Ink Book Clubbers may recall that our first selection ever was Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which we announced on April 29 of this year. In those initial conversations, we engaged in debates over whether the book had crafted a viable progressive program for grappling with society’s most urgent issues, or whether, in the wake of Trump’s reelection, Klein and Thompson had presented Exhibit A in explaining why Democrats had lost the people’s ear. But if our goal in launching the Book Club was to create a platform on which our community’s members could exchange ideas and opinions around our shared reading, we were off and running.
Since Abundance, we’ve read seven more Ink Book Club titles, and we’ve sat down with each of their authors for at least one live discussion. The books we’ve chosen have varied in genre and style, but in each case, we’ve teased out timely themes that shape our world and inform our democracy, whether in Kevin Young’s poetry collection, Night Watch, or Karim Dimechkie’s novel, The Uproar. With Jill Lepore, author of We the People, we took a deep dive into the founding of our country; in Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night, we found an alternate but equally fundamental view of North America’s formation. Novelist An Yu brought us Sunbirth, a strange and unforgettable tale of two sisters and their efforts to survive amid catastrophe and loss, and Kiran Desai’s exquisite The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny provided us with unmitigated delight. And of course, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad’s searing, gorgeous work, challenged us to view the world and ourselves differently, and won the National Book Award.
As 2025 comes to an end, we want to acknowledge each of these amazing authors, as well as all those Anand hosts on The Ink throughout the year, and all of our members for your insightful comments and enthusiastic participation. What I know without a doubt is how privileged we are to have access to the work of such profoundly gifted artists and thinkers, and to be supported in the work we do by this smart, engaged, and compassionate community.
We look forward to bringing you a fresh, new roster of Ink Book Club selections in the coming year. And this Friday, December 19, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, let’s meet up to continue our discussion of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, as well as some of the other books we’ve recently enjoyed, and might recommend. I wanted to single out three additional books that also stood out for me this past year, and one I am especially excited to start reading:
I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman (translated by Ros Schwarz, Transit Books). This surreal, haunting dystopian novel was first published in French in 1995. Written by a Belgian writer who was also a psychoanalyst, it follows an unnamed narrator who is the 40th prisoner, joining 39 older women who have been imprisoned together in an underground cell. It’s reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale or an upside-down Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but its spare language and existential themes make it truly singular. A small California publisher, Transit Books, acquired it several years ago, and since then, it has gone on to quietly sell 500,000 copies and become a TikTok darling. A clerk at my local bookstore raved about it to me, so I picked it up.
Speaking of The Handmaid’s Tale, I also absolutely loved Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. It’s a truly spectacular read that offers an expansive portrait of the artist in all the seasons of her life. Embedded everywhere are canny quips, enigmatic writing tips (“If the ant on the raft isn’t working for you, it’s okay to stop”) and morsels like this one: “Keep your eyes on the old women in stories; they’re either helpers or witches.” Atwood also pokes and prods at the “versions” of herself that have been perpetrated, either by her or by certain chauvinistic critics: “I have acquired saintly haloes and infernal horns. Who,” she asks, “would not wish to explore those funhouse mirrors?”
Bread and Angels, by Patti Smith, is her superb follow-up to Just Kids, her 2010 National Book Award-winning memoir chronicling her artistic and romantic relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. If Atwood’s memoir is exuberant, Smith’s latest is elegiac: gorgeous, but mournful. She knew she wanted to be an artist before she even knew what the term meant or what her medium would be, and in Bread of Angels, she takes us on that singular journey. What I love most about this book is that it shows Smith to be fearless in her quest to build a life on her terms, always taking intense pleasure in the everyday, while processing profound losses.
What I’m reading next: A Different Drummer, by William Melvin Kelley, whom Kathryn Schulz, in a 2018 New Yorker article, labeled “a lost giant of American literature.” In the piece, Schulz recollects stumbling on a copy of a Langston Hughes paperback being sold at a barn sale for $1.00. It was inscribed to Kelley, whom Schulz knew next to nothing about. That sparked her quest to find out more about this major Black writer, who earned comparisons to James Joyce, William Faulkner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and James Baldwin, but left behind early success for exile, slipped into obscurity, and later took up a career teaching young writers. First published in 1962, and since its rediscovery considered a classic, A Different Drummer is set in an imaginary Deep South state in June of 1957, when a young Black farmer shoots his horse, burns down his house, salts his fields, and then heads North with his wife. His actions inspire the other Black residents of the state to do the same.
Below, for Book Club members, some thoughts and questions as we continue to read The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny this week, and in advance of our meeting this Friday.
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