{"id":18,"date":"2026-06-01T21:49:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2026-06-01T22:22:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:22:26","slug":"winter-spring-2026-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Winter\/Spring 2026 Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My reading list for the first half of the year (in alphabetical order):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Best American Short Stories, 2025<\/em> (ed. Celeste Ng)<\/a>
Birds of America<\/em> by Lorrie Moore<\/a>
The Book of I<\/em> by David Greig<\/a>
Canticle<\/em> by Janet Rich Edwards<\/a>
The Consequences<\/em> by Manual Mu\u00f1oz<\/a>
The Dark Dark<\/em> by Samantha Hunt<\/a>
Gilead<\/em> by Marilynne Robinson<\/a>
A Girl Returned<\/em> by Donatella Di Peitrantonio<\/a>
Girl, Woman, Other<\/em> by Bernardine Evaristo<\/a>
The Great Believers<\/em> by Rebecca Makkai<\/a>
The House on Mango Street<\/em> by Sandra Cisneros<\/a>
Jesus\u2019 Son<\/em> by Denis Johnson<\/a>
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny <\/em>by Kiran Desai<\/a>
Lost Children Archive<\/em> by Valeria Luiselli<\/a>
Matrix<\/em> by Lauren Groff<\/a>
A Parchment of Leaves<\/em> by Silas House<\/a>
The Prettiest Star<\/em> by Carter Sickels<\/a>
We Run the Tides<\/em> by Vandela Vida<\/a>
The Social Graces<\/em> by Renee Rosen<\/a>
Stone Yard Devotional<\/em> by Charlotte Wood<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


An overarching theme for my last five months in reading is the examination of community & insider\/outsider:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist in Canticle<\/em> by Janet Rich Edwards becomes a Franciscan friar and lives with the beguines in 13th century Brugge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Girl Returned<\/em> by Donatella Di Peitrantonio follows a girl who learns that the people she thought were her parents are not her parents when she must return to her biological family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Prettiest Star<\/em> by Carter Sickels, Brian returns to his hometown in Ohio to die from AIDS-related illness, and he’s met with homophobia and fear from the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist of A Parchment of Leaves<\/em> by Silas House says the only fault of her husband is that he’d choose his family over her. Naturally, the novel complicates her conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Matrix<\/em> by Lauren Groff, which I wrote about here on Substack<\/a>, Marie de France is kicked out of the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and sent to live out her days as the prioress of a struggling English abbey that she turns into a thriving, secure community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m honestly not surprised by the desire in myself (and other readers) to experience cloistered societies like those found in Stone Yard Devotional <\/em>by Charlotte Wood and in The Book of I<\/em> by David Greig (although definitely without the need to hide for one’s life from Viking invaders). After all, the world is large and happenings are turbulent. I must acknowledge that the desire for a safe community (even within myself) can sometimes be a double-edged sword: security on the one hand and intolerance on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a moment on writing craft. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m learning a lot about orientation and clarity. That is, technically making sure the reader knows what’s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in A Parchment of Leaves<\/em>, Silas House orients the reader by starting the narrative in close third person. This choice allows the reader to see the main character Vine from an outside perspective before the narrative switches to first person from her point of view for the majority of the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the third person, we learn how people of the area believe that Vine has killed or harmed men coming up onto the mountain where her family lives by invoking curses on them. Then we get this juicy tidbit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had a perfectly good motive, anyway. Tate Masters was the richest man in the nearby town of Black Banks, and he owned all of the land in the head of Redbud Camp. He had decided to build himself a mansion on the mountain\u2019s crest. Masters had made it well known that his plan was to run the Cherokees off. (4)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

House orients the reader by coming out and just saying what’s happening, very effectively. Whoever is telling us the story, that person thinks Vine is well within her rights to use a little magic to get rid of these intruders. Vine and her family are resilient. We’ll use this information when Vine takes over the telling of the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I’m working on.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was working on a novel at the start of the year, but I decided to switch my focus to short stories to work on the craft of writing, which can be easier to see and handle in a shorter space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My reading list for the first half of the year (in alphabetical order): Best American Short Stories, 2025 (ed. Celeste Ng)Birds of America by Lorrie MooreThe Book of I by David GreigCanticle by Janet Rich EdwardsThe Consequences by Manual Mu\u00f1ozThe Dark Dark by Samantha HuntGilead by Marilynne RobinsonA Girl Returned by Donatella Di PeitrantonioGirl, Woman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amandavink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}