My 2026 Reading List: 100 Books, 24 Intentional Reads

2026 is my year to bring more reading back into my life.

After years of feeling disconnected from books, I’m choosing a gentle and intentional approach. Below is a list of 100 fiction and nonfiction books. I plan to read 12 fiction and 12 non-fiction titles over the year, about two per month.

And if it was any question, yes—listening to audiobooks counts! Because comprehension and meaning matter more than format. Read this NPR article about why:

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/07/nx-s1-5454723/does-listening-to-an-audiobook-count-as-reading

Why Reading Became Hard (and How I’m Reframing It)

Reading became difficult for me when I started treating it like a task.

Graduate school required 200–300 pages a week of dense art theory and history on top of my own research. Important, foundational, all the things—but didn't quite hit with my dopamine receptors. After grad school, I was finished with all books for a long time.

Years later, I found my way back to books. But I was shy to share, as it was a lot of comfort, fluffy reads: vampire novels, Emily Henry books, the occasional best seller.  Those books did exactly what I needed—they reminded me of the joys of sinking into a story.

I became more engaged with nonfiction again during my business class with Holly Howard. Maybe it was reading The E-Myth alongside Braiding Sweetgrass. I found the best gift of reading in these pages: curiosity. 

I'm so excited to read right now. And even better, I get to cuddle up with my 8-year old and read together. Does it get any better??

The Goal for 2026

• 100 books on (or off!) the list
• 24 books read
• 12 fiction
• 12 nonfiction

No other pressures. No expectations on how I choose to read these books or in what order. Just reading to feel curious and engaged.

My Nonfiction Reading List

Creative Practice & Thinking

• The Work of Art — Adam Moss
• Ways of Seeing — John Berger
• The Shape of Content — Ben Shahn
• The Shape of a Pocket — John Berger
• The Craftsman — Richard Sennett
• The Nature of Order — Christopher Alexander
• On Looking — Alexandra Horowitz
• Silence — John Cage
• The Forest Unseen — David George Haskell
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard

Biz and $$$

• Profit First — Mike Michalowicz
• Company of One — Paul Jarvis
• The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel
• Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! — Greg Crabtree
• Small Giants — Bo Burlingham
• Managing Oneself — Peter Drucker
• The Long View — Brian Fetherstonhaugh
• Good Strategy / Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt

Founder/Leader

• Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke
• High Output Management — Andrew Grove
• Leadership and Self-Deception — The Arbinger Institute
• Turn the Ship Around! — L. David Marquet
• The Fifth Discipline — Peter Senge
• The Art of Action — Stephen Bungay

Ops

• How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell
• Timefulness — Marcia Bjornerud
• The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
• Atomic Habits — James Clear
• Work Clean — Dan Charnas
• Slow Productivity — Cal Newport

Design Heavy

• In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
• The Eyes of the Skin — Juhani Pallasmaa
• Objects of Desire — Adrian Forty
• Material Matters — László Moholy-Nagy
• The Poetics of Space — Gaston Bachelard

Everything Else

• Co-Intelligence — Ethan Mollick
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff
• Tools for Thought — Howard Rheingold
• The Art of Gathering — Priya Parker
• Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Seeing Like a State — James C. Scott
• The Timeless Way of Building — Christopher Alexander
• Being Mortal — Atul Gawande
• Range — David Epstein
• Finite and Infinite Games — James P. Carse
• Thinking in Systems — Donella H. Meadows
• A Pattern Language — Christopher Alexander et al.

My Fiction Reading List

In My Ann Patchett Era

• Bel Canto — Ann Patchett
• Commonwealth — Ann Patchett
• The Dutch House — Ann Patchett
• Still Life — Sarah Winman
• A Place for Us — Fatima Farheen Mirza
• The Lincoln Highway — Amor Towles
• Rules of Civility — Amor Towles
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry — Gabrielle Zevin
• The Interestings — Meg Wolitzer
• Evvie Drake Starts Over — Linda Holmes

Post-Apocalyptic

• Station Eleven — Emily St. John Mandel
• Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel
• Good Omens — Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
• The Measure — Nikki Erlick
• Oona Out of Order — Margarita Montimore
• The Power — Naomi Alderman
• The Midnight Library — Matt Haig
• The Golem and the Jinni — Helene Wecker

Kinda Dreamy

• The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern
• The Starless Sea — Erin Morgenstern
• Life of Pi — Yann Martel
• Neverwhere — Neil Gaiman
• The Snow Child — Eowyn Ivey
• The Housekeeper and the Professor — Yoko Ogawa

Dark Humor

• The Humans — Matt Haig
• Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
• Less — Andrew Sean Greer
• The Maid — Nita Prose
• Sourdough — Robin Sloan
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette — Maria Semple
• Anxious People — Fredrik Backman
• Convenience Store Woman — Sayaka Murata

New-ish

• Exit West — Mohsin Hamid
• Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell
• A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles
• The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — Michael Chabon
• The Sentence — Louise Erdrich

Let’s Talk Books

This list is not for optimization, it's for research and reentry into my book era. I realized that while I have a sense of what kind of fiction pulls me, I often get overwhelmed when looking for that next read, a common problem for my ADHD brain. My hope is that these lists help me gently seek for my next set of pages and enjoy the journey of discovering books again.

If you have recommendations or strong opinions, I’d love to hear about it. Share in the comments or send me an email—I'd love to hear about it.

Here’s to curiosity, ease, and cozy corners fillled with books!