In 2026 I read Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss.
My sister asked me what I’ve been reading lately and I told her, “Joan Didion if she had better politics.”
Top tier essays in this collection. Challenging and cleverly constructed in several parts. Not as sharp or incisive for me as Having and Being Had, but that’s a high bar to clear. This earlier work still manages to be consistently better than most if not all of her contemporaries.