In 2026, I’ve set a goal to read the books I received as gifts but hadn’t yet read. It seems silly that I haven’t read the books I received as gifts. But, as someone who receives books from publishers, reads a book club book every month, and tries to read books from my ever-growing to-be-read list, it can be hard to get to the books I’ve received as gifts.
I went through all my bookshelves and chose ten books I received as gifts. I thought I would share my list here to hold me accountable, as well as encourage you to read the books you’ve been given as gifts or are just sitting on your bookshelves.
2026 Read the Gifts Challenge
TINKERS
By: Paul Harding
A gift from my nephew, Eric, several years ago. As a high school English teacher, he and I often talk about books, and he passed this favorite of his on to me. TINKERS won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2010.
An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer’s time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness.
At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.
THE STRANGER IN THE LIFEBOAT
By: Mitch Albom
My husband has often gifted me Mitch Albom books, and I always love them.
Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, ten people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. “Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says. “I am the Lord,” the man whispers. So begins Mitch Albom’s most beguiling novel yet.
Albom has written of heaven in the celebrated number one bestsellers “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “The First Phone Call from Heaven”. Now, for the first time in his fiction, he ponders what we would do if, after crying out for divine help, God actually appeared before us? A fast-paced, compelling novel that makes you ponder your deepest beliefs, “The Stranger in the Lifeboat suggests that answers to our prayers may be found where we least expect them.”
THE MIRACLES AMONG US
By: Dr. Marc Siegel
This was a gift from my husband this year. I chose it as my First Read of 2026 and also kicked off my challenge. I’ve really been enjoying the stories of medical miracles.
Almost everything a doctor sees can be explained scientifically. Almost.
Drawing from his extensive experience as a physician, Dr. Marc Siegel explores the profound and often mysterious intersection between faith and medicine. He shares riveting stories of patients who have experienced remarkable recoveries, challenging the boundaries of medical science. These narratives highlight not only the resilience of the human body, but also the inexplicable moments when intuition and foresight play a crucial role in healing.
Doctors see more than just patients who are cured against all odds.
From a rabbi who somehow knew a carpenter’s infant son had a heart problem, to an NFL player’s amazing survival from a rare kind of cardiac arrest, these stories bolster the belief there is a higher power at work.
The Miracles Among Us reminds us that God’s love has the capacity to surprise us even in our darkest moments. Whether you are a healthcare professional, a patient, or simply someone intrigued by the mysteries of medicine, this book provides an enlightening exploration of how miracles manifest in everyday life.
LITTLE PIECES OF HOPE
Happy-Making Things in a Difficult World
By: Todd Doughty
I think this will be my next read after I finish THE MIRACLES AMONG US. This was a gift from my best friend, Tammy, because she knows I love happy, inspirational stories.
On March 11, 2020, the day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and all of our lives began to change in unprecedented ways, Todd Doughty knew he needed to do something to help him stay connected to the everyday joys of daily life. So he wrote down a list of things that make him happy: The musical intro to “All Things Considered.” Someone forgiving you. Someone believing in you. Your foot sticking out from under a blanket in order to find the cool spot. Freshly cut yellow tulips. A really good burger.
Many, many lists later, Little Pieces of Hope pulls together the best of Doughty’s lists along with never-before-seen entries, essays, musings, prompts, quotes, and playlists that offer solace, connection, and a daily touchstone of joy in a difficult world.
A beautiful keepsafe full of glorious illustrations, Little Pieces of Hope is brimming with the pleasures of life, inspiring readers to look for and celebrate the good things that surround us.
BIG FRIENDSHIP
How We Keep Each Other Close
By: Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
This was also a gift from my best friend, Tammy. Tammy and I have been best friends since my junior year of college in 1993. But I also have several close friends here in my community, from high school, and friends that I’m no longer close to for various reasons. I love friendship stories, fictional and real. I’m anxious to read this one.
A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.
Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls.
An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.
NOT OUR KIND
By: Kitty Zeldis
Another gift from Tammy. She saw this author speak in Nashville and thought it would be a story I would love.
One rainy morning in June, two years after the end of World War II, a minor traffic accident brings together Eleanor Moskowitz and Patricia Bellamy. Their encounter seems fated: Eleanor, a teacher and recent Vassar graduate, needs a job. Patricia’s difficult thirteen-year-old daughter Margaux, recovering from polio, needs a private tutor.
Though she feels out of place in the Bellamys’ rarefied and elegant Park Avenue milieu, Eleanor forms an instant bond with Margaux. Soon the idealistic young woman is filling the bright young girl’s mind with Shakespeare and Latin. Though her mother, a hat maker with a little shop on Second Avenue, disapproves, Eleanor takes pride in her work, even if she must use the name “Moss” to enter the Bellamys’ restricted doorman building each morning, and feels that Patricia’s husband, Wynn, may have a problem with her being Jewish.
Invited to keep Margaux company at the Bellamys’ country home in a small town in Connecticut, Eleanor meets Patricia’s unreliable, bohemian brother, Tom, recently returned from Europe. The spark between Eleanor and Tom is instant and intense. Flushed with new romance and increasingly attached to her young pupil, Eleanor begins to feel more comfortable with Patricia and much of the world she inhabits. As the summer wears on, the two women’s friendship grows—until one hot summer evening, a line is crossed, and both Eleanor and Patricia will have to make important decisions—choices that will reverberate through their lives.
Gripping and vividly told, Not Our Kind illuminates the lives of two women on the cusp of change—and asks how much our pasts can and should define our futures.
THE FRENCH KITCHEN
By: Kristy Cambron
Another book my friend, Tammy, gifted me last year! You all need a friend like Tammy who gifts you books you know you’ll love!
Paris, 1952 — An ex-pat wife living in Paris signs up for a cookery class taught by an American chef with an indomitable wit and decidedly French airs–an instructor by name of Julia Child. Amongst classes of the L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, with pots and pans and prim Paris wives learning to sauté in the French way, Kat Fontaine learns much more than she bargained for.
Still haunted by the years she spent serving in the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII, Kat soon finds a simple cookery class unearths the tangle of gut-wrenching memories of war and questions about the high-ranking society husband whose past is as murky as her own. But when the puzzle pieces start to come together–and her carefully crafted Paris world begins to fall apart–Kat must confront her own secrets against the mounting suspicions of the husband she thought she knew . . .
Rue, 1943 — Deep in the heart of Nazi-controlled northern France, Manon Altier shifts between working for the enemy by day–as a French chef at the famous Château du Broutel, where names like Himmler, Rommel, and Goebbels frequent the guest list–and running with underground networks against the Vichy regime at night. Working undercover to filter information to agents within the burgeoning OSS, Manon digs deep into the glitz and glamour of a Nazi stronghold that has her teetering on the edge of being discovered at any turn. But when an intriguing stranger appears at the chateau claiming to work with the French Resistance, Manon must lean on her instincts to judge whether to run and hide or stand firm–even as a terrifying discovery tests her resolve to continue the fight.
From the heights of culinary cuisine in 1950s Paris society to the underbelly of a WWII spy network embedded deep within Nazi-controlled Vichy France–and the spy backstory of the world’s most famous would-be French chef, Julia Child–The French Kitchen turns up the heat on the pasts of women whose worlds collide, and forces each to question what she thought she’d planned for a perfect future.
SWEET SPOT
An Ice Cream Binge Across America
By: Amy Ettinger
Tammy knows about my mom’s love of ice cream and gifted me this non-fiction book about ice cream. I may have to take this along on my Florida trip with my mom to read and talk about with her.
A journalist channels her ice-cream obsession, scouring the United States for the best artisanal brands and delving into the surprising history of ice cream and frozen treats in America.
For Amy Ettinger, ice cream is not just a delicious snack but a circumstance and a time of year–frozen forever in memory. As the youngest child and only girl, ice cream embodied unstructured summers, freedom from the tyranny of her classmates, and a comforting escape from her chaotic, demanding family.
Now as an adult and journalist, her love of ice cream has led to a fascinating journey to understand ice cream’s evolution and enduring power, complete with insight into the surprising history behind America’s early obsession with ice cream and her experience in an immersive ice-cream boot camp to learn from the masters. From a visit to the one place in the United States that makes real frozen custard in a mammoth machine known as the Iron Lung, to the vicious competition among small ice-cream makers and the turf wars among ice-cream trucks, to extreme flavors like foie gras and oyster, Ettinger encounters larger-than-life characters and uncovers what’s really behind America’s favorite frozen treats.
Sweet Spot is a fun and spirited exploration of a treat Americans can’t get enough of–one that transports us back to our childhoods and will have you walking to the nearest shop for a cone.
POCKETS
An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close
By: Hannah Carlson
Finally, this book, also from Tammy, combines history and fashion, and I’m definitely excited to finally read it.
Who gets pockets, and why?
It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.
Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.
Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.
And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.) Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain “smart” textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards.
Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.
Here is the nudge you need to read the books on your shelves, too. Create your own challenge to help you find the reading fun. Choose all the books under 300 pages. Or do a ROYGBIV challenge, choosing book covers from each color of the rainbow. Choose a specific genre or books that start with the letters in your name. Whatever will encourage you to read and keep reading the books on your shelves.
Let me know in the comments if you kick off your own reading challenge.
Posted Under 2026 Read the Gifts Challenge, reading challenge