Reading Roundup April 2026
Happy May Day, everyone! I hope you're out there making a difference today. Not everyone is built for marching in streets with large crowds, myself included, so it can be challenging to know how to make a difference beyond voting, which only happens twice a year at most.
As someone who works alone--no colleagues, no bosses--and whose neurodivergence means marches are not my thing, I struggle to know how to make an effective difference. I can take days off without anyone even realizing I've done so. I don't shop much, and I haven't had an Amazon account for years. How can I even make a dent?
My partner is a union guy, and a few months ago he gave me this helpful framework: What can you do to change the status quo? For instance, tonight there is a meet-and-greet event for presenters at the writing festival where I'll be presenting tomorrow. This is, technically, work related. However, I believe that a handful of literary types getting together to talk about creativity and literary education and encouraging critical thinking in readers and writers is a step toward changing the status quo, so I am attending the event. For that matter, I'm writing this newsletter today, because you, Dear Reader, are changing the status quo along with me by choosing to read widely and thoughtfully.
And I just gave myself a nice little segue into what I read last month!
I have a group chat going with a half dozen of my closest friends from high school. One mentioned that she was neurodivergent, and I was like, I am also neurodivergent, and she recommended Fern Brady's memoir Strong Female Character. It came out five minutes after I had stopped binge reading neurodivergent memoirs, so I had missed this one. We all grabbed copies from our libraries and had a little impromptu book club! Brady is a comedian, and she's Scottish, so clearly I was the most correct in borrowing the audiobook. If part of your neurodivergence is being absolutely socially clueless, Brady knows what it's like. And sometimes it works in her favor. Or favour, I guess.
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780593582503
I read an interview with Jeanette Winterson where she was asked if she preferred a book club or a writing group, and she laughed in the interviewer's face (or maybe into their email inbox) and said basically "Fuck no!" I love her for this (see above: works alone). (I am editing a book by an author who loves parentheses, and it seems to be rubbing off.) I told this story to a friend, and he mentioned that her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? was great, and I admire his literary taste, so I borrowed this from the library too (ebook, not audio). He was, as usual, correct. Winterson writes about her difficult, to put it extremely mildly, relationship with her adopted mother.
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780802120878
I bought Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère ages ago and only decided to read it this spring. I remembered that it was about a yoga retreat, and a mental breakdown, but that was it, and I remembered mostly correctly. He uses "yoga" in the sense of a spiritual practice, the way it's used in many Asian traditions, not just in the Yoga with Adriene way (shout out to Adriene, whose YouTube video catalog keeps me from becoming the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz). So the first section is about his attending a 10-day meditation retreat, which is interrupted by personal and professional tragedy. Then it skips ahead to his mental breakdown and institutionalization. And then it moves to his time in Greece working with refugees. The fragmentation of the book is due in part to a legal agreement Carrère has with his ex-wife that he will not write about her. It makes for a chunky kaleidoscope of a narrative that spans about five years of his life. In the final section, the reader learns, along with his longtime publisher, that Carrère has spent his entire career--he is in his early sixties at this point--typing with one finger. Not even the time-honored two-finger hunt-and-peck method! Astonishing. Interesting to note: I read this before I went on a 3-day meditation retreat, but no personal or professional tragedies befell me. It was a lovely retreat. I read this book in French, but it's been translated and published in the US.
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9781250872982
I mentioned above that I was on a 3-day meditation retreat in April. It was in the middle of nowhere, the kind of place where Google Maps just stops drawing lines and your blue arrow is alone in a field of green. Ideal. Phone signals were weak, but I kept my phone in airplane mode anyway, except for a 10-minute window in the evening to tell my partner I was doing great (and to learn that the dog had been skunked in my absence 🦨). I brought along my Kobo ereader because I can't not and "snuck" in reading Night Night Fawn, the new novel by Jordy Rosenburg. Someone did eventually ask what I was reading, and I considered lying for a fleeting second and saying it was something by Tenzin Palmo, but I confessed it was a novel. Turns out there was a bookish contingent at the retreat, so we spent our post-dinner hangout time talking about books. (This was not a strictly silent retreat.) Night Night Fawn is a satirical book about a woman who is dying and maybe overdoing it on the oxy and remembering her life and hallucinating her daughter as a hawk and it is funny and touching and pathetic all at once. This led to a book recommendation for The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, so look for that next month!
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780593448007
On the Calculation of Volume IV by Solvej Balle. I feel like this is an "if you know you know" situation. If you don't know, I recommend this series. Each book is short, and book four was just released in April. The next one comes out in November, so you've got time to catch up over the summer. There are seven in the series, so plenty of time to get on the Solvej Balle train. There's plenty to consider here, even if you don't agree with every thought or impulse Tara, the main character, has as she lives November 18 over and over and over again.
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780811238410
I started attending a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center regularly at the end of 2025, and in desperation I picked up Robert Thurman's translation of some basic texts, used at Powell's books. I have been meditation and practicing different kinds of Buddhism for years, but Tibetan Buddhism was entirely new to me. I've been reading this book slowly, like a few pages a week, all year, and I finally finished it. It was helpful, but there are other, way better, way more relevant books on Tibetan Buddhist practices out there. No regrets, but I'm definitely moving on from this.
The link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780062510518
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