The Midnight Library By Matt Haig

I’ve bought a physical copy of The Midnight Library no fewer than three times, and ended up losing it during a move each time. I kept meaning to read it, and then bought an e-book version a few days before I ended up getting a new contract, one that consumed all my time, and I forgot about reading it.

This is a lovely book about how we live, how we love, and how we come to diminish our selves and our lives. Highly recommended, and you don’t have to be a philosophy major to love everything about Nora Seed and her exploration of the meaning of life.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

There’s something deeply powerful about this book, and Tartt writes it beautifully and well. But the power of what Tartt has captured goes beyond the story of five friends and what happened to their sixth, and how secrets become a sickness. Tartt published this in 1992, and her canvas for the portraits she paints is the small college campus, an world away but also one so completely a world and culture to itself that it could be interchangeable with another one a coast—or even a nation—away. 

What happened in higher education in the early 90’s—largely through the early years of the S&L crash in the States, but through so many other factors as well—rendered this a last picture of the way things were. By the time contemporary readers meet Richard, our narrator, and his erudite fellows of the Classics, this will seem as though it was written in a culture that is not merely a few decades ago, but from a time of ancient history. The chronology of this work renders the whole even more compelling, though Tartt doesn’t need any help. The Secret History brings friendship and loyalty, identity and inclusion all to the fore, shining a light on the ways in which we build who we are and craft the scaffolds that support our narratives of self. 

The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

I really liked the ending and the resolution as well as the overall arc of this trilogy (I didn’t read the half-step books in between). I hear there is a second series, and I’m giving it a pass, since I love everything about the way that this series landed.

The Wicked King by Holly Black

  

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune

The book is lovely, actually. There is magic, but there are no Heroes-Capital-H, just the everyday heroism of everyday people being brave outside their comfort zones. It’s a book about belonging, courage, found families, and what it means to live life fully. It was exactly what I needed, and it touched me. It’s well written, in simple ways that are easy to overlook, and it has a dry humor that I appreciate. I am very glad i read it, and very glad it came to me just now. 

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

This ended up in my hands courtesy of the 14 year old, who pressed it to me and said “you have to read it.” And of course I read it. It’s pretty nice, as modern fantasy goes, actually. The first in the Folk of the Air series.

The Hum and the Shiver By Alex Bledsoe

This book has a wonderful premise, and then the writing by Bledsoe is just so sophomorically bad that it is painful. 

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

2025

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

2022

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

2018

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

2019

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Vintage, 2008

I read this when it came out in 2008 and was blown away. 

I decided to read it again and see if it holds up, and it really does. 

The themes of connection, trust, love, cynicism in a modern world, and the frame tales kept me spellbound.

Andrew Davidson knocked it out of the park and carved narratives into my soul.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Bloomsbury, 2011.

This is so good that is wrecked my ability to read anything for nearly a month.

Superb writing, deft craft, and the absolute beauty of the tale kept me spellbound. 

My heart still aches when I think of it.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Tambourines to Glory by Langston Hughes

Novel form published in 1958

This is a rollicking good time.

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

Peapod Classics, 1952.

Another fairy tale for grown ups, this features the journey of a young woman as she encounters mythological creatures, is given a directive by none other than Odin himself, and makes her way in her life through uncertainty and into herself.

Mitchison’s prose is witty, scantly subversive, and delightful. Engaging as the tale is, the way its told is the real gem of this work, and I loved everything about it.

The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens

House of Anansi Press, 2006

I was fetched by The O’Briens, so I jumped at the chance to take a journey with Fergus O’Briens from an earlier time. Behrens didn’t disappoint. 

Isolation, and the conditions which create it, are on full display as Fergus makes his way across seas, oceans, and continents, doing the best he can in the moment, and frequently wondering how he ended up in this or that particular state, only to decide quite boldly that the only thing for it is to do something completely different. 

I loved everything about this work, but I especially loved the writing. Behrens gets me.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Published by Penguin, 2014

I fell in love with Ng when I read Little Fires Everywhere, and I adored Our Missing Hearts, so when I learned that her debut novel had somehow missed me, I picked up a copy straight away.

This exploration of family, parental expectations, racism, and society is a brilliant and beautiful work. Ng really sets us up with the first sentence and never lets us go after that. 

Brilliant, deeply moving, and powerful. 

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Published by Gerald Duckworth, 1978

I needed more books about books in my life, so I turned to The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. Books themselves have very little place in the overall plot, and that’s all to the good, as well cheer our heroine on as she explores widowhood as an outsider in a tightly-knit, and often closed-minded, small community. 

The book is dryly funny, witty, and compassionate. It’s a fantastic romp while also being a treatise of the power of having enough gumption to follow a dream, even when that feels like an act of resistance.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Knopf, 2022

I was so fetched by Zevin’s Fikry that I scooped up this work. It’s nothing like Fikry, of course, and it’s just brilliant.

I was consumed down into the investigation of friendship and trust and confidence and parallel play and gaming, especially gaming together, that I read this book without stopping. 

Truly, I love each of the characters, and I felt the struggles and victories as they played out, winced as each one made terrible decisions, and actually held my breath during a particular scene. 

It’s a compelling work, and delightful.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry By Gabrielle Zein

Published in 2014.

I stumbled across this book, wanting something that spoke to the many beautiful bits of language and my love of books and bookshops. It was a surprise, a delight, and a heartwarming emotional ride that I adored. 

Family, found family, and the ties that bind are all on display, as well as the various ways in which life gains and loses meaning. And of course, there are the snippets of literature, the love story to books and fiction itself, that threads through the work. 

This might very well be the feel good book that you’re looking for. I know it certainly was for me.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Published by Tor, 2018

The second in the Murderbot series, Artificial Condition brings us more deeply into the issues of identity, autonomy, and friendship. 

These novels are jaunty and light, and yet they deal with some of the most important, and timely, themes of our day. Each of the volumes I’ve read so far has been the perfect book to take with me on a vacation, and the situations and mishaps—and personalities—that populate each offering have stayed with me in a meaningful way. 

Pack this in your suitcase and enjoy the ride.

The series has been brought to the small screen by Apple TV+, and I hear that’s delightful too. 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Published by Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993

I know I’m late to read this, and that even high school students have no read it as part of their classes, but I somehow hadn’t made time for this yet, and it seemed the perfect time to remedy that. 

I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, and Butler delivers a compelling and powerful story of a world that shatters, falling apart along fissures and fault lines of its own making. 

Along the way, we find wisdom through spirituality, the comfort and necessity of companionship, and the human need to care for others. 

This is worth all the wonderful things that have been said about it, and yes, it’s perfect as a required reading entry.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Short, stark, and compelling, this little book was originally published in French in 1995, and the first English translation published in 1997. It barely made a blip on the literature world, and then Vintage published it in2019 and Transit republished it in 2022. 

I found myself captivated by this matter of fact recitation of life on a distant place, a distant land, possibly a distant planet. The group of women, and the decisions made along the way, each reflect the idea of society and the weight that we give them (rightly or wrongly, as you may choose). There is no proselytizing, here, just the journey of one step after another to discover life and what makes it livable. 

By the end, I had come to love the narrator and cheer for her. 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Published by Faber and Faber, 2020.

This small volume is stark, easily overlooked in its simplicity, and compelling. I felt the pages and the narrative deeply and felt my heart in my teeth as the characters made the small decisions that would change their lives, and the lives of others. 

There’s an ethics in daily life discussion to be had here a la “If not now, when? If not you, who?”, but don’t let that dissuade you. The lyrical simplicity of this tale is worth reading just for the sheer beauty of it. 

Circe by Madeline Miller

Published by Little, Brown, & Co., 2018

I put off reading this, even though I was completely intrigued. I was afraid of being let down by a retelling of one of my favorite minor, often-overlooked goddesses.

I need not have worried. 

Circe is lyrical and beautiful, an homage to the myth, and everything I ever wanted out of a Greek tale of heroes and gods. 

This is everything that it should be, and deserves all the praise that has been richly heaped upon it.

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

Published by Viking, 2016

I loved The Thursday Murder Club. Osman really hit it out of the park with his first installment, but I found the second volume a bit klunky at the start. By the time he found his footing again, I felt the story was overly thin. 

I thought I might just be having an off day as a reader, and talked with some other fans of the first volume who told me that the second does pale, and that, unfortunately, it seems the third and fourth are each worse by degrees in turn.

Read the first one, but feel free to skip the rest in the series. 

The Hunter by Tana French

Published by Viking, 2024

I’ve loved Tana French’s writing since I first read Into the Woods in 2010. The Hunter is the second in her Cal Hooper series, which I like just as much as any of the Dublin Murder Squad. 

I was so engrossed in the characters she created that I was 300 pages in before I remembered that this was supposed to be a murder mystery and wondered when the body would show up. 

I’m very much looking forward to the next installment. Cal Hooper and crew have taken up space in my personal canon.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Published in 2025 by Tor.

The River Has Roots is immersive, lyrical, and mystical. It’s a fairy tale for grown-ups, and I loved everything about it. The interior illustrations by Kathleen Neeley only make the experience richer. 

I fell in love with El-Motar’s collaboration with Max Gladstone, This is How You Lose the Time War, and couldn’t put my hands on this standalone debut fast enough. It didn’t disappoint. 

Warning: Reading this raised the bar for all the books that I would read after it.

Reading this was like getting a gift.