Lonesome Reader

We're at the halfway point of 2026, so it's time to go through my favorite books of the year so far. I've read 64 books in total, but as always, it's not about the quantity of what you read — it's about the quality of the reading experience. Plenty of those 64 have been great, but these 10 in particular are the ones that have really stuck with me: I keep thinking back on them...

In this arresting new short story collection, Oates evokes the lives of a diverse group of characters, many of whom have reached a crisis point in their lives, in such a mesmerising way that I felt swept up in the momentum of these tales. From an abusive affair gone wrong, to strained parent-child relationsh...

The most noticeable thing when starting to read “Son of Nobody” is how the story is divided into The Psoad, an imagined newfound epic poem which follows the Trojan war from the point of view of a foot soldier from Midea, and footnotes by their translator, the Classics academic Harlow Donne. I usually read fo...

It took me a little while to settle into this debut novel though the author establishes some intriguing mysteries from the outset. At the beginning we meet Qianze who works a demanding job in New York City when her long lost father Weihong suddenly reappears. Where has he been? What is the prophecy that he's...