At a Glance: Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea rethinks the character of Bertha Mason, Charlotte Brönte’s madwoman in the attic from...

At a Glance: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

First published in 1962, We Have Always Lived in the Castle tells the story of what remains of the Blackwood...

At a Glance: Why Fish Don’t Exist

In her debut book Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller writes about David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist and the first...

At a Glance: You’re Not Listening

A journalist for The New York Times, Kate Murphy writes about the art of listening in her 2020 book, You’re...

At a Glance: Free Food for Millionaires

Free Food for Millionaires is the debut 2007 novel of Min Jin Lee, who also authored the best-selling novel Pachinko. ...

At a Glance: Prisoners of Geography

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics has a clickbait-esque title...

At a Glance: Mouth to Mouth

Antoine Wilson’s 2022 psychological thriller Mouth to Mouth is about an art dealer, Jeff Cook, who runs into an old...

At a Glance: Holidays on Ice

Another excellent collection by David Sedaris! Holidays on Ice is the oldest collection of Sedaris’s I have picked up thus...

At a Glance: Lemon

Much like the fruit, Lemon, Kwon Yeo-Sun’s first English translated book, is a vibrant, searingly curt read. At first glance,...

At a Glance: Goodbye to Berlin

Goodbye to Berlin is a semi-autobiographical novel chronicling life in Berlin just before the outbreak of World War II. Isherwood’s...

Featured Books

Reading the World

Here you'll find what books we've been reading from around the world. Many of the novels are classified with multiple country tags, which I’ve chosen based on both the setting of the books as well as the author, where relevant. The tagging process is in no way standardized, and if you feel that I’ve made a mistake or left something out, please get in touch! I play a bit fast and loose with the country tags, but I’d always rather over tag than put a novel into an oversimplified, national box. Bodies are mobile, and national identities change.

Subscribe For Updates

Don't worry, I won't spam you! I value your privacy and will only send subscriber updates when a new pattern is released or something particularly notable happens.

You can expect to receive less than five emails per year.