We asked the past year’s podcast-guests for the favorite books they read in 2025 and the books they hope to read in 2026 for our special year-end Guest List episode! Twenty-six guests participated (as did I!), so listen to the show to hear about the books they loved this year, and use this page to check out all the books, as well as their past episodes!

Photo of my 2025 books (not incl. comics & some e-books) by me.

The Guests

Jonathan Ames – 7:20

• Cockfighter – Charles Willeford
• Tao Te Ching – several translations, incl. Ursula K. LeGuin’s
• The Heart of Meditation: Discovering Innermost Awareness – Dalai Lama (tr. Jeffrey Hopkins)

Jonathan’s 2026 goal

• How to Live and Die: The Transformative Power of Meditating on Impermanence – Lama Zopa Rinpoche (tr. Gordon McDougall)

Kayla E. – 9:20

• Mysticism – Simon Critchley
• The Book of Miracles – Joshua P. Waterman and Till-Holger Borchert
• Jesus as Mother – Caroline Walker Bynum
• Lexicon of Comicana – Mort Walker

Kayla’s 2026 goals

• Wonderful Blood – Caroline Walker Bynum
• Holy Feast and Holy Fast – Caroline Walker Bynum
• Metamorphosis and Identity – Caroline Walker Bynum
• Last Things: Death and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages – Caroline Walker Bynum
• Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection – Julia Kristeva
• Nuns as Artists – Jeffrey F. Hamburger
• The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle
• The New Herbal – Leonhart Fuchs (ed. Werner Dressendörfer)
• The Weight – Melissa Mendez

Dan Goldman – 51:50

• Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino
• A Man Named Doll – Jonathan Ames
• The Wheel of Doll – Jonathan Ames
• Karma Doll – Jonathan Ames

Dan’s 2026 goals

• The Antidote – Karen Russell
• Space Oddity – Cathrynne M. Valente

Dean Haspiel – 40:45

• Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? – Harold Schechter and Eric Powell
• some comics, like the FF, Spider-Man, Batman & Robin: World’s Finest, and Savage Dragon

Dean’s 2026 goals

• The Knives – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
• Houses of the Holy – Caitlin Skaalrud
• Monica – Daniel Clowes
• Life Drawing – Jaime Hernandez
• Drafted: An Illustrated Memoir of a Veteran’s Service During the War in Vietnam – Rick Parker
• Printopia – Bob Fingerman
• The Veracity Trap – Chip Kidd and Michael Cho
• Red Light Properties – Dan Goldman

Jennifer Hayden – 26:15

• The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker – Amy Reading
• lots of work by Niall Williams
• Paris Express – Emma Donoghue

Jennifer’s 2026 goals

• Bread of Angels – Patti Smith
• All The Way To The River – Elizabeth Gilbert

Rian Hughes – 23:50

• A two-volume ring binder set of photosetting fonts from a defunct 1970s company called Alphabet

Paul Karasik – 3:50

• The Summer Book – Tove Jansson (tr. Thomas Teal)

Paul’s 2026 goal

• Dead Souls (tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky) – Nikolai Gogol

Glenn Kurtz – 38:20

• On the Calculation of Volume – Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J. Haveland)
• The Stronghold – Dino Bugatti
• Diary, 1925-1930 – Virginia Woolf
• Septology – Jon Fosse
• American Originality: Essays on Poetry – Louise Glück

Glenn’s 2026 goals

• On the Calculation of Volume, Book 3 – Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J. Haveland)
• Poems – William Blake
• The Waves – Virginia Woolf

David Leopold – 33:00

• Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes – Stephen Sondheim
• Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany – Stephen Sondheim
• The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead – Robert Hunter
• Photographic Memory: William Henry Jackson and the American West – Bill Griffith
• Collected Works – Saki

David’s 2026 goals

• Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
• Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic – Seth Neblett
• The American Musical: Evolution of an Art Form – Ben West
• Van Gogh and the End of Nature – Michael Lobel
• Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium – Erik Davis

Seth Lorinczi – 19:20

• Wolf Bells – Leni Zumas
• Night of the Gun – David Carr
• Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World – Lisa Wells

Sacha Mardou – 11:15

• What We Can Know – Ian McEwan
• Spent – Alison Bechdel

Sacha’s 2026 goal

• The Weight – Melissa Mendez

Kate Maruyama – 37:05

• Death of an Author – Nnedi Okorafor
• Sundown in San Ojuelo – M.M. Olivas
• Tiny Threads – Lilliam Rivera
• James – Percival Everett

Whitney Matheson – 44:05

• The Uncool – Cameron Crowe
• Bread of Angels – Patti Smith
• Say Everything – Ione Skye
• Putting Myself Together – Jamaica Kincaid
• Art Work – Sally Mann
• The Safekeep – Yael van der Wouden
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil – V.E. Schwab
• On the Calculation of Volume – Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J. Haveland)
• Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me – Mimi Pond
• Heartwood – Amity Gaige

Whitney’s 2026 goals

• Baldwin: A Love Story – Nicholas Boggs
• The Correspondent – Virginia Evans
• Minor Black Figures – Brandon Taylor
• Flesh – David Szalay

Josh Neufeld – 28:00

• Separation – Jake Halpern & Michael Sloan

Lance Richardson – 14:55

• How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998 – Helen Garner
• Shadow Ticket – Thomas Pynchon

Lance’s 2026 goals

• The rest of Thomas Pynchon’s novels
• Bernie for Burlington – Dan Chiasson

Ari Richter – 24:35

• Precious Rubbish – Kayla E
• Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life – Dan Nadel
• Feeding Ghosts – Tessa Hulls
• Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America – Bridget Read
• Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America – Irin Carmon

Ari’s 2026 goal

• The Arab of the Future – Riad Sattouf

ML Rio – 55:20

• Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
• Kittentits – Holly Wilson

ML’s 2026 goal

• Bogart – A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax

Dmitry Samarov – 4:25

• Daybook – Nathan Knapp
• Service – John Tottenham

Dmitry’s 2026 goals

• Ulysses – James Joyce (ill. Eduardo Arroyo)
• Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
• The Confidence Man – Herman Melville

Jonathan Sandler – 16:55

• Victory Point – Owen Pomery
• A Journal of My Father – Jiro Taniguchi

Damion Searls – 48:30

• Praiseworthy – Alexis Wright
• The Book of Rain – Ab? Zayd Al-An??r? (tr. David Larsen)

Damion’s 2026 goals

• Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
• East of Eden – John Steinbeck
• Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
• Carpentaria – Alexis Wright

David Shields – 2:55

• Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution – Todd McGowan

Peter Stothard – 5:45

• Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg (tr. Tiina Nunnally)

Peter’s 2026 goal

• Sicilian Stories – Giovanni Verga (tr. Stanley Appelbaum)

Tom Tomorrow – 12:20

• It’s Superman! – Tom de Haven
• A few of the Arkady Renko novels – Martin Cruz Smith
• Hotel Ukraine – Martin Cruz Smith
• The Doorman – Chris Pavone
• The Shattering Peace – John Scalzi
• a couple of manuscripts of upcoming novels – Richard Kadrey & Charley Stross
• The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley
• Lessons in Magic and Disaster – Charlie Jane Anders
• Insectopia – Peter Kuper
• Drawing Blood – Molly Crabapple
• The Last Soviet Artist – Vika Lomasko
• Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left – Eoin Higgens
• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism – Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors – Edward Niedermeyer

Peter Trachtenberg – 30:25

• I Heard Her Call My Name – Lucy Sante
• Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar – Cynthia Carr
• Shadows on the Hudson – Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Insurecto – Gina Apostol

Cecile Wajsbrot – 7:50

• On the Calculation of Volume – Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J. Haveland)

Mia Wolff – 3:35

• Everything Will Swallow You – Tom Cox

Gil Roth – 54:45

• The Snow Leopard – Peter Matthiessen
• True Nature – Lance Richardson
• Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory – Martin Mittelmeier
• The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York – Peter Trachtenberg
• Frighten The Horses: A Memoir – Oliver Radclyffe
• Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land – Rachel Cockerell
• Hot Wax – ML Rio
• Precious Rubbish – Kayla E
• Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy – Sacha Mardou
• Insectopia – Peter Kuper
• Ginseng Roots – Craig Thompson
• The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil (tr. Sophie Wilikins/Burton Pike)
• The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann (tr. John E. Woods)
• The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain – Morten Hoi Jensen
• The Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)
• Mourning Diary – Roland Barthes (tr. Richard Howard)
• The Invention of Solitude – Paul Auster

Gil’s 2026 goals

• Shadow Ticket – Thomas Pynchon
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
• The Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)
• Absolution – Jeff VanderMeer
• Knfie – Salman Rushdie
• On the Calculation of Volume, Book 2 – Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J. Haveland)
• Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir – Craig Mod
• The Maze Maker – Michael Ayrton
• Metamorphoses – Ovid (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)
• Quacky – Jim Woodring
• Offerings for Ordinary Gods – Ali Trotta
• What Do I Know: Essential Essays – Montaigne (tr. David Coward)