Ripeness by Sarah Moss. I borrowed this one from my university library, since Moss is the author of Ghost Wall which I really liked. This novel is very different in structure and tone, alternating main character Edith’s memories of a teenaged summer spent in Italy with her current (independent, socially rich, sexually active) life in her 70s, living in a coastal Irish village. Unlike many contemporary books structured this way, the dual plots aren’t meant to artificially increase suspense or mystery. The dual stories unfold slowly and for the most part pleasurably, with a low hum of tension from the ugly truths the narrator would rather not confront until she must.
DILF: Did I Leave Feminism? by Jude Doyle. A manifesto for aligning feminism and transmasculinity. I’ve admired and enjoyed the author’s feminist writing for more than a decade, and I appreciated the thoroughness and care with which he examines feminism. Similar to my experience reading An American Ex-Wife, it’s a little sad to spend a book with an author’s Serious Author voice when you are accustomed to the humor and wit of their newsletter.
Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks is a fun and intriguing read that draws on many things I like–ghost stories, detective stories, precocious little girls, complicated mothers, etc. Its short chapters made for easy reading, but I needed to put it down after a few.
The Summer War by Naomi Novik is a short, delicious read in her fairytale mode: a young discovers her powers of sorcery when she accidentally curses her beloved older brother, then has to figure out how to undo the curse, protect her loved ones and herself, and outsmart the ancient magical race of fairy-like people who have sworn revenge on her kingdom.
I am just about finished with Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, which I picked up again since the Rewilding Our Stories Discord voted it as our community read this spring. Gorgeous, gorgeous prose, some pretty wild stories about struggling rivers and the people who protect them, and some surprising literary and historical connections. (I admit it has been fully 20 years since I read the epic of Gilgamesh, but I certainly did not catch on to the environmental overtones the first time around.) There are strange currents that I am noticing this time around… although each section focuses narrowly on a particular river system in a particular place, the greater focus is on the cast of characters who accompany him on his explorations. I am curious about this–if this is an attempt to put a human face on ecological crisis, which arguably would be counter to the book’s message. Or perhaps it’s an argument about the sorts of people who tend to be attracted to this sort of work: the people who populate these pages possess supernatural intelligence, extraordinary hardship, and often deep unshakeable grief. Ordinary people need not apply? Or does the work make these individuals extraordinary? I still have maybe 80 pages left to read, so perhaps I should without judgment until I have finished the book and discussed it more with my peers.
I started Helm by Sarah Hall, which is an interesting companion to Is a River Alive? Helm opens from the POV of a Foehn wind, for example; both books indulge in an audacious, delicious-to-read literary experiment in narrating geological time. From there, it jumps into a few other human perspectives. I am having a weird time, but I am interested enough to keep reading.
Some short poems I enjoyed:
Orchestra by Russell Brakefield
View With a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska
Elsewhere
The Quiet Power of Reflective Games
A deep dive in sugar history, originally posted in Bitch Magazine 5 years ago but reposted on The Flytrap in honor of the Super Bowl halftime show.
You should probably leave Substack. Here’s why and how.
Oh man. I loved Vladimir, and now they have made a limited series and cast some of the most beautiful people to play these messy professors? I am here for it.
What Do You Do When the Biggest Platforms For Readers Are Kind of Evil?
Emma Copley Eisenberg on the shame of writing through catastrophe.
Lovely, strange #longread about hanging out with AI bros in San Francisco.
And yes, here we are, time for the monthly roundup of AI in the news:
‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI (Guardian, February 6, 2026)
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It (Harvard Business Review, February 9, 2026)
How AI Destroys Institutions (Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law, 2026)
AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture (Communications Psychology, 2026)
Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn’t Offer Much Proof (WIRED, February 18, 2026)
DOGE Bro’s Grant Review Process Was Literally Just Asking ChatGPT ‘Is This DEI?’ (Techdirt, February 19, 2026)
AI Added ‘Basically Zero’ to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says (Gizmodo, February 23, 2026)
The Left Doesn’t Hate Technology, We Hate Being Exploited (Aftermath, February 23, 2026)
AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture (Communications Psychology, 2026)
Communities (including mine) are pushing back on the construction of data centers:
City Council eyes rules for data centers after New Orleans East project dies (New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 29, 2026)
New York Is the Latest State to Consider a Data Center Pause (WIRED, February 6, 2026)
AI’s growing appetite for power is putting Pennsylvania’s aging electricity grid to the test (The Conversation, February 25, 2026)
On state-level plans for data centers, and how they may impact the environment:
A quick guide to Pennsylvania’s data center debate (Technical.ly, February 16, 2026)
From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities (World Resources Institute, February 17, 2026)
‘Pennsylvania is perfect’ (New Internationalist, March/April 2026 issue)
Minutiae
February: the shortest month, the month when everything has to happen for some reason. The first weekend of the month featured a cold snap, accompanied by emergency cold advisory texts. It was also the first weekend of Walk Around Philadelphia, so I put on two layers of everything and walked from Bridesburg to Torresdale one day and Torresdale to Somerton the next. It was tough, between the cold (at one point I had handwarmers in my gloves) and the crunchy piles of snow leftover from the previous month’s winter storm. At the same time, it was exhilarating and meaningful and beautiful: walking along the city’s frozen rivers, watching birds, talking to strangers, helping one another navigate difficult ground. After that, I figured winter couldn’t do much to me. So the following weekend saw me crawling out onto the creek ice to scoop up water for salt testing, and pruning sidewalk trees the weekend after (at a much more comfortable temperature).
I celebrated February with my loved ones: a Valentine’s dinner (mine), a Valentine’s party (someone else’s), a snowy walk in Bartram’s Garden, a board game night, an afternoon at an art studio making glass fushion pieces. I tried and failed to work on my thesis consistently. I tried and mostly succeeded to show up for Buried Creek Collective, meeting with local organizers and working out our schedule. I enjoyed getting snowed in for a second time. I took a long break from dance as I recovered from a respiratory virus. When I went back, and got en pointe for the first time in a month, it felt so weird and otherworldly that I thought, oh well, might as well do échappés and other things that used to scare me, how bad could it be? (Not too bad, as it happens.)
Sara Davis 