TBR 2026 | Patron-Only

What an awesome list and exercise. Now you’ve got me pondering what I need to jump into. In 2026 I’ll be reading: 1) The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadaré, 2) The Cossacks by Tolstoy, 3) The Trial by Kafka, 4) More Borges… because it’s Borges, and we’ll see about the rest. Cheers and happy reading!

Kharms is outstanding! He is a big fixture in my family (who are Russian-Jews from formerly Leningrad) and he was held up as something of an ideal almost, of where your imagination can take you. In my adolesence, as I was writing terribly oversentimental wishy-washy poetry, they would always tell me: "Forget this stuff, read Kharms!" It's a real shame you don't hear about him more outside of Russian circles, and so I was naturally quite excited when you mentioned him. Hope you get 'round to reading him this year and that you enjoy his stuff. Cheers

Thanks Cliff, great list. East of Eden is on my tbr along with Middlemarch, some Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and a re-read of Moby Dick among others. Currently reading (slowly) Don Delillo's Underworld and also J G Ballard's final novel Kingdom Come which is eerily prescient, especially in light of recent events here in the UK. Not bad for a novel written 20 years ago.

Should be a great year for reading, at least.

I've (finally) started The Brothers Karamazov and I'm looking forward to reading Dispatches and re-reading The Crossing with you this year.

Great list! Thanks for the shoutout re: Chaos! That's one that stuck with me for quite a while. Nazi Literature in the Americas is also an amazing read. My 2026 TBR (that I will no doubt stray from and not finish): Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut, The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy, Cities on the Plain by Cormac McCarthy, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young, Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino, A Childhood by Harry Crews, A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Białoszewski, & City of God by Saint Augustine.

Dispatches by Herr is a flat out classic. Herr co-authored Full Metal Jacket. I have a first printing.