Stamped From the Beginning taught me so much more than any other book I’ve ever read about antiracism. It’s long, but very worth the process of working through it slowly.

On Beauty is a literary family drama that feels simultaneously like comfort food and watching a train wreck in slow motion.

The Stone Sky is an incredible conclusion to The Broken Earth trilogy. I truly couldn’t put it down, and it solidified this trilogy as an all-time favorite.

Wolf Hall is a pretty dense historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII. But it’s an incredible accomplishment of a book, and I’m really glad I read it.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a deeply unsettling but ultimately brilliant book about the mother of a psychopathic kid who commits a school shooting.

Sabrina & Corina is a collection of really, really good short stories about Latinas of indigenous ancestry. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t enjoy, and many I truly loved.

Fairest is an expertly written memoir that has so much to give its readers. I definitely recommend it.

The Obelisk Gate is a fantastic sequel to The Fifth Season that promises SO MUCH to come.

A Thousand Ships is just so good. It’s easy to read and to love, but it also packs a big punch of metaphor and meaning.

Lanny was exactly my kind of literary magical realism — visceral, full-bodied, whimsical, a little weird, and deeply resonant.

The Man Who Saw Everything is so creative. You’ll spend most of the book feeling lost … but you’re actually supposed to, and it pays off in the end.

Property forces white women to take an uncomfortable look at their role in the history of slavery. It’s not exactly “fun” to read, but it is masterfully crafted and effective.

The Empire of Gold is the incredible conclusion to the Daevabad Trilogy that we’ve been waiting years for!

Bel Canto is beautiful and devastating, and as you’d expect from the title, it flows like music. This might be my favorite Ann Patchett so far.

I don’t have much to say about this beyond what’s been said before: If you are white, read it.

Here for It is an honest, hopeful, moving, funny memoir written in essays by a gay Black man. What else do you need to know?

This is a beautiful literary story about two Chinese-American siblings surviving on their own near the end of the gold rush. Like everyone else, I loved it.

This is a beautiful novel. It shows us the most important moments of a murdered woman’s life, told through flashes of memory, in the minutes before her brain function stops.