The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. I’ve had this one on my shelf for awhile, and picked it up when I was looking for a pageturner since I found Creation Lake gripping. Mars is pretty propulsive, although also a little off-putting. There’s something self-consciously edgy about its choice of subject (women in prison, particularly the main character, a former exotic dancer who murders her stalker) and settings (the prison, the strip club, the mean streets of San Francisco). It’s not that there’s nothing inherently wrong with these choices, it’s just that they feel a little thinly drawn (like Creation Lake‘s lady spy felt a little thinly drawn), and their relationships to one another serve the plot more than their characters. But you really do want to find out what happens to them all, and I was grateful for an absorbing experience.
Vagabond by Tim Curry. What a pleasure to read the story of so many films I’ve loved over the years. It’s not an incredibly dishy memoir, nor a particularly incisive or reflective one, but it was still a breezy and fun trip through this legend’s memories.
I finished Helm by Sarah Hall, which was an interesting time even if it didn’t quite hang together for me. I was reminded that the author wrote another book I liked called Burntcoat–a finely cut gem of a book, I called it. Helm is not quite so fine or so faceted; more like a loose, blowsy collection of tall tales, some of which blew right past me. But other scenes and plotlines lodged in my mind due to their finely observed portraits or stylistic audaciousness.
I’m most of the way through Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada, translated by Philip Gabriel. It took some time for me to warm up to this book, mostly because it is written and/or translated in a very simantically simple and almost facile style that doesn’t do much for me. But I was intrigued by the premise: a bookseller goes to work for a library on the outskirts of Tokyo that is only open at night, and which stocks books written and collected by famous writers (which, naturally, reminded me of working at a rare book library). On their break, the library cafe chef serves meals inspired by literature; off the clock in their on-premises dorm, the library staff watch film adaptations of the classics. It’s charming and cozy, so I settled into it.
Short pieces I read and liked:
The Student AI Trap by Elan Ullendorff
Make It Dirty by Christopher Gonzalez
Elsewhere
The case for making some things harder, reflecting on friction, delivery, GLP-1s, and more.
Same: Newly Poly Plover Dad Still Figuring Out His Time Management
Yessss, more happy sluts please: I’m Kinda Tired of this Book Trope: the Miserable Slut
I loved Pluribus, so I was excited to read a late-breaking but attentive recap from one of the TV newsletters I enjoy.
AI in the news:
‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies (Guardian, Februarty 26, 2026)
New York considers bill that would ban chatbots from giving legal, medical advice (State Scoop, March 3, 2026)
Big Tech Signs White House Data Center Pledge With Good Optics and Little Substance (WIRED, March 4, 2026)
AI Fakes Spread Disinformation. Is the Distrust They Create Even Worse? (Mother Jones, March 9, 2026)
How AI use in scholarly publishing threatens research integrity, lessens trust, and invites misinformation (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 12, 2026)
Does Generative AI “Work”? That’s a Misleading Question. (The New Republic, March 16, 2026)
Disney cancels $1 billion OpenAI partnership amid Sora shutdown plans (Ars Technica, March 25, 2026)
Your private Zoom call may be featured in an AI-generated podcast (Cybernews, March 26, 2026)
GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all (The Register, March 26, 2026)
Wikipedia cracks down on the use of AI in article writing (TechCrunch, March 26, 2026)
I Asked ChatGPT 500 Questions. Here Are the Ads I Saw Most Often (WIRED, March 27, 2026)
Why MAGA fears human teachers (Salon, March 30, 2026)
A sampling of stories about Grammarly’s misstep:
Grammarly Is Offering ‘Expert’ AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors—Dead or Alive (WIRED, March 4, 2026)
An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants (Something Mo, March 10, 2026)
Grammarly Is Pulling Down Its Explosively Controversial Feature That Impersonates Writers Without Their Permission (Futurism, March 11, 2026)
Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me (The Verge, March 23, 2026)
The most important AI news of the last month is how these tools–the same tools being foisted on us by our schools and employers, the same ones our Facebook friends are using to generate new profile pics and our office software is using to collect our data for training–are now being used to destroy lives.
Trump Moves to Ban Anthropic From the US Government (WIRED, February 27, 2026)
US uses Anthropic AI, B-2 bombers and suicide drones in Iran strikes (Reuters, February 28, 2026)
Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than ‘speed of thought’ (March 3, 2026)
What AI Models for War Actually Look Like (WIRED, March 4, 2026)
AI error or not, Iran school bombing is a permanent stain on America’s soul (Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 2026)
Sen. Elissa Slotkin introduces bill to draw red lines for AI use by the military (NBC News, March 17, 2026)
AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying (The Guardian, March 26, 2026)
Minutiae
I wrote this story almost four years ago. It was accepted for publication almost two years ago. And now I feel like, whose story is this? But here it is.
All the water within you | Corvid Queen
My side project, Buried Creek Collective, shared some press releases in advance of our applications opening on April 1. We’ve gotten picked up by a couple of Philly news sources! It’s happening!
March has been a blur. I had some adventures: I went on a walking tour to learn about pigeons and tagged along with an 11-year-old’s birthday outing to see Hoppers. I put on a nice dress and a mask that covered the top half of my face instead of the bottom, and experienced an immersive production of Phantom of the Opera with people singing at us in crowded dressing rooms, grand ballrooms, and spooky hidden rooms. Spring emerged in fits and starts, but stewardship began anew: I toured a stream restoration project with the water department workers responsible for it, explored an exhibition on buried streams with the historian who curated the exhibition, inspected an overgrown highway embankment with some volunteers with whom I’ll be overseeing an invasive removal project in the summer, and rounded up my own volunteer group to prune trees and maintain the rain garden behind a school in my neighborhood. I had my annual fondue party, and bombarded my friends with deviled eggs and melted cheese and chocolate-soaked marshmallows. My extroverted orange cat loved it.
I had a very long creative drought–at least, it felt long. But at the end of the month I started to write again. I went to a class, and had a fabulous time dishing with fellow writers. I skipped a lot of ballet classes in order to write more. Spring is reemerging slowly, and so am I.
Sara Davis 