The reading shelf
Every book on this shelf was selected for a residency cycle, read in full by our community, and discussed over the course of a full year. Each review below was written personally by Dr. Tomiwa Johnson. These are the books we believe deserve a permanent place on your shelf.
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
A devastating story of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against the backdrop of Afghanistan from the fall of the monarchy to the Taliban. Hosseini writes with a compassion that never tips into sentimentality. Our reading circle spent three weeks on the final chapters alone, and the conversation about what we owe the people who once saved us is still going.
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie traces three lives through the Biafran war with a steadiness that makes the horror land harder, not softer. She writes about love and politics as if they are the same conversation, which of course they are. The novel became the most discussed title of our 2024 cycle and changed how several members think about historical fiction.
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
Roy builds a world so textured you can smell the mangoes rotting in the river. The story of twins growing up in Kerala unfolds backward and forward at once, every sentence carrying the weight of what is about to happen. A masterclass in structure that does not sacrifice feeling. The first paragraph alone is worth the price of the book.
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
The novel that reframed African literature for the world. Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo and the arrival of the colonizers with a clarity that still feels urgent almost seventy years later. We selected it for the residency because every generation of readers deserves to sit with this book. No member has ever regretted the time spent here.
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison writes about slavery and motherhood with a ferocity that refuses to let the reader look away. The ghost is real and the ghost is metaphor and neither reading diminishes the other. Beloved is one of those rare books that changes a little every time you return to it. Our circle read it twice during the residency year.
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
An English butler takes a rare motoring holiday and confronts a life of service that may have been a life of waste. Ishiguro says more in what he leaves out than most writers do in what they include. The final scene on the pier still comes up in our discussions months later. Quiet, devastating, perfectly constructed.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Buendia family rises and falls across seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo, and Marquez makes every page feel like both myth and history. Magical realism at its most generous. The novel demands patience and rewards it tenfold. We scheduled a longer residency cycle for this one and it earned every week.
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Narrated by Death, set in Nazi Germany, and somehow full of warmth. Zusak tells the story of a foster girl who steals books and shares them with neighbors and with a Jewish man hidden in her basement. The prose is inventive without being precious. A book about the quiet ways people save each other with words.
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A young Nigerian woman immigrates to the United States and starts a blog about race from the perspective of a non American Black person. Adichie writes about love, exile, and identity with a sharpness that never loses tenderness. Americanah became the gateway book for several new members of our circle and we keep returning to it.
Want your book on this shelf?
We accept fifteen new titles each year for the residency cycle. If your work belongs here, submit it for committee consideration.
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