I’ve Read Dozens of Books in 2026—These 7 Are Still Stuck in My Head

2026 has turned into one of my most interesting reading years in a while.

I’ve jumped between fantasy, literary fiction, mystery, classics, nonfiction, and books that are almost impossible to fit neatly into any single genre. And somehow, that variety has made this year’s favorites even harder to narrow down.

I already shared some of the best books I read in 2026 in Part One, but there were too many great reads to stop there.

For Part Two of the best books I read in 2026, I’m highlighting seven books, and one massive fantasy series that stood out for completely different reasons. Some challenged the way I think about storytelling. Others were simply incredibly entertaining. And a few reminded me why certain classics continue to find new readers decades after they were first published.

Here are more of the best books I read in 2026.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk is unlike most novels I read.

Instead of following one traditional storyline from beginning to end, Tokarczuk creates a fragmented collection of stories, observations, histories, and philosophical ideas centered around travel, movement, the human body, and our obsession with understanding the world around us.

Normally, that kind of structure can make a book difficult for me to connect with. But Flights works because you never really know where Tokarczuk is going next.

One moment you are reading about airports and travelers. The next, the book is exploring anatomy, history, preservation, or a completely different character whose life intersects with the larger themes of the novel.

It feels less like following a traditional plot and more like traveling through someone’s thoughts.

That won’t work for every reader, but it made Flights one of the most memorable books I read this year. It is ambitious, strange, thoughtful, and unlike almost anything else on this list.

If you enjoy literary fiction that experiments with structure and asks you to participate in putting the pieces together, Flights is worth experiencing.

He Who Fights with Monsters Series by Shirtaloon

One of the biggest surprises of my reading year has been the He Who Fights with Monsters series by Shirtaloon.

I dove deeper into LitRPG in 2026, and this series quickly became one of the reasons why I understand the genre’s enormous popularity.

The story follows Jason Asano, who suddenly finds himself transported into a dangerous fantasy world filled with monsters, magic, adventurers, strange powers, and an RPG-inspired progression system.

That setup alone isn’t necessarily unusual for LitRPG.

What makes He Who Fights with Monsters work is Jason.

He is sarcastic, opinionated, unpredictable, and often completely unwilling to act the way people in this new world expect him to. His personality creates some of the funniest moments in the series, but there is also much more going on beneath the humor.

The progression system is addictive, the world continues expanding, and the stakes become increasingly larger as the series moves forward.

And that is probably the biggest compliment I can give the books: they make you want to keep reading.

Finishing one massive fantasy novel and immediately wanting another is exactly what a long-running series needs to accomplish.

For fantasy readers who haven’t tried LitRPG yet, He Who Fights with Monsters is one of the series that convinced me the genre deserves much more attention.

Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson

At this point, seeing Brandon Sanderson appear on one of my favorite-books lists shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But Tailored Realities reminded me that Sanderson doesn’t need a thousand-page epic or an enormous interconnected fantasy series to create fascinating worlds.

The collection showcases different sides of his storytelling and gives readers a chance to experience his ideas in much smaller doses.

That can actually make the concepts stand out even more.

Sanderson has always been great at taking one interesting idea—whether involving magic, technology, society, or human behavior—and asking what would happen if you pushed that idea as far as possible.

Short fiction gives him the opportunity to do exactly that without needing hundreds of pages of setup.

For longtime Sanderson readers, Tailored Realities is another fascinating look at how his mind works. For newer readers, it can also serve as a less intimidating entry point than committing to something as enormous as The Stormlight Archive.

Sanderson remains one of the authors I am most likely to pick up without needing to know much about the book beforehand, and Tailored Realities justified that trust once again.

On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle

Few books I’ve read recently have approached time quite like Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series.

The premise is fascinating: Tara Selter becomes trapped inside November 18, repeatedly waking up to the same day while the rest of the world seemingly resets around her.

But this isn’t really a traditional time-loop thriller.

Balle is much more interested in what repeatedly experiencing the same day would actually do to someone psychologically.

On the Calculation of Volume II expands that idea beautifully.

Instead of treating the time loop like a puzzle that simply needs to be solved, the novel explores isolation, routine, memory, relationships, and what gives our lives meaning when the normal passage of time disappears.

It is quiet and philosophical in a way that might surprise readers expecting something closer to Groundhog Day.

That slower approach is exactly what makes the series fascinating.

Time travel and time-loop stories are usually built around changing the past or escaping the loop. Balle instead asks something much more unsettling: what happens if there is no obvious escape?

The second volume made me even more interested in seeing where this unusual series eventually goes.

Ametora by W. David Marx

Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style ended up being one of the most interesting nonfiction books I read this year.

The book explores how American fashion became incredibly influential in Japan—and how Japanese designers, consumers, magazines, and clothing companies eventually became some of the world’s greatest preservers and interpreters of classic American style.

That includes everything from Ivy League clothing and denim to workwear, street fashion, and vintage Americana.

What makes the book fascinating is the cultural exchange at its center.

Japanese fashion didn’t simply copy American clothing. It studied it, categorized it, refined it, preserved details that Americans sometimes abandoned, and eventually created versions that would influence fashion around the world.

Even if you aren’t deeply interested in clothing, Ametora works as a book about culture.

It shows how ideas travel between countries and how something can be adopted by another culture, transformed, and eventually exported back to the place where it originated.

I started the book wanting to learn more about Japanese fashion and finished it thinking much more broadly about globalization, identity, marketing, and cultural influence.

That’s exactly what I want from nonfiction.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Sometimes you read a classic and immediately understand why people are still talking about it decades later.

That was my experience with Rebecca.

Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel follows an unnamed young woman who marries the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter and moves with him to his enormous estate, Manderley.

But the memory of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, seems to exist everywhere.

Rebecca is dead before the novel begins, yet she dominates the story.

That is one of the most impressive things about the book.

Du Maurier turns someone who never physically appears in the present-day narrative into one of its most powerful characters. Rebecca exists through memories, possessions, conversations, comparisons, and the insecurity she creates in the novel’s narrator.

And then there is Mrs. Danvers.

She remains one of the most unsettling characters I’ve encountered in classic fiction.

Rebecca blends psychological suspense, mystery, romance, and gothic fiction into a novel that still feels remarkably readable today.

There is atmosphere on nearly every page, but beneath that atmosphere is a story about jealousy, identity, obsession, and the danger of idealizing people we never truly knew.

It deserves its reputation as a classic.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

Sometimes you don’t need a book to reinvent a genre.

You just need it to keep you turning the pages.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware did exactly that.

The novel follows Leonora, a crime writer who unexpectedly receives an invitation to the bachelorette weekend of an old friend she hasn’t spoken to in years.

The gathering takes place in an isolated glass house surrounded by woods.

That already sounds like something is going to go terribly wrong.

And naturally, it does.

Ware uses isolation, old friendships, secrets, uncomfortable social dynamics, and unreliable memories to slowly build tension.

The secluded setting is especially effective. The house feels exposed because of all the glass while simultaneously feeling completely cut off from the outside world.

That contradiction creates the perfect setting for a psychological mystery.

I enjoy locked-room mysteries and thrillers that bring a limited number of characters together and force you to question everyone, and In a Dark, Dark Wood scratches that itch.

It is fast, atmospheric, and easy to fly through.

Sometimes that is exactly what I want from a thriller.

What My Favorite Books of 2026 Say About My Reading Year

Looking at this list, there isn’t much connecting these books on the surface.

One is experimental literary fiction.

One is an enormous LitRPG fantasy series.

Another is Japanese fashion history.

There is a gothic classic, a psychological thriller, a short-fiction collection, and a philosophical novel about being trapped in time.

But I think that’s exactly why I’ve enjoyed reading so much this year.

I haven’t stayed inside one genre but explored many different ones.

Fantasy will probably always be my comfort zone, but some of my favorite reading experiences happen when I pick up something completely outside what I normally read.

Ametora taught me about a cultural history I knew very little about. And as someone who loves fashion and travel, it was very informative.

Flights challenged my expectations of what a novel should look like.

Rebecca reminded me why great classics survive. It took me a while to get around to reading it but I am glad that I did.

He Who Fights with Monsters sent me down another fantasy rabbit hole.

And On the Calculation of Volume II took one of my favorite storytelling concepts—being trapped in time—and approached it in a way I hadn’t seen before.

That variety has defined my reading year. And with several months still remaining in 2026, I’m hoping Part Three becomes necessary.