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Joanna Rakoff

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2 months ago

Bestselling novelist Min Jin Lee’s new novel, the follow up to Pachinko, American Hagwon, on the bookshelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Bestselling memoir Strangers, by Belle Burden, soon to be a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow, on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Bestselling writer T. Kira Madden’s thriller Whidbey on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Kate Christensen’s novel Good Company on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Rebecca Handler’s novel In the Round on the book shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Patmeena Sabit’s bestselling novel about an honor killing in an Afghan community in Washington DC on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Larissa Pham’s novel about power abuse in an arts MfA program Discipline on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Bestselling author of Shrill Lindy West’s new memoir Adult Braces, about polyamory, on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Debut novel of Harvard The Obsessed, based on Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, by translator from the Korea Lizzie Buehler on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Bestselling novelist Julie Buntin’s new novel Famous Men on the shelf of Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie

Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir My Salinger Year, basis for the Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley movie. Text asks for suggestions for 2026 novels to add to her to be read pole.

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Posted On: August 12th 2026, 06:57 pm

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My favorite books of 2026, part 3!! Featuring my most-anticipated book of the year, Min Jin Lee’s new novel, and several other Big Books, but also several incredible debuts (Patmeena Sabit!) and deeply original fictions that shook me out of my early summer reading slump!

This summer, my reading has slowed a bit, as I go deeper into my own new book, and also because, as happens sometimes, I started and put down a number of books that just weren’t for me, which led to a rare-for-me reading slump. So this third installment of 2026 favorites is a bit late but includes some of the most exciting and original novels I’ve read in years, which I know I’ll be thinking about, well, forever, and one—Julie Buntin’s Famous Men—that I’ve already dipped into a second time.

I may have delayed posting because one of the books on this list is somewhat divisive: Belle Burden’s Strangers. And, in fact, I avoided reading it for months because of the class-centered discourse about it, which led me to think it might not be for me. But I was wrong. I loved it. (More thoughts further in!)

I have a massive stack of 2026 galleys crowding out the cookbook shelf in my dining room—next to the even larger piles of campus novels and books on writing!—and also a list in Notes of already-out new titles I’m dying to read, but I’d really love to know your 2026 favorites so far. No matter how attuned I think I am to new releases, some always slip by me. (Many.)

And I’ve been receiving a lot of requests for specialized reading lists: books set in New England, thrillers, mysteries, romances, laugh out loud funny books, many for beach reads of all types. I’m putting these together, in my usual overthinking fashion, but please tell me if there’s anything you’d like to see. ❤️

If you know me, you know there are few novelists with whom I feel as deep a kinship as Min Jin Lee, whom I first discovered during the auction for A Fortunate Age, when several editors compared it to her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, in that both bear the influence of Victorian and Edwardian social realism, and both look at the invisible societal forces—economic, political, ideological—that shape every aspect of o

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