WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 23, 2026
This week’s reading list moves from intimate family dramas to imagined societies—and, with Halloween approaching, two unsettling novels. On The Ezra Klein Show, Sarah Longwell chose fiction to get lost in: Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, John Williams’s Stoner, and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Chrystia Freeland’s selections pair science fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin and Iain M. Banks with Margaret Atwood’s memoir Book of Lives.
For readers after something darker, we’ve also selected Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night from the books discussed on the October 23 episode of The Book Review. Eight books, with plenty of different ways to spend the weekend.
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Sarah Longwell’s picks
Recommended on The Ezra Klein Show, October 23. Read the episode’s recommendations.
Intermezzo
Two brothers navigate grief, love, and their uneasy relationship after their father’s death. Sally Rooney follows their overlapping lives in contemporary Ireland.
Stoner
A Missouri farm boy discovers literature and becomes a university professor. John Williams traces the quiet ambitions, disappointments, and attachments that shape an ordinary life.
The Poisonwood Bible
A missionary brings his wife and four daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959. Their alternating perspectives reveal a family unraveling amid colonialism, faith, and political upheaval.
Chrystia Freeland’s picks
Recommended on The Ezra Klein Show, October 20. Read the episode’s recommendations.
The Dispossessed
A physicist leaves an anarchist society for its wealthy neighboring world, testing the limits of both systems. Le Guin’s novel explores freedom, obligation, and the possibilities of another way to live.
The Player of Games
A celebrated game player from the Culture travels to an empire whose political hierarchy depends on a fantastically complex game. His invitation draws him into a contest with consequences far beyond the board.
Book of Lives
Margaret Atwood looks back on the experiences, places, and relationships behind her writing, moving from a childhood in the Canadian woods through the making of her novels.
Two for Halloween
Our two selections from the books discussed on The Book Review’s October 23 Halloween episode.
The Haunting of Hill House
Four visitors arrive at an isolated house to investigate reports of haunting. Shirley Jackson turns their stay into a study of loneliness, fear, and the uncertain boundary between a troubled mind and a hostile place.
Our Share of Night
A Novel
A father tries to protect his son from a powerful family and its occult inheritance. Set against Argentina’s dictatorship and its aftermath, Mariana Enriquez’s novel connects supernatural terror with violence, grief, and power.