Fresh Off the Shelf - Vol. 5

Strong Contenders for the Best Fiction I’ve Read This Year

If there’s one thing that characterizes this explosive month of reading for me, it is fiction. Between my ongoing theatre research and the hyperbolic waves of progress I’ve made on my next book, I’ve added a lot more novels, short stories, and plays into my regular reading rotation.

Many of our first encounters with the written word are through stories—tales of fiction. We may then be encouraged to check out more books through school library programs, but by the time we age out of assigned readings, many of us fall out of fiction entirely.

Even though I continued to read, both after high school and throughout college, much of my reading since my academic years has been in nonfiction—primarily psychology and history. This month saw me get back into reading contemporary fiction and also paying my respects to some of the greatest writers from the last century.