Reading Roundup: May 2025

Trauma Plot: A Life by Jamie Hood. I added this memoir to my library holds after reading an astonishing excerpt online. If it sounds like a harrowing read, it is–but it’s more than that. The author is finishing a literature PhD during the period of time when she is repeatedly attacked, and she really brings the full force of her knowledge and analytical insight to look at her life leading up to and following each incident: narratives she creates or refuses, logics of dehumanization (including those inherent to the PhD process), simple yet powerful shifts in point of view. The result is as beautiful and meaningful as it is devastating.

The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard. This book was recommended by one of my instructors, because I was working on an essay that included descriptions of the decaying or abandoned infrastructure hidden in FDR Park. And, fair enough, this slim novel contains yards of gorgeous and erudite prose describing the remains of London overtaken by rising seas and vegetation. Unfortunately, the little bit of plot there is depends on some tired sexist characterization and some truly heinous, Heart-of-Darkness-esque racist tropes. If I had included a “book you hated or disagreed with” square on my environmental book bingo this year, this would clear the category for me.

Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies by Manuel Betancourt. I picked this up at the campus library during a weeklong workshop, and it was such a relief to have a breezy, familiar book on paper to rest my eyes between hours of website coding. It’s a brand new book, but the familiarity is in its tone and in its reflections on relationships and desire, triangulating theory with personal experience and depictions on film (opening with Closer, a play and film that has also historically been fruitful for me to think with). It’s also furtively a divorce memoir–and perhaps I would have loved it more if it had been a bit less furtive, because I’ve been loving divorce memoirs and novels lately. (Liars! American Ex-Wife! You Could Make This Place Beautiful!) Or perhaps the musings are less developed and the pop culture readings a little more esoteric than in The Male Gazed by the same author, which I adored. But I did find these essays pleasant to read, which counts for a lot when rinsing the taste of The Drowned World out of one’s brain.

Sometimes at the end of the month I like to pick up a novel to devour in one or two bites, and this month that was Audition by Katie Kitamura. Lovely, moody, mysterious, and a little surreal. I don’t want to say more without giving away the plot, but it was like a bad dream about marriage and family and aging and artistic ego–or perhaps more like a philosophical conundrum, like a trolley problem, since the narrator is often self-aware and insightful even as she conceals some truths and overcomplicates others.

I also started Ultimatum Orangutan by Khairani Barokka, a collection of poetry by an Indonesian artist and poet who explores climate change and colonialism among other themes. And I bought a copy of All Systems Red by Martha Wells so I could reread it in advance of the TV series. It’s still so good.

Some short poems and prose I liked:
Sonnet for Ochún by Leslie Sainz
From Scratch by Hassan A. Usman
A Girl Experiments with Being Human by Ruth Joffre
Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

Elsewhere

Oh dang: The New Acting Administrator of FEMA Wrote a Novel. It’s Not Good.

AI in the news:
‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw (Wired, April 23 2025)
Elon Musk’s xAI in Memphis: 35 gas turbines, no air pollution permits (E&E News, May 1, 2025)
Project Ludicrous: Will nuclear energy power the AI boom? (Baffler, April 29, 2025)
AI is draining water from areas that need it most (Bloomberg, May 8, 2025)
Seattle Worldcon 2025 Controversy (Locus, May 7, 2025)
Being honest about using AI at work makes people trust you less, research finds (The Conversation, May 6 2025)
AI use damages professional reputation, study suggests (Ars Technica, May 8, 2025)
On AI and the humanities: A Matter of Words (The Point, May 12, 2025)
Going ‘AI first’ appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo (Fast Company, May 12, 2025)
A developing story: MIT Says It No Longer Stands Behind Student’s AI Research Paper (Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2025)
AI Is Eating Data Center Power Demand—and It’s Only Getting Worse (Wired, May 22, 2025)

Also, don’t stop noticing how the world’s most inefficient Department of Government Efficiency is using AI to make everything worse:
DOGE Put a College Student in Charge of Using AI to Rewrite Regulations (Wired, April 30, 2025)
Republicans push for a decadelong ban on states regulating AI (The Verge, May 13. 2025)

Minutiae

May passed by fast, in a blur of rain. I finished my semester by submitting a long essay about my favorite park, which I hope to revise and publish as a standalone piece as well as incorporating it into my thesis. I enrolled in a four-day intensive digital humanities lab, in which I learned how to create a webpage in GitHub and prepare a spreadsheet for visualization as a timeline, a map, or a sortable database.

I spent a few hours working on a small urban farm, weeding and composting and trimming yellowed chard leaves and cutting mixed baby greens (but leaving the babiest leaves to keep growing). I tabled for Tree Tenders in the noisy gymnasium at a local school-turned-art studio, yelling “Do you have a tree in front of your house??” at every unfortunate person who made eye contact. I signed up for Love Your Park Day, planning to weed or plant in my favorite park, but instead got drafted to guide a nature walk. So I led a small group around the lake, looking at waterside plants and talking about native and introduced species. I scheduled a few work sessions at the rain garden I help maintain, but we had to reschedule each one…. because of rain. I went for an amble in Pennypack Park, where I had never been before, but I have a resolution to visit (and hopefully volunteer in) each of the seven watersheds in Philadelphia this year. It was the one sunny day during the second half of this month, and we saw some good plants and also watched a rat snake scale a wooden wall.

I turned 44 this month. I threw myself a little party, and had friends come fill up my little house with noise and laughter. My little orange foster cat loved it, and made sure to greet each and every guest. I dressed up for a nice dinner out and orchestra tickets with my partner. I took care of so many pets this month for some reason: I walked a dog, fed three different cats, gave medicine to a turtle, and scratched a parrot’s head. (I did not get paid for any of this except in love.) This weekend, I’m off too New Jersey for a short adventure involving a slime museum.

At the end of the month, all of the serviceberry trees in Philadelphia seemed to burst with almost-ripe fruits–too many for the birds to eat. A mast year. Whenever I see one on my walks in the city, I reach up to find the purplest berry and pop it into my mouth. Serviceberries taste like an apple tree tried to produce a blueberry with a dash of almond extract. It is weird and wild that this bounty is growing over our heads even in South Philly, free for the taking.