What EGL Staff Are Actually Reading This Fall: 7 Books Worth Your Nightstand
Every few months we go around the group chat and ask what's actually sitting on people's nightstands. Not what we think we should be reading, what we are actually finishing, dog earing, and texting each other about at eleven at night. Here is the current EGL stack, plus what each book is teaching the person who picked it up.
Manifest
By Roxie Nafousi
Part manifesto, part practical guide, Roxie Nafousi lays out seven steps for turning intention into action. It is less "ask the universe" and more an accountability framework dressed in soft language, which is probably why it became a phenomenon. The book gives structure to something that usually feels vague and unfalsifiable.
"I came into this one skeptical, honestly. But the step about taking aligned action instead of just journaling about your goals actually changed how I plan my week. It is a lot less woo than the title suggests."
Masha Lapin, Editorial Director
The Martha Way: Essential Principles for Mastering Home and Living
By Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart's latest distills decades of hosting, gardening, and home management into first principles rather than recipes to follow step by step. It reads like an apprenticeship, the kind of book you keep on the kitchen counter and return to as the seasons change.
"What I love is that it is not aspirational in a way that makes you feel behind. It is more like being handed the actual logic behind why a home runs well, so you can apply it your own way instead of copying hers exactly."
Frankie Simpkins, Content Strategist
Parable of the Sower
By Octavia E. Butler
Written in 1993 and set in a near future America undone by climate collapse and inequality, Butler's novel has had an unsettling second life as required reading for anyone paying attention to the present moment. At its center is Lauren Olamina, a teenager building a belief system, Earthseed, out of the wreckage around her.
"I read this on a friend's recommendation expecting dystopian fiction and got something closer to a leadership manual. Lauren's whole philosophy is about adapting without losing yourself, and I think about that constantly right now."
Abbey Lehman, Newsletter Editor
The Battle for Your Brain
Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
by Nita A. Farahany
Farahany, a Duke law professor and bioethicist, makes the case that neurotechnology (wearables and devices that can read brain data) is advancing faster than our legal protections for mental privacy. The book argues for something she calls cognitive liberty, the right to control your own mind and its data.
"This is the book that made me actually read the fine print on my sleep tracker. It is not alarmist, it is measured, but it left me thinking differently about every wellness gadget I own."
Kristin Lane, Social Media Lead
My Life on the Road
By Gloria Steinem
Steinem's memoir reframes her decades of travel and organizing not as a break from a settled life but as the work itself. It is part memoir, part history of the feminist movement, told through the people she met on planes, in union halls, and on campus tours across the country.
"What struck me most is how she treats listening as a form of activism. In a media landscape obsessed with having a take, there is something radical about a book that centers showing up and paying attention instead."
Sam McGrath, Community Manager
Famesick
A Memoir, by Lena Dunham
Dunham's first proper memoir, out this year, is a frank accounting of what two decades in public view cost her physically and otherwise. It trades the tell all instinct of most celebrity memoirs for something closer to a reckoning, less about scandal and more about the actual price of ambition.
"I went in for the gossip and stayed for the chronic illness sections, which are honestly the most vulnerable writing I have read from her. It reframes fame as a health story, not a glamour story."
Morrison Kennedy, Contributing Writer
The Forest Feast Gatherings
By Erin Gleeson
The latest entry in Gleeson's Forest Feast series is a vegetarian entertaining guide built around simple, seasonal menus and illustrated in her signature watercolor style. It reads less like a cookbook and more like a hosting philosophy, built for people who want gatherings to feel easy rather than performed.
"This lives on my counter now. The menus are simple enough that I actually cook them on a weeknight, and the illustrations alone make me want to have people over more often."
Katie frestone, Brand Partnerships Lead
