Books have brought me comfort, humor, knowledge, inspiration, and a lot of joy over the years. In fact, you can read a love letter I once wrote to books here.

And, I receive a lot of requests for book recommendations, so here is a list of some of my favorites that I’ve read this year.

Inner Practice

For a deep dive into inner practice, I heartily recommend anything by Stephen Snyder and Henry Shukman, such as Trust in Awakening or Original Love. 

Fiction

For fiction, my wife once wanted to give me a book. The staffer pointed to their well-stocked shelves, and then asked her what I liked. Jan said, “Well, he likes books with good writing, and characters you can like, and a moral trajectory . . . and a happy ending.” “Hmm,” the staffer replied, “we don’t have many of those.”

But there are still some!

• Anything by Peter Heller is really good, and I particularly like The Dog Stars and Celine.
• This year I read the whole Vorkosigan​ Sci-Fi series, which combines page-turning space opera with deep insights into character and enduring love.
• I also really liked:
  •  A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
  • Titanium Noir
  • A Gentleman in Moscow
  • All of Martin Clark’s legal novels. 
• The Maltese Falcon is weirdly fun and interesting.
• The Arkady Renko detective novels are phenomenal, with the first one – Gorky Park – set in the crumbling Soviet Union and later books now in Russia.
• With the series on TV, I had to reread Shogun, still a magnificent journey into complex medieval Japan.

And I keep coming back to Where Have You Been?, about major 20th-century authors. I don’t have any background at all in literary analysis, but it’s simply a delight to follow Michael Hofmann’s gorgeous, exuberant, brilliant cascades of words.

Last, if you want real news, subscribe to Science​ magazine. Really. Each week you’ll get wide-ranging interesting articles written for an educated general audience plus research papers (most of which I skip). Long after the latest political carnival has left town, the beautiful steady accumulation of knowledge will endure. Thank you, scientists!