Mid-Year Reading Review: Reflections and Recommendations

The best books (so far) of 2026

I started 2026 with a goal of reading 52 books over the course of the year — one for each week.

Ambitious, yes, but very achievable. Last year I read 42 books; in 2024, that number was just 25. So continuing that upward trend seemed to be very reasonable.

So how am I doing now?

Halfway Point stats

• 26 books
• 9,928 pages
• Average book length of 381 pages

I’m currently at 26 books for 2026, which is exactly where I need to be. At times I felt like I was falling behind, so I must say I’m rather proud to be on track at this point of the year. But these totals only tell part of the story. So let’s go through each month, and I’ll give my thoughts on the books I read during them and what stood out most to me.

January

Books: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke; The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven; Ghost on the Throne by James Romm; Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser; The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven; Trump Revealed by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher; The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.

I started the year in the middle of a classic sci-fi romp that I had begun towards the end of 2025, jumping right in with Arthur C. Clarke and the Ringworld series. But, being a creature of established habit, I quickly turned back to the non-fiction which I generally prefer to immerse myself in, traveling back to Alexander the Great and then taking a little bit of time on the background of our current president, Donald Trump.

The best book from this month was Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke’s ability to establish big ideas and explore them thoroughly is well-regarded for a very good reason, and this tale of an alien visitor to the solar system, through a relic left of what was a presumed long-dead civilization, is widely considered to be among the very best of his works.

The Ringworld books are good, but they are best enjoyed after you’ve already read the first Ringworld (which I did in December last). The two books on Alexander the Great work best in complementing a full treatment of his life, and Trump is too mercurial for there to be much consistency in the quality of books about him.

January’s winner: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

February

Books: Willard Garvey by Maura McEnaney; Billionaires’ Row by Katherine Clarke; The Path to Power by Robert Caro.

Through the two Trump books, I developed something of a curiosity about skyscrapers. So, in the beginning of February, I took a detour into those great buildings through two different books. The first one, Willard Garvey, was chosen to explore a fellow Kansan who built the two tallest towers in the state, and the second one, Billionaires’ Row, was chosen to continue that exploration into one of the great skyscraper cities, New York. Satisfied in my curiosity, I then turned my attention to tackling Robert Caro’s titanic accomplishment and ongoing project — The Years of Lyndon Johnson.

February’s best book was The Path to Power. It is the first volume in Caro’s treatment of the 36th president, and it was written with the mix of deep investigation and carefully crafted, locomotive prose that the 90-year-old author is renowned for. I felt as though I was there with Lyndon, in Texas and in Washington, and the insights Caro provides are invaluable.

The two other books are insightful if you are interested in the history of Kansas or the mechanics of New York real estate, but they are relatively niche and more rewarding to a pre-existing interest in those topics.

February’s winner: The Path to Power by Robert Caro

March

Books: Means of Ascent by Robert Caro; The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke; Master of the Senate by Robert Caro.

March has been perhaps my most rewarding month to read so far this year. I continued through the Johnson series with a brief interlude for a Clarke novel — one which I would actually now consider one of my favorite sci-fi novels, period, in The Fountains of Paradise. It is an exploration of human hubris against nature through the construction of a space elevator on the site of one of the greatest monuments of ancient times. This, paired with the continuance of the exceptional Caro, made it a wonderful month of reading, but also very difficult to choose the best book.

Nevertheless, the prize must go to Master of the Senate. This is, hands down, one of the best political or historical books I have ever read. The history of the Senate at the beginning and the profile of Richard Russell alone, not to mention the careful chronicle of Lyndon ascending the steps of power, make it almost unrivalled as a work of literary art.

March’s winner: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

April

Books: The Passage of Power by Robert Caro; A Godly Hero by Michael Kazin; The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman.

April saw me finish the Johnson sequence, which carries LBJ to the middle of 1964. I can honestly say this is one of the most impressive series I have ever read, in terms of the depth of research, quality of insight, and brilliance of prose. To follow it up, I turned to one of Johnson’s progressive forebearers in William Jennings Bryan, and then took a quick break from politics with popular scientist Jennifer Ackerman’s The Bird Way.

The highlight of April was The Passage of Power. Perhaps it’s cliche and repetitive to pick a Caro book for a third consecutive month, but the quality of his work is undeniable, even though Master of the Senate is better (in my opinion). I read A Godly Hero mainly as a transition book and The Bird Way as a palate cleanser so that, when I returned to histories, I was not overly influenced by a hangover from Caro’s style.

April’s winner: The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

May

Books: Bolivar: American Liberator by Maria Arana; Jefferson the Virginian by Dumas Malone; Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains by James R. Mead; Jefferson and the Rights of Man by Dumas Malone.

I decided, at the end of April, that I wanted to try and follow up the Johnson series with Dumas Malone’s classic, six-book life of Thomas Jefferson. While I waited for book one to arrive, I read a biography of Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, and between the two Jefferson books, I read James Mead’s journals of early Kansas on the recommendation of a very locally active Wichitan.

My favorite from May was Bolivar: American Liberator. It was very refreshing to go and explore a topic I wasn’t terribly familiar with or overly exposed to, and it certainly helped that the writing was vivid and the pace was brisk. The portrait it painted of Bolivar was very human, and it truly felt, for much of the book, that I was with him in his campaigns.

The Jefferson books have been good, with very high quality research and dignified prose, but they’ve just been, for the moment, upstaged by the tangents that Mead’s chronicle took me on, which will be explored further in the next month.

May’s winner: Bolivar: American Liberator by Maria Arana

June

Books: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf; The Great River by Boyce Upholt; Wichita: The Early Years by H. Craig Miner; The Imperial Presidency by Arthur Schlesinger; Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

June did not come with any set program or common theme; instead, it was dedicated to following various tangents. I started with that classic, The Great Gatsby, which had been staring at me from the shelf for months, and then turned back to Jefferson and the other Founders in a botanical way. I then shifted to the conquest of rivers in the West for settlement in The Great River and Wichita: The Early Years. Of course, I can’t stay away from politics for long, and so I followed it up with The Imperial Presidency, which directly influenced the purchase of the newly released Regime Change.

Between two great books, The Great River and The Imperial Presidency, the one that edges out as the best for me is The Great River. Boyce Upholt is an environmental journalist, and his chronicle, which is smoothly and vividly written, surveys the efforts of Americans to tame the Mississippi River. I knew much less about this than I did presidential history, which is the primary reason it takes the top spot.

The Great Gatsby is wonderfully intriguing and the perfect length, and well deserves its status as a classic. Founding Gardeners and Wichita: The Early Years are focused and work best with pre-existing background knowledge, as does The Imperial Presidency. Regime Change is a chronicle of Trump’s second term that, while timely and extremely well-written, may put off some readers as being too controversial.

June’s winner: The Great River by Boyce Upholt

Wrapping Up

2026 has been wonderfully interesting for me in terms of the books I’ve been reading. One of the things I’ve been learning over the past couple of years is that it’s good to vary your subjects, as changing things up can keep you in the habit of reading. I’ve also been coming to appreciate that it’s okay to put a book or a series down for the time being if it’s dragging; sometimes it’s important to get through it, but it’s arguably even more important to take steps to make sure that you don’t lose the habit of reading because you’re struggling with one book.

The books I would recommend obviously would vary depending on what someone is interested in, but I would recommend to anyone my 6 best books, along with the other Johnson book, Fountains of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and the first half of The Imperial Presidency.

For the rest of the year, I’m optimistic about keeping up the pace, and I hope that seeing what I’ve read gives you some ideas about starting or continuing a reading journey of your own!