From a New York Times By the Book interview with Anand Giridharadas headlined
His Fantasy Literary Dinner Party? He Already Threw It.”:

What books are on your night stand?

Some time ago, I bought a pair of red, can-shaped Italian night stands with tiny curved drawers. I thought they would lend me glamour. Books don’t fit on or in them, however, so I keep a towering pile on the floor, which, between us, is straining my marriage. In the pile now are Joan Didion’s collected nonfiction, James Baldwin’s “Another Country,” Svetlana Alexievich’s “Secondhand Time,” “Inside U.S.A.” by John Gunther, and — my current focus — John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” which I should have read before but I hadn’t, probably because it was assigned.