Top 10 and More: The Best Books I Read in 2026

I Read 112 Books This Year. Here’s What I Liked Most. Plus: A Major Milestone

I read 112 books this year. There’s still a little year left, but I’m unsure I’ll get to much more before the window closes. I’m writing this in a hospital room right now. Starting a couple weeks ago, my daughter Naomi experienced an acute reaction to her anti-seizure medication; she was recently diagnosed with epilepsy. Per habit, I tucked several books into my bag. Not per habit, I haven’t opened a single one since getting here. Maybe when we get home. Thank God she’s on the mend, and thank all of you for your concerns and prayers.

But as I sit here with the final days of 2025 dwindling down, I thought I’d share my favorite books from the year.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

My Top 10, plus Honorable Mentions

Ranking my top ten is both easy and not. I know Nos. 1–3 for certain. The rest pose challenges, and rank probably doesn’t much matter. They could slosh around in positions 4–10 without much to anchor them to any one spot on the list; they’re all phenomenal in their way. If I’ve reviewed the book, I’ve included the link below.

1. Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (fiction)

2. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (fiction)

3. Yan Lianke, Lenin’s Kisses (fiction)

4. Johan Norberg, Peak Human (nonfiction)

5. Dylan Pahman, The Kingdom of God and the Common Good (nonfiction)

6. Charlie English, The CIA Bookclub (nonfiction)

7. Shusaku Endo, Deep River (fiction)

8. Shirley Jackson, The Sundial (fiction)

9. Pär Lagerkvist, Barabbas (fiction)

10. George S. Schuyler, Black No More (fiction)

You can read the reviews for my specific thoughts, but I want to single out Dylan Pahman’s The Kingdom of God and the Common Good. It’s the best book I know for explaining the long, rich history of Christian social thought across all traditions; in fact, one of the book’s supreme virtues is Pahman’s generous, ecumenical approach. As we think about economic and social policy, believers and nonbelievers alike will find much here to stimulate their intellectual curiosity and moral imagination. I cannot praise or recommend Pahman’s book highly enough.

Having tagged those ten, I also want to point to several honorable mentions. First, Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine. While I vigorously disagreed with Kingsnorth’s analysis of what ails our society, few volumes stimulated my thinking this year as much as his. That’s the mark of a great book. And as much as I differ from his view, I appreciate the spirit with which he offered his critique.

Jacob Mchangama’s magisterial history Free Speech deserves special attention as well. I got to know Jacob this year; it turns out he lives about 10 minutes from my house. Free inquiry and open debate have represented motivating concerns of mine for years and recur as regular subjects at Miller’s Book Review. No one knows these traditions better than Jacob, and few have done as much to explain why they matter—or what we lose without them.

I read a few Yoko Ogawa novels this year, including re-reading The Memory Police, but I’d like to highlight The Housekeeper and the Professor. Like everything I’ve read from Ogawa, it’s subtle and mysterious; it’s also touching and beautifully humane. That’s a rare combination.

I’m still brooding on Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. I read it in three different translations back to back (Keenan, Carpenter, and Gibeau). It’s impossible to say which version is better; they all have their merits. But the underlying story, both funny and tragic, is unforgettable.

If you’re looking for a brilliantly written memoir on a complicated Midwestern life, I recommend Howard Schapp’s Brooding upon the Waters. In fact, I’ve been recommending it wherever I go; this past week, I raved about it on a group coaching call with Full Focus clients. It’s a powerful reflection on mutual dependence, the complex source of our passions, mental illness, loss, and so much more. I finished it in two sittings. Worth noting, it’s published by Gregory Wolfe’s always-interesting Slant Books.

And finally three novels that couldn’t be more different but each of which still sits with me: Charles Willeford’s Cockfighter, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and Sean Michaels’s Do You Remember Being Born? The last is a fascinating exploration of the interplay of art and artificial intelligence.

Reading with My Daughter

One of the many joys of 2025 was reading with Naomi. I’ve been reading to her since she was minuscule, whatever was appropriate for her age. Sometimes she favors kids’ books, and I’m (mostly) happy to indulge that. Other times, we settle in for chapter books; I’ve noted all of those in my overall reading list (below). Depending on a million variables of family life, we might only get a few pages a night—or we might blast through a full book in a few days.

A standout? Roald Dahl. We started with George’s Marvelous Medicine, a neglected copy of which was banging around on the shelves. I bought several others and we sailed through them all. We just finished Danny the Champion of the World a few weeks ago.

We’ve also just begun The Chronicles of Narnia. I unknowingly misinformed Naomi that Lucy was just six years old in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—her same age! But I’m now pretty sure Lucy’s actually closer to eight. I’m going to have to let her down gently.

Everything I Read in 2025, Basically

If I finished a book this year, I put it on the list below. I mostly left off business reading, especially if I really just consulted the book, rather than seriously read it cover to cover. Anything I quit unfinished I’ve abandoned to the perils of the memory hole. If I reviewed the book, it’s linked so you can see what I thought of it.

January

1. Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (fiction)

2. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (fiction)

3. David Sax, The Future Is Analog (nonfiction)

4. Shirley Jackson, The Road Through the Wall (fiction)

5. Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman (fiction)

6. George S. Schuyler, Black No More (fiction)

7. Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, The Age of AI (nonfiction)

8. Henry A. Kissinger, Craig Muncie, and Eric Schmidt, Genesis (nonfiction)

9. Leslie Valiant, The Importance of Being Educable (nonfiction)

February

1. Shirley Jackson, The Bird’s Nest (fiction)

2. Nella Larsen, Passing (fiction)

3. Nella Larsen, Quicksand (fiction)

4. Flannery O’Conner, Everything that Rises Must Converge (fiction)

5. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (nonfiction)

6. Shirley Jackson, The Sundial (fiction)

7. Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (fiction)

8. Aaron Gwyn, The Cannibal Owl (fiction)

9. Aidan Levy, Saxophone Colossus (nonfiction)

10. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (fiction)

March

1. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (fiction)

2. Anne de Marcken, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over (fiction)

3. Derrick G. Jeter, Blood Touching Blood (fiction)

4. Yoko Ogawa, Mina’s Matchbox (fiction)

5. Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police (re-read from 2024; fiction)

April

1. Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (fiction)

2. Jacob Mchangama, Free Speech (nonfiction)

3. Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (fiction)

4. Pär Lagerkvist, Barabbas (fiction)

5. Cal Newport, Slow Productivity (nonfiction)

6. Roald Dahl, George’s Marvelous Medicine (fiction)

May

1. J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (fiction)

2. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (fiction)

3. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (fiction)

4. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (fiction)

5. Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach (fiction)

6. Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (fiction)

June

1. Dylan Pahman, The Kingdom of God and the Common Good (nonfiction)

2. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (fiction)

3. Johan Norberg, Peak Human (nonfiction)

4. Henry James, The Ambassadors (fiction)

5. Glenn C. Loury, Self-Censorship (nonfiction)

6. Denise S. Robbins, The Unmapping (fiction)

7. Sy Montgomery, What the Chicken Knows (nonfiction)

8. Charles Willeford, Cockfighter (fiction)

9. Roald Dahl, The Fantastic Mr. Fox (fiction)

10. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (fiction)

11. Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born? (fiction)

12. Alissa Wilkinson, We Tell Ourselves Stories (nonfiction)

July

1. Ernest J. Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men (fiction)

2. Aaron Gwyn, The Cannibal Owl (re-read from February; fiction)

3. Charlie English, The CIA Bookclub (nonfiction)

4. Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem (fiction)

5. Roald Dahl, The Twits (fiction)

6. Roald Dahl, The BFG (fiction)

7. Roald Dahl, The Witches (fiction)

8. Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (fiction)

9. Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (fiction)

10. Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World (fiction)

August

1. Eca de Queiros, Adam and Eve in Paradise (fiction)

2. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (fiction)

3. Yan Lianke, Lenin’s Kisses (fiction)

4. Yan Lianke, The Four Books (fiction)

5. Charles Dickens, Hard Times (fiction)

6. Brandi Willis Schreiber, A Long Walk with Mary (nonfiction)

7. Shusaku Endo, Deep River (fiction)

8. Laura Spinney, Proto (nonfiction)

9. Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (fiction)

10. Roald Dahl, Matilda (fiction)

11. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (fiction)

12. Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet (fiction)

13. Kathryn Scanlan, Kick the Latch (fiction)

September

1. David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (fiction)

2. Andrew Klavan, The Kingdom of Cain (nonfiction)

3. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 2 (nonfiction)

4. Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (fiction)

5. Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister (fiction)

6. Richard and Florence Atwater, Mr. Popper’s Penguins (fiction)

7. Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake (fiction)

8. Shusaku Endo, The Sea and Poison (fiction)

9. Raymond Chandler, The High Window (fiction)

October

1. Raymond Chandler, Playback (fiction)

2. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (fiction)

3. Stephen R. Lawhead, The Skin Map: Bright Empires 1 (fiction)

4. Stephen R. Lawhead, The Bone House: Bright Empires 2 (fiction)

5. Stephen R. Lawhead, The Spirit Well: Bright Empires 3 (fiction)

6. Stephen R. Lawhead, The Shadow Lamp: Bright Empires 4 (fiction)

7. Stephen R. Lawhead, The Fatal Tree: Bright Empires 5 (fiction)

8. P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins (fiction)

9. Dwarkesh Patel, The Scaling Era (nonfiction)

10. Bram Stoker, Dracula (fiction)

11. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (fiction)

12. Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (trans., Keenan; fiction)

13. Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (trans., Carpenter; fiction)

14. Osamu Dazai, A Shameful Life (No Longer Human by another title, trans., Gibeau; fiction)

15. Osamu Dazai, Flowers of Buffoonery (fiction)

November

1. Raymond Chandler, Trouble Is My Business (fiction)

2. Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (fiction)

3. Octavia Butler, Kindred (fiction)

4. Lynell George, A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky (nonfiction)

5. Octavia Butler, The Last Interview (nonfiction)

6. Rachel McCarthy James, Whack Job (nonfiction)

7. Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (fiction)

8. Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine (nonfiction)

9. Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth (nonfiction)

10. Shusaku Endo, Portraits of a Mother (fiction)

11. Molly McNett, Child of These Tears (fiction)

December

1. Roald Dahl, Danny Champion of the World (fiction)

2. Howard Schapp, Brooding upon the Waters (nonfiction)

3. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop (fiction)

4. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (fiction)

5. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (fiction)

6. C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (fiction)

7. Josephine Quinn, How the World Made the West (nonfiction)

For those keeping track, that’s 81 fiction and 31 nonfiction titles, a 72/28 percent split.

I’m sure I’ll read a few more before the year completely vanishes. I’ve got a couple I’m eyeing once we’re home from the hospital, and I’m midway through two right now. I’m re-reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and Athanasius’s On the Incarnation (seemed like a good one for the Christmas season).

Parting Note

One exciting piece of news: Last week, Miller’s Book Review hit 10,000 subscribers. I’m both humbled and blown away. Thank you all for your continued interest in what I’m doing here. I find this project immensely rewarding—all the more so because of your engagement. Crossing a milestone like that could only happen with your ongoing support.

Thank you!

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