Reading list, mid-2026

A shorter list than I would like, and heavier on non-fiction than I intended. Notes are what I actually thought, not what I think I am supposed to have thought.

Worth your time

• Something on attention and its economics. Made me change how I use my phone for about three weeks, which is roughly the industry standard for this genre.
• A history of a single infrastructure project. Slow start, but the middle third is superb on how large things actually get built.
• A novel I will not summarise, because summarising it is exactly the wrong way in.

Mixed

• A management book with one genuinely good chapter and eleven filling out the page count. Read chapter four.
• A memoir that was better as an essay. The essay exists. Read that instead.

Abandoned

• One I gave sixty pages and could not get purchase on. Possibly my fault; I was tired.

Next half: more fiction, deliberately.