Novels We Loved In The First Half Of 2026

A highly posed, non-candid picture of us taken by our niece Grayson

While I appreciate a good movie or show, few things make life better than falling in love with the world of a novel, the sort of book that while you’re reading it, you’re dimly aware that with every page you turn, you’re hastening the end of your love affair with the story. But you cannot stop.

Here are four novels Debbie and I loved and recommend strongly. They all have first-person narrative voices that captured us early on and never let us go.

They were welcome respites from the clamor of reality.

The Calamity Club by Katherine Stockett

Two caveats. First, The Calamity Club is a bestseller so it is far from an “undiscovered gem.” Second, I have a financial interest in the book’s publisher and thus a financial interest in the book continuing to do well. ¹

The world of Calamity Club is 1933 Mississippi told through the two, alternating voices of a girl and a woman. It’s a big book at over 600 pages but I didn’t want it to end. The action keeps coming. The plot is intricate but not convoluted. It all made sense to me.

I found the two narrators on the page distinct and compelling. Debbie listened to the audio version and was so mesmerized by the voices that it led to a ridiculous fight between us (described in a recent post, link in the footnote). ²

The author Katherine Stockett (The Help) did a great deal of research and it shows. You get a good sense of the Deep South Depression status hierarchy, from destitute to former rich to still rich. I was transported (a cliché but it’s the right word) away from the real world, which was a delightful relief.

I didn’t find the novel overtly political. However, reading about some of the worst cruelties of that time and place made me angry for the suffering characters, glad that there’s been great progress since 1933, and regretful that some of that progress has been recently squandered.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

When I finished Calamity Club, having closed one escape route from current reality, I craved a “rebound novel” that would offer a similar escape. I asked Claude (Anthropic) for suggestions of other, high-quality historical novels, i.e., well reviewed. That’s how I found Days Without End.

The narrator is an immigrant from Ireland to the Western United States in the mid-19^th century. He’s looking back as an older man on all his adventures, starting in the frontier town of St. Louis in the 1840s when he’s a teenager.

For much of the story, he’s a soldier fighting Indian tribes, the Confederate Rebels, and various bandits. There’s a lot of violence and gore but it’s delivered in a narrative voice that manages to be rough, explicit, and eloquent all at once.

The narrator also carries on an unusual and magnificent love affair. To say more would risk spoiling the plot.

Like Calamity Club, the pace of Days Without End is quick.

Also, Sebastian Barry is a prolific novelist. I’m looking forward to reading his other books.

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

In The Rest Of Our Lives, a fifty-five-year old man is trying to figure out his life as he’s driving his daughter, his only child, to drop her off at freshman year in college. We learn right away that a dozen years ago, his wife had an affair. As a consequence, he vowed that he would file for divorce once they were empty-nesters. That time has come.

The story takes place in modern day America, so no “transport,” but the writing is so good that it was easy to escape into the novel’s world. There’s a simple clarity to the narrative voice. It doesn’t show off. The skill is hidden by the skill itself.

The man’s journey through geographical space, through time, and in his head, had more than enough action and uncertainty to keep me deeply interested. There’s a great one-on-one pick-up basketball game scene, and I also liked the storyline of his wife’s travails as a teacher at Brearley, a quintessentially elite, all-girls private school in Manhattan.

I found myself more than once giving advice to the protagonist as if he were my friend pouring out his heart. He didn’t take all of my advice but nevertheless I rooted for him to the very end.

Medium Rare by Natasha Joukovsky

Medium Rare is historical in that much of the action takes place during the 2019 NCAA March Madness tournament. It’s a take on the myth of Icarus, played in the novel by a “mid-level” Washington lobbyist who achieves sudden and “stratospheric celebrity” when it looks as if he’s filled out a perfect bracket to win a billion-dollar prize.

The narrator Cassandra is a female friend of the bracket “genius.” Like her mythical namesake, Cassandra has the power of prophecy, although clouded enough to keep a reader guessing.

Cassandra is very status conscious and aware precisely of how far she stands above her mid-level lobbyist friend and his wife. The narrator’s snark and her ruthless snobbery were especially appealing to me, which may be a self-condemning statement! And waiting for the “lucky” bracket winner to fly too close to the sun played upon my sense of schadenfreude.

Also, the NCAA basketball scenes, true to the 2019 tournament’s history, are great.

Full attention and completing

My full attention standard for television is much lower than it is for reading a novel. There are some, rare TV shows and movies that grab my full attention, that eliminate the temptation to either multi-task or let my mind wander, e.g., The Pitt ³

For the rest, I’ll lazily follow along unless I think it’s really bad. Then I’ll cut it off.

However, if a book is not grabbing my full attention, I’ll stop reading. I probably have a book completion rate of about a third.

In this regard, Debbie and I are very different. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, she’s a “completist” and considers it a moral failure to begin anything without finishing it. I’ve decided to be grateful for this quirk of her character as it could be an important reason why the project of our marriage has endured.

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Comments appreciated about the books above and your reading (or TV/movie) suggestions

Below is a link to our full year 2025 books and shows recommendations. We picked too many!

1. Spiegel & Grau is the publisher.

2. This post describes the fight launched by Debbie’s immersion in the audio book of The Calamity Club. Yes, I was at fault.

3. The Pitt is a great example of a show that grabs me as much as any book. You have to pay attention to each episode’s many life and death story-arcs or else you’ll be lost. Plus, I never want to miss the subtleties of the doctors and nurses interacting with one another and with patients. After an episode of The Pitt, I feel drained. That’s magic.

If you love The Pitt, consider reading Susan Bordo’s essays on it, including Some Scenes From this Season of The Pitt That Got Me in the Feels