Authority by Andrea Long Chu. I’m a longtime fan of the author’s eviscerating reviews of books that have more hype than sense, so I was excited to pick up this collection of essays. It includes some of the all time greats–a takedown of Joey Soloway’s memoir, a close critical look at Ottessa Moshfegh’s corpus–and also some new work that turns her critical eye to the state of criticism itself, which had the unexpected result of making me ashamed of my PhD. As in: wow, my program really didn’t provide much professional training, did they? Or like, much in the way of context for how and why we do what we do?
Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn. This is what I like to call a Big Idea book. In this case: what if the climate change worst case scenario happens, and your best chance for survival was an impenetrable bunker designed by the queen of Girlboss Gatekeep Gaslight? What if life in the pink bunker, micromanaged by Queen Girlboss from her spaceship for billionnaires, began to show the cracks in its ideology over a generation of survival? Now, there are Big Idea novels that deftly manage the mechanics of writing such as worldbuilding and voice, and others that take a lighter hand with the details and a more workmanlike approach to the voice. This novel might have benefited by taking the latter approach; instead, it goes into the ethics of its Big Idea in a hamfisted way and indulges in extensive descriptions of climate change and bunker security that didn’t feel well-researched to me. But I stuck with it, and to my surprise, I got invested enough in its characters that I raced to finish. I may even read the sequel.
American Bulk by Emily Mester. This essay collection is so readable, so smart, and so empathetic. I expected a little bit of gristle–research studies, that sort of thing–but each essay feels smooth and frictionless, like the Olive Garden breadsticks the author loves. She has a lot of insightful things to say about the meaning of Olive Garden, and Costco, and all the other hallmarks of the middle–middle class, middle brow, middle America–but her insights are folded seamlessly into surprisingly riveting stories about her family life.
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton. A strange short story about a severely disabled woman who dreams of having an abortion (although she is not pregnant). I don’t want to say more than that–this is a book best experienced by letting the narrator take you in hand.
I came down with some kind of stomach bug mid-month, and as I was suddenly spending a lot of time horizontal, I reread all of the Murderbot Diaries on my phone. I mean all of them except the first, which I’d reread in hard copy a couple months ago. And the second, which I also have in hard copy and had reread shortly before falling ill. But the novel and four novellas…. yep. NO RAGRETS!
Afterward, I was seized with a desire to clean up my Currently Reading pile. I finished Mother River by Can Xue, and while I can’t say I enjoyed it exactly, I did find myself reaching for it when I needed a break from reality–which was more often than expected. I skimmed The Source by Martin Doyle, which I started way back in January; it’s a bit dry for a book about rivers (get it??) but I needed its big-picture view of American water policy. And I picked up Wild Philadelphia by Michael Weilbacher again. This is more of a guidebook, with lists of local flora and fauna, some field trips you can take at different times of year, and some action items to preserve wildlife in the city. But there’s a robust section about local history and ecology that I wanted to make notes on, and it was fun and informative to browse the rest.
Some short prose and poems I loved:
Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy
Life Plans at 27 by Ling Ma
Elsewhere
Here’s the interview with Emily Mester at Culture Study that convinced me to read American Bulk.
Part of my 20something heart will always belong to the band Murder by Death, so I loved this primer at the AV Club. And it gave me an excuse to tell my Murder By Death story via Bluesky thread.
The New York Times is failing to meet the current moment in almost every possible way but at least they have this cute article about women holding things [gift link].
AI in the news:
Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes (Futurism, July 6, 2025)
He helped Microsoft build AI to help the climate. Then Microsoft sold it to Big Oil. (HEATED, July 17, 2025)
Related: We’re Wrong About AI – Will Alpine (Ignite Seattle, February 24)
Stop Pretending Chatbots Have Feelings: Media’s Dangerous AI Anthropomorphism Problem (The Present Age, July 21, 2025)
How big tech is force-feeding us AI (Blood in the Machine, July 22, 2025)
Tech Industry Figures Suddenly Very Concerned That AI Use Is Leading to Psychotic Episodes (Futurism, July 23, 2025)
Gross: Johns Hopkins University Press will license its authors’ books to train AI models (The Baltimore Banner, July 25, 2025)
Gross: Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says (Ars Technica, July 28, 2025)
For women, the increase of AI use in the workplace may affect their careers: Harvard study (CTV news, July 26, 2025)
Poll finds bipartisan agreement on a key issue: Regulating AI (The Conversation, July 17, 2025)
Worth noting separately a few instances of the US government using genAI for harm:
Trump Says He’s ‘Getting Rid of Woke’ and Dismisses Copyright Concerns in AI Policy Speech (Wired, July 23, 2025)
Trump’s new AI policies keep culture war focus on tech companies (NPR, July 23, 2025)
Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump (Public Notice, July 29, 2025)
AI is fuelling a new wave of border vigilantism in the US (Al Jazeera, June 27, 2025)
A couple of resources to help you keep all the atrocities straight:
Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes at McSweeney’s
Trump Action Tracker, maintained by Dr. Christina Pagel
The Men Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Prison at ProPublica
Minutiae
My goals for July were to train and rehearse for my dance studio’s recital at the end of the month, and to establish a regular routine of reading, writing, and researching for my thesis. I was… partly successful. I started off the month feeling strong, stacking rehearsals after dance classes; however, after a holiday weekend of several consecutive classes followed by a weeknight weeding session at one of the sites relevant to my thesis, I found myself hobbling home after my regular Tuesday ballet class. This turned out to be a muscle strain, not a huge deal, but I had to dial physical activity way back to keep it manageable. I still performed in the recital, which was fun if exhausting, but my confidence in my own strength was somewhat shaken.
Between the strain and the stomach bug, thesis progress has been spotty. I made time for a lot of hands-on, in-person experiences to reflect on: the weeding excursion, boating on Poquessing Creek and the Delaware, a night hunting moths in the Wissahickon, a photography tour of my favorite park which I accompanied to offer plant and park info, and a visit to a thematically relevant art exhibit at the Fairmount Waterworks. I took notes on books, and had fun creating a sort of mind map of my work on a posterboard. I told myself I was filling a reservoir that will be useful when I sit down to write.
I met up with a new friend at another art exhibit, where we made paper collages and went for ice cream after. I went to see the new dinosaur movie, which was okay, but watching it with friends was more fun than it deserved. I went to see Shakespeare in Clark Park, which actually moved indoors due to rain, and it was fun and exuberant and very gay. I took my foster kitty to an adoption event, where he made himself the belle of the ball by making heavy eye contact with everyone who walked in, and stacking his paws in a winsome way if they looked back. No one was adopted outright at the event, but we did gain some donations and volunteers, and maybe someone out there can’t stop thinking about this extroverted orange cat and will find us on the rescue website. And there went July–gone in a flash, like the lightning bugs flickering under the trees while I wrecked my hip cutting multiflora rose.
Sara Davis 