Best Books I’ve Read in 2026: My Favorite Reads So Far

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First, what have you read so far in 2026?

By myself, I’ve read:

Three Body Problem
Big Magic
Loving What Is
Throne of Glass #1, #2 & #3
The Assassin’s Blade
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
A Clockwork Orange
Speaker for the Dead
Toilet Training in Less Than a Day
The Martian
Animal Farm

With my children I’ve read, aside from their board books:

Charlotte’s Web
Whatever After: Bad Hair Day

You can also follow along with what I’m reading over on Goodreads!

What are you currently reading?

I always have to have a few books in my log. I like to switch between them depending on my mood. Pretty commonly, I’ll have a romance book, a sci-fi, and a self-help or more of a thinking-type book.

Right now, the three that I’m currently reading are:

Xenocide (Ender #3)
Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass #4)
For One More Day

What made you pick these books?

I’ll take them one at a time.

Starting with the one that I’m most anxious to pick up and continue reading: For One More Day by Mitch Albom. His books are super easy to read and have such tender, thoughtful writing. I actually found it at a thrift store near me just last week, and I’m already more than halfway through.

As far as Queen of Shadows, I’m only reading this one out of obligation… I picked up the first book for a book club with me and my friends and felt devoted to it because of the obligation. However, I don’t really feel inclined to pick this one up and honestly might add it to my “did not finish” shelf.

For Xenocide, I need to fill you in on a little bit of backstory. My husband has a book club, and a while ago they decided to read Ender’s Game. I like to follow along with the books that they are reading as well, so I started to read it and keep up with their book log.

I really loved the story, and it just so happened that my husband’s book club was going to pick up the second book a while later! So I read the second book while they all did as well, and now a bunch of us are reading the third book, Xenocide, without a deadline.

This one is so fun to listen to on Audible since they narrate different people’s perspectives using different narrators.

What has been your favorite book of the year so far?

Hands down, my absolute favorite book was A Clockwork Orange.

I watched the movie a while back and actually really hated watching it. It’s not that I hated the story—it was actually really compelling and intriguing. Watching the movie was maybe a bit too graphic for my taste, which is saying a lot because I don’t really have a filter when I watch any shows. I don’t get scared, and I don’t really get uncomfortable either. So for this one to affect me was strange.

Because the story was so intriguing, and the backstory to why it was written, I knew I had to read it. There are so many moral dilemmas in it that really made me question my perspective on certain things. I empathize with, yet also antagonize, the main character.

Has anything surprised you?

Truly, I was really expecting to love the Throne of Glass series.

I fell in love with A Court of Thorns and Roses when I read it a couple of years ago! Throne of Glass feels very immature and not quite as well thought out as ACOTAR.

It leaves me feeling not as complete as when I would finish a chapter with ACOTAR—I would always yearn for more and couldn’t put the book down. Often I would find myself reading 100+ pages in a day.

With the Throne of Glass series, it’s hard for me to even want to get through 20 pages.

Have you read anything you really didn’t like?

There’s nothing that I’ve absolutely hated lately. I did read a couple of books this year that weren’t quite as interesting as I thought they would be.

The first was Three Body Problem. My husband read this book and absolutely loved it. He couldn’t put it down. We were running to Barnes & Noble pretty promptly after he finished the first book so that he could pick up the second and third to finish the series.

He and I both agree that my fault in disliking this book, or maybe not finding it as interesting, is that I listened to the audiobook and didn’t read the physical book. Because the characters have Chinese names and a lot of the locations are in Chinese as well, it can be kind of hard to follow along with the audiobook alone. The physical book has a reference guide for character names, and I feel like that would’ve been really helpful for me!

Something I read towards the end of 2025 that I absolutely disliked and quite possibly hated was Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

The entirety of the book, it felt like the author was just trying to be poetic and beautiful and was using huge, extravagant words to get a point across. It ended up making the book too artsy instead of story-driven.

It was supposed to be a horror book, but I never felt uneasy, and I never felt scared because I was spending so much time lost in what the author was trying to portray.

Is there a book from this year that you keep thinking about?

Obviously, the book that is going to stay with me is Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.

The story goes: I was eight months pregnant, and my toddler was just over two years old. She was continuing to show big signs of readiness for toilet training, and it was clear she was ready to be out of diapers.

Then the day came that she would pee in her diaper, immediately get entirely naked, go change into new clothes, and get a new diaper for me to put on her.

At this point, I knew that she needed to be potty trained practically that day, as she was doing this every single time she wet herself.

Both my mom and my mother-in-law used the Toilet Training in Less Than a Day method for their kids and highly praised it. I read the book in under 48 hours, and it’s how I potty trained my daughter.

Have any of these books changed your mind about something?

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty stubborn, so it’s hard to change my mind on things. I’m pretty set in my ways unless there’s a very compelling reason for me to look at things from a new perspective.

I do like the idea of rereading books from my childhood now with my adult brain so that I can understand the concepts and ideas more in-depth. Because of this, I am trying to read more chapter books aloud to my children.

What kinds of books are you drawn to right now?

The books I’m drawn to most of the time are science fiction, romance, and self-help. I always try to have one book in each category in my current reading list.

It makes it easy to match my mood, depending on what I’m feeling.

When and where do you usually read?

With little ones, it can be hard to find undistracted time to read.

My husband and I have a habit of reading in bed before we fall asleep. It’s actually quite nice to sit in bed in a quiet room, knowing that the girls are safe in their beds and we can just cozy up to each other with our comfort books.

Other than late at night before bedtime, I do try to read while the girls are napping, or I’ll turn on an audiobook while I’m doing chores.

Has your reading life changed since becoming a mom?

Oh my word, has it changed.

Prior to having children, I rarely ever read. I felt like reading was a mandatory item for school, and it felt unnecessary and mean to read.

Since becoming a mother, I realize the importance of reading, even now as an adult, and how important it is for vocabulary and mental stimulation, and to induce thought-provoking conversations between my husband and me or even our friends.

I started to become overly obsessive with reading. I read the A Court of Thorns and Roses series — SERIES. Nearly 3,000 pages!!—in about three months.

I had my routine down to a science. I’d get my daughter down for her nap, immediately run downstairs and sit in our big recliner with a soft blanket over me and my water bottle. I’d turn on Night Court ambience on YouTube (don’t laugh, it’s a great vibe. Try it.), and I would totally forget about the world around me. I would be so engulfed in what I was reading until I heard my daughter stir about two hours later on the baby monitor.

Now that I’m a mother to two children, it’s even more difficult to find the time to read. My daughters’ naps never line up, so I hardly ever get a quiet and thought-provoking session of reading in without both of them being down for bed at night.

During the day, I primarily have to rely on audiobooks since I can’t really do too many tasks at once. I’ll listen to them while I’m playing with my kids, doing my chores around the home, or while we’re in the car on our way running errands.

At night, I can always turn off distractions and read anything right before bed, guilt-free.

Do you have a reading goal for 2026?

At the beginning of the year, I wanted to read one book a month.

Seeing as it’s August and I’m likely to reach that goal by the end of this week, it’s clear I need to set loftier expectations!

What’s still on your 2026 reading list?

I have a bad habit of going to Barnes & Noble about every two weeks and leaving with a stack of books that will take me about two months to read…

Between that nasty habit, my Audible books on my shelf, and the books on my “to be read” on Goodreads, I really never know what book is waiting for me just around the corner.

However, I do know I have plenty to pick up!

If you could recommend just one book you’ve read this year, what would it be?

Absolutely—A Clockwork Orange.

For all of the reasons I’ve stated earlier. It’s so intriguing and such a thinker. It makes you question your own ideas. I can’t go much more into it than that.

And finally, why do you read?

I love exploring new concepts and ideas. I love growing my own knowledge and expanding my mind!

I love the thought that someone else had this blip of “magic” dropped into their mind from the cosmic universe that just had to be shared with us in this physical realm—and now I get that idea as a tangible item in my hands, put onto paper through words.