What We’re reading Installment 1

One of the pleasures of organizing a book festival is the chance to discuss with friends and colleagues what they’ve been reading, and what they’re excited about. As an editor, I’m always reading, but mostly looking for manuscripts to consider for publication or editing books I’ve already acquired. So I always look forward to the holidays when I can read books that have little or nothing to do with my work, but ones I’m eager to read out of curiosity and just for the pleasure of it. Here’s my holiday list:

First on my list was the new novel by Lily King, HEART THE LOVER. I hadn’t read King since her brilliant novel, EUPHORIA, so it was a real treat to engage with her new book. It’s very different, which I always like, but so smart, so funny, beautifully written, and shockingly accurate in evoking the lives of young men and women starting in their 20s in all of their ambition, idealism, and confusion. Second was Ian McEwan’s novel WHAT WE CAN KNOW. I hadn’t read McEwan’s since ATONEMENT, and I found WHAT WE CAN KNOW utterly compelling, and particularly so in McEwan’s portraits of several very strong, complicated women characters.   I asked several women friends of mine who had read the book if they found his depiction of them accurate and convincing, and they were similarly impressed. It’s a deeply moving novel about love, illness, fidelity, and betrayal, written with the quiet confidence of a master.  Lastly, I returned to Melville’s MOBY DICK, which I hadn’t read since college. It is, to my mind, the great American novel, not only a brilliant allegory so rich in its language but also—and I missed this on my first reading—hilariously funny. I realize it’s a book that many people love to hate (including my wife, Emily) or haven’t read at all and have no plans on doing so, though I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

Here’s what my widely-read fellow board member David Gernert had to say about it: “John, I will politely keep my opinion of MOBY DICK to myself.” Fair enough, and this is what he had to say about his holiday reading: “I just read STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett, which I loved….But my biggest recommendation of 2025, partly because it deserves a wide audience, is THE SAVAGE NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE by Ron Currie. It’s a gritty, powerful, and ultimately moving crime saga about a Franco-American family that essentially runs Waterville, Maine, and if it doesn’t blow you away, I’ll eat my hat.”

Well, there you have it.  We’ll be in touch next month with additional recommendations. In the meantime, we wish you a Happy New Year and all the best for 2026.

We’d love to hear from you as well—what books have you been reading lately, and what drew you to them?

All the best,

John & David