The theme of the week is one super chill question: who will you be when America descends into chaos? What I read this week Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel I love how in her four most recent books Emily breaks the narrative of a dystopian novel into puzzle
The theme of this week is death comes for us all! (I added an exclamation point at the end so you'll know I'm being peppy about it.) What I read this week Switzy by Emma Cline and Understory by Chloe Benjamin Sometimes by circumstance I come
The theme of the week is reasons to become a misandrist, and also English pubs What I read this week The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley I have not read Gwendoline Riley before but now I'm in it. Her latest novel, long-listed for the Booker Prize, really
The theme of the week is intergenerational trauma, unreliable narrators, and the malleability of memory What I read this week Awake Awake by Fiona Mozley "History was chaos, top to bottom, front to back, and a human life was no different. Any attempt to decipher a lucid course would
The theme of the week is who has a soul and who is a mere husk of a person (the answer might surprise you) What I read this week The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by Gil Durán In the 80s and 90s pop culture
The theme of this week is going out on your own and discovering some harsh truths What I read this week Unprecedented Times by Malavika Kannan I first met Malavika through my friends Kristen and Kayla, who live in Orlando and know every writer who was ever in the nearby
This week's theme is who gets to celebrate and go home, and who doesn't What I read this week Etna by Paul Yoon I'm a big Paul Yoon fan but I approached his latest novel with some trepidation. As Josh said, the only book
The theme of the week is how AI is making the world (more) stupid What I read this week The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams What to do with this frustrating, brilliant novel! I almost wanted to take a week longer to think about it before I wrote about it, but
This week's theme is what happens (nothing good!) when you mine your life for material for your fiction What I read this week You Won't Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters by Rachel Aviv Rachel Aviv has one of my favorite journalistic beats.
The theme of this week is very simple: two of the hottest novels of summer 2026 What I read this week Famous Men by Julie Buntin "I was naive, but not so naive that I hadn't already heard this story, both of us fitting neatly into our
The theme of the week is terrible men and the havoc they wreak! What I read this week A Real Animal by Emmeline Atwood In 2019 Catapult published Meander, Spiral, Explode, novelist Jane Allison's craft book on narrative structure and the classic hero's journey and how
The theme of the week is multiple personalities, figuratively What I read this week I'm a Lot: Surviving Myself and All the People I've Been by Alison Leiby Alison Leiby is my husband's work wife which means that we are family. I know a