What I'm Reading
Reading is my creative wellspring. In fact, much of what ends up in my own writing first took root in a gripping book I couldn't put down. Travel and cooking feed the same well: new cities and unfamiliar recipes force me to notice things everyday routines simply cannot, and those observations eventually show up in how I tell a story or frame an image. This isn't only where I keep track of what's on my nightstand. It's where I share the books, and the ideas inside them, that I couldn't ignore.
Currently Reading
The Wedding People
I don't usually let myself get pulled into buzzy fiction. Too many recommendations turn out to be all hype, no payoff. This one broke the streak. A woman checks into a wedding-week hotel with no intention of attending the wedding, and the novel that unfolds from that single, quiet premise is wildly funnier and sharper than initially expected. I was hooked by page ten and haven't looked back.
The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
I'll never outgrow a good spy story, and this one has the advantage of being true. This account, which I'm working through as an audiobook, traces how personal grievances and disillusionment with a brutal system turned a KGB archivist into one of the Cold War's most consequential defectors. Less cloak-and-dagger than the espionage fiction I usually reach for, and better for it.
The Song of Achilles
I never much cared for mythology, so I'm embarrassingly late to this one. Miller takes the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus, barely sketched in the Iliad, and builds a full, aching love story out of the margins. Maybe I read Homer carelessly in high school and dismissed the genre altogether, but this is giving me a whole new appreciation for classics I overlooked for years.
Noteworthy Reads of Late
Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
Not a page-turner in the conventional sense, but the ideas stuck with me longer than the prose did. Borden traces a through-line from the Puritans to Amway to today's wellness-industrial complex, and the case she builds is unsettling: the line between a cult and a savvy marketing operation is thinner, and more porous, than most of us would like to admit.
The Grapes of Wrath
I avoided this one for years, half-suspecting it would land too close to home. Both of my parents count it among their favorites and encouraged (my polite way of saying nagged) me to read it anyway. Turns out, like most things, they were right. What struck me wasn't just how precisely Steinbeck draws each member of the Joad family, but how closely the ecological and economic upheaval of Dust Bowl America rhymes with our own: a shifting climate, a hollowed-out middle, new technology remaking entire industries overnight. It did land close to home: my own parents made their own hard call to leave the family farm business in the 1990s and start over in the Minneapolis suburbs. While our circumstances weren't nearly as dire as the Joads', I came away from this book with an even deeper appreciation for the sacrifices they made.
Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America
A first-hand, meticulously sourced account of what's happened to farming and rural life in America, written by my aunt, Sonja Trom Eayrs, and set around our own family farm in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota. I'm obviously not a neutral reader here, but if you've ever wondered where your food actually comes from, and what the consolidation of Big Ag has cost the family farms that used to define the Midwest, this is essential, clear-eyed reporting.
The Women
I may be the outlier here, but I didn't love this one. Hannah tells an overdue story about how the women who served in Vietnam are still overlooked in how we remember that war. But the execution felt engineered for maximum emotional effect rather than earned. Worth reading for the perspective; just don't expect much subtlety along the way.
Bad Mormon
Yes, I watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and no, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. This was the ideal beach read on our babymoon in the Seychelles. Breezy, candid, and more self-aware than reality TV usually gets credit for. Gay turns out to be a sharper writer than most of her peers in the genre.
What Kind of Paradise
Anyone who grew up in the '90s has the Unabomber's police sketch burned into memory, mine care of too many childhood evenings with Unsolved Mysteries. This novel takes that old fascination and adds a compelling twist: a fictional daughter who escapes her father's Montana cabin and has to build a life in the outside world, where everything seems foreign. Gripping for most of its length, even if the ending doesn't quite stick the landing.
Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life
Not the self-help book I expected. Where most books in this genre traffic in platitudes, this one is genuinely useful on getting out of your own way, and on starting before an idea, or a venture, feels ready. I liked it enough to read it twice, and if I'm honest, this website is something of a live demonstration of its thesis.
Ride with Ian
He showed up in my Instagram algorithm, and ever since, I've been quietly obsessed with his mission to bike across every continent. What keeps me reading his Substack isn't the mileage: it's his candor about the trip and how the journey profoundly changed his sense of who he is and his own place in the world.
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
Ukraine's struggle for a distinct national identity is centuries old, not a story that started in 2014 or 2022. Plokhy traces that fight for self-definition back through Greek colonies and Roman frontiers, up through the present, and the result is a clear account of the long-running tension between East and West still shaping the region.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
This one sat on my shelf, half-read, for longer than I'd like to admit. Glad I finally finished it. Frankopan's central move, retelling world history through the corridor between Europe and Asia rather than around it, reframes centuries of assumed Western centrality, and leaves you with a useful reminder: no civilization holds the center forever.