Mid-2026 Top 10 Favourite Reads
Hello! Welcome to my Mid-2026 Top 10 Favourite Reads of the year so far.
At the end of this year, I plan to re-read my top favourites and give them a definitive ranking, but since we’re at the mid-point now, I thought I’d talk about my current top 10. This list could be drastically different by December, who knows! But right now, here’s where things stand (titles link to each book’s Goodreads page, if you’d like more information on them):
#10
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
I read this play back in February, and it lingered in my top 5 favourites of the year for quite a while. I believe I read it for the “disability” prompt during the Olympicsathon, since it’s about deaf/blind/mute Helen Keller learning to communicate for the first time. I watched the movie based on this play when I was a kid, and it profoundly affected me then. Reading the play many years later, I could still picture the performances of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, and it absolutely blew my mind to think of them playing out such intense, highly-choreographed scenes live on stage. I think this might be my favourite play of all time.
#9.
Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe by Gail Crowther
This one came out of nowhere for me. I was browsing my library’s upcoming purchases online one day, and I saw this and thought it sounded interesting, so I put a hold on it (the only library patron to do so, as far as I could tell). I’ve never been a big Marilyn Monroe fan, but I know from watching the TV show Smash back in the day that there was more to her than the press let on. So I thought maybe I would skim through it and just enjoy the bits about books.
Little did I know I would find this book absolutely enthralling and relate to Marilyn on a pretty deep level. I reviewed this book here on my blog, if you’d like to read more of my thoughts on it.
#8
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard
I believe I heard about this one from Florence Harvey on YouTube (love her!!). The way she talked about it made it sound like my kind of book, and when I realized it was by a Canadian author, I knew I had to read it asap. It took me barely 2 hours to read it, but my eyes were (figuratively) glued to the pages the entire time while my mind spun in circles. I LOVE having that kind of reading experience! This book has a lot to say about urban spaces creeping in on rural spaces, and I still think about it a lot several weeks after reading it.
#7
I wish I could tell you where I heard about this one. During the Olympicsathon, I was looking for a book cover that included all the colours of the Olympic rings, and I saw this one on my CloudLibrary “Saved for Later” list with an alternate cover that seemed to qualify. So I borrowed it and started reading it without really knowing what to expect. What I got was a mind-blowing blend of satire, dystopia, early-2000s nostalgia, climate fiction, magical realism, social criticism… My head is still reeling more than 4 months later. I hope this stays on my top 10 list all year, because I’m dying to re-read it.
You can read my in-depth review for this book here on my blog.
#6
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
I didn’t know what to expect from this one, because everyone seems to either love it or hate it. So I felt a bit tentative with it at first… until I realized that the dots and dashes at the end of certain chapters were Morse code. Then I kind of flipped out a little bit, decoded the whole Morse code message, and giddily devoured the rest of the book. Absolutely loved it. The only reason it ranks as low as #6 is because I’ve read 5 other books this year that I loved equally as much. Honestly wouldn’t surprise me if any of these top 6 end up as #1 upon re-read.
#5
Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World by Mark Waddell
I read this for the Stephen Leacock Medal shortlist. I can’t even tell you how much joy this weird comedy-horror book gave me. You really shouldn’t be able to use the words “wholesome” and “delightful” about a book in which an evil hell-monster is massacring the human race, but somehow, when it comes to Colin Gets Promoted, you kinda can. I don’t often laugh out loud while reading, but I had to stop and belly-laugh a few times during this one. And let me tell you, I really really needed that.
#4
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
New favourite author alert! I read this after seeing the movie, so I knew what to expect from it going in. Still, Reid’s writing blew me away, and I now pick up books based solely on comparisons to this one (The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, for example). Apparently I love weirdly abstract, metaphorical literature with mind-bending endings, especially if they’re written by Canadians?
#3
The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer
Speaking of Canadian-written abstract, metaphorical books with mind-bendy endings… this one might be my favourite this year. A lot of people love it, but a lot of other people don’t, and I can’t actually understand why. I loved this book. I was so tense at times, I was jumping at every sound in my house. Then again, I can kind of relate to the OCD of it all. Can’t wait to re-read it!
#2
This was my first 5-star read of the year, and I never quite feel like any of my subsequent fiction reads exceed the sky-high bar it set. And yet I haven’t seen ANYONE else talk about it. In my blog review for this book, I classed it along with Bunny by Mona Awad as “books that have something deep to say about the writing process and the author community, but that choose to say it in a darkly comic way that’s entertaining in its own right.” And just like with Bunny, I loved (and related a little too much to) every second of it.
#1
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
This one is just lovely. Robin Wall Kimmerer is who I would like to be when I grow up. I soak up wisdom at her feet every chance I get, because I want to live in her vision of what the world could be. If we all lived lives of gratitude and valued reciprocal giving over self-accumulation, life would be as sweet as a serviceberry.
Fini
And that’s my top 10 reads of the year so far! Please let me know if you’ve enjoyed any of these books as much as I have, or if I’ve convinced you to pick any of them up. I’ll return to my list at the end of the year and let you know how things stand then. It’s exciting to think that you might have yet to discover your absolute favourite book of the year, isn’t it? It’s what drives me to keep on reading voraciously month after month! But I’m looking forward to spending December just revisiting the best of the best. I’m curious to see how my rankings might change once I read them all back-to-back.
If you’re thinking of purchasing any of these books, please consider using one of my affiliate links to Bookshop.org (US or UK) or Booksellers.ca (Canada). I might earn a small commission from any purchases made through these links, which will help me pay the blog bills. They’re also great online alternatives to buying from Amazon, since they help support local independent bookstores. Thanks!
Leave a Reply