Vol. 1 · Issue 2026
Find your next favorite book.
Honest editorial reviews, curated reading lists, and AI recommendations from a small team of stubborn readers.
The Cover Story
This week's lead review
A review
Babel
by R. F. Kuang
“Babel by R. F. Kuang 2022 review. An alternate 1830s Oxford where the British Empire is powered by silver bars enchanted with the lost meaning between translated words. Nebula and Locus Award winner.”
Latest
Recently reviewed
Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
Beartown by Fredrik Backman 2017 review. A small Swedish forest town stakes its identity on its junior hockey team. An assault by the star player splits the town. Backman's most ambitious novel and the first of the Beartown trilogy.
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 2020 review. The death of William Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son and the four years before Hamlet is written. The Women's Prize winning novel about marriage, grief, and the play that came out of it.
Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 2021 review. A junior-high science teacher wakes alone on a deep-space craft with no memory. Andy Weir's third novel and the canonical contemporary hard science fiction novel about a single problem solved correctly.
The Anxious Generation
by Jonathan Haidt
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt 2024 review. The smartphone-and-social-media-driven youth mental-health crisis and a four-point reform proposal. The most-cited contemporary book on adolescent psychology.
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