What I Read April 2026
I tried very hard not to have a theme this month.
I know I say that a lot, but this time I meant it. I was just going to read books without some moment where I dramatically connect everything and pretend I planned it that way. It would have saved me from unnecessarily firing neurons I am trying to save for winter.
And then, somehow, there was a theme. Somewhere between books two and three, I realized we were doing a thing.
That thing, by the way, is witnessing. (That “we” by the way is…I don’t know.)
And yes, I mean the very lofty “bear witness” kind. Dress up in a robe, grab your favorite gavel, and put it in your non-book-holding hand. Congratulations! You’re in for some really amazing reads! Just watch where you point that gavel.
Across wildly different books (historical fiction, literary fiction, cultural analysis, whatever it is George Saunders is up to) the same problem keeps showing up. People living (and dying) inside events they may not fully understand. People documenting, interpreting, misinterpreting, or just standing there blinking, as history (or morality, or love, or grief, or politics) does its thing.
Which is all just to say, here are the books I finished this month:
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Vigil by George Saunders
- The Making of Marigold McGrath by Carrie Hayes
- The Great Game by Andrés Martinez
Note: For sanity and scale (mine, yours, and the internet’s), what follows are the openings of each review. Full versions are linked below.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison observed that there were no adequate memorials for those who were enslaved in the United States. “No small bench by the road,” no modest roadside markers, no sanctioned sites of mourning. So she wrote one. Beloved is a monument of language and memory. There is, to my knowledge, no more fitting extension of a literary work into the world.
I find myself hesitating to even try to articulate my admiration for fear of diminishing the work. From the first page, it is clear you are entering a kind of sacred space, one that is welcoming and exacting and asks you to be your best self. To sit with the past, witness, reckon, and repair.
Vigil by George Saunders
Vigil is George Saunders doing the afterlife thing he does so well, this time with even more bite and a contemporary target. It’s set in an in-between space that’s not quite heaven, not quite anywhere you can Yelp, where a spirit’s job is to help the dying make peace before they go. Like cosmic hospice with moral stakes.
The Making of Marigold McGrath by Carrie Hayes
Historical fiction set during World War II is something I tend to approach with high expectations and a ready-to-go side-eye, but The Making of Marigold McGrath by Carrie Hayes won me over with its intelligence, its restraint, and its refreshing perspective on what it means to come of age while the world is unraveling. Hayes gifts us a story about what it means to live inside and bear witness to a moment that has not yet resolved into history.
The Great Game by Andrés Martinez
Ordinarily, I don’t read sports books. I barely watch sports. Sports are what I put on when my brain needs a screensaver or my children are in the room and I’d like to keep them there a little longer. But The Great Game by Andrés Martinez is a book about everything sports touch: politics, power, media, identity, community. It’s also very much a book about America’s favorite pastime: wanting to be part of the world while also insisting we should do our own thing.
And there be the April reads. As always, I welcome any recommendations! Read any good books lately?
Jackie Pick 