This year, Bonnie Garmus released her newest novel Peck & Peck after her globally beloved debut, Lessons In Chemistry. After a character firmly rooted in STEM, she dove into a book focused around art, creativity and the publishing industry. But the whole novel was kicked off when she heard a poem that awoken something in her. So as we dive in head first to her 80s-set novel based on a character with an ear for poetry, she pointed us towards a few works she has loved as she buried herself in the genre as well as a few novels she can’t get enough of.
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 by Nikki Giovanni
In her exclusive interview with She Reads, Bonnie talked about how she heard the poem “The Laws of Motion” by Nikki Giovanni being recited on NPR and that it ignited something in her.
I hadn’t heard this piece since I was 14, when my English teacher read it aloud to us. Suddenly, all these memories of poetry and what he said about it came flooding back to me.
The poem is really about what constitutes substance in our lives. And at that time, with work, I was asking myself, am I even working with substance? I don’t know. I was starting to really doubt my career.
This was back in 2009, when I was doing a lot of work in technology. I started to feel like technology was shifting from something that had been cool and innovative to something more greed-based and marketing-driven, to be blunt.
At that point, I had this idea for Peck & Peck. I didn’t follow it right then, but it came back to me after I’d finished writing Lessons in Chemistry, with the rise of AI. It was exactly what we were talking about back then. So that’s where it all started.
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Len Pennie
In talking with Bonnie, she discussed her adoration for a poet whose work not only became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, but who reads her work on her wildly popular Instagram.
I listen to this poet, she’s Scottish, Len Pennie. I listened to her deliver one of her pieces[…] she just blows me away. She knows how to read her own work.
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Ply by Hernan Diaz
A new release from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust, this novel thrusts us into the future when the state has follow, social order is being rethought and an orphan is sustaining herself as a “pincher”. Stealing electricity from the grid and selling it on the black market, she finds herself also entrenched in art, music and a world-changing scientific discovery.
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Let the Poets Govern by Camonghne Felix
Camonghne Felix has worked as a political strategist and speechwriter, but in this new work that is part memoir/part manifesto, she explores the revolutionary power of language on politics. Mixing her own personal experiences, family history and the works of Black radical thinkers, she considers how poetry can be a force that challenges power and brings about meaningful change.
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Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin
This poetic exploration follows a woman whose parents immigrated, escaped authoritarianism, only to impose strict beliefs on their children. It journey’s through displacement, being undocumented in America and the search for belonging.
Bonnie had this to say about this debut collection:
It’s really fascinating because she’s a Chinese poet who was actually born in Rio de Janeiro. She’s Brazilian, but her parents were Chinese immigrants to Brazil.
Her descriptions of their lives, how she fits into that, and being in a Latin American country are amazing.
It’s a different immigrant story from what we hear here.
She’s really an excellent writer. It’s her debut book, and it came out last year.
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Three New Books Bonnie is Loving
If you are looking to lock in on a few of 2026’s best books, these are the ones Bonnie Garmus devoured.
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
From the bestselling author of The Help, comes the story of three women’s fates converging in the throes of the Great Depression. An orphan too old to expect to be adopted, an unmarried and outspoken woman coming to ask her socialite sister for help, and a woman with nothing to lose hatch a plan. But in this time, even the slightest of moves can be risky for women and bring about dangerous consequences.
I think it’s an excellent book, and I blurbed it.
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Whistler by Ann Patchett
When Daphne and her husband see a gray-haired man following them, she isn’t prepared for the reunion about to take place. The man was her stepfather for little over a year when she was nine, but the relationship had a profound impact on them both. It’s been years since they connected, but now, time falls away and they reflect on the event that changed things forever and the memory and seemingly small moments have a ripple effect that can last a lifetime.
[Whistler] blew me away. I think it’s my favorite of hers, and that’s saying something because she never misses.
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Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason
Sophie had what appeared to be a perfect life. Great relationships, a solid marriage, a career dedicated to books. So it’s curious that now she is living alone, almost fired and estranged from those who loved her. With reading as her only solace, she falls back into an author’s work who she loved in her twenties. Now she feels exceedingly close to this author as she dives into their words and her sadness.
Oh my gosh, I loved it. She wrote Sorrow and Bliss, and it’s one of my favorites.
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Bonnie Garmus’s Comfort Reads
When we asked Bonnie what she cozies up with when she’s looking to relax and just fall into something, she gave an answer that might surprise you:
You know the books I return to again and again? This is going to make me sound weird, but I love to read old fairy tales.
I read Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen and all the myths.
And I’m especially attached to American Indian myths because they write so much about animals and animal spirits and all the things that the animals do. It’s fascinating.
Whenever I’m kind of blue because I haven’t found a good book or I’m stuck on something, I sit down and read fairy tales or American Indian myths.
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