Bog Queen by Anna North. March was an uninspiring reading month for me, so I was surprised to find myself gulping this book down in the first two days of April. It was so enjoyably readable, which is more than I can say for some of the books I’ve slogged through these year. There are a few different voices: a young forensic scientist who has been called in to identify a body found in an English peat bog; the voice of a woman who lived two thousand years ago and would ultimately become the bog body; and the voice of the bog itself, which was not quite as effective as the other two, but that’s fine. What made this book better than simply a pageturner is the way it gives room for all the different stakeholders around the bog body, and asks (simply, not overly complicating things) what our responsibilities are to the dead, to the living, and to the earth that holds us all.
A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews took my breath away. On the surface, it’s not a book I’d pick up: I’m not familiar with the author’s work (although of course I have heard of Women Talking, a film based on her book of the same title), and this is a literary memoir revolving around the question of why does she write. But one of my thesis readers recommended it for its structure (fragmented, allusive, recurring motifs) and its passion. I was hooked from the first page. There are scenes of her younger life, on poorly conceived and possibly dangerous journeys; many of these emerge in letters addressed to a lost sister who enacted long periods of silence and ultimately took her own life. There are scenes from her life with the sister and their irrepressible mother and their father, who also took his own life. But also: there are many scenes of benign chaos in her later life, living in a house full of children and grandchildren. There’s a faint environmental allegory at play; the author imagines a Wind Museum, for both real and figurative forces that have blown her life around or apart. There is rage and passion and curiosity, and somehow all these disconnected pieces come together.
In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings by James C. Scott. This very odd book is an intensely detailed geological and hydrological argument about rivers universally and the Ayeyarwady River in Burma/Myanmar specifically–by a political scientist. The argument is that the lateral movements of rivers–their seasonal floods, their meanders, their natural processes of depositing silt and organic material–are as important to the life of a river as its current from source to sea, and these movements have been curtailed by human activities such as farming, damming, and building cities along rivers. Sounds good so far, but the argument leads the author to some conclusions I can’t quite get behind. He posits a “thin” Anthropocene that extends all the way back to the earliest agricultural economics, which have transformed watersheds with deforestation, erosion, and reduced biodiversity. He suggests plant and animal species selected by agriculture “co-evolved” with humanity, but he sees this domestication as a weakening or shackling of these species rather than mutually assured survival. There is also a very weird chapter written entirely as first-person monologues from various riverine species, from river dolphins to white ginger. In other words, it’s simultaneously misanthropic and relentlessly anthropocentric. Not a fun read, but an interesting one, and I could see it being a good source for research.
Queen Demon by Martha Wells. I remember enjoying The Witch King, although the author’s prose style is better suited to Murderbot’s sarcastic space adventures than to a sweeping fantasy epic. I remembered almost nothing about it. So I spent the first 100 pages of Queen Demon alternating between slow recall (ohhh yeahhh, demons take over dead bodies in this world) and being completely lost (who is this guy and why has the Witch King sworn to protect him? where are these armies going?). But eventually I found my footing in each of the two storylines (one takes place during a great rebellion, the other several decades later in the new world order) and found myself finishing the book in one night. Do I recommend it? Eh. Did I enjoy it? Yes, actually.
Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders was a light read to take on the plane with me, even when dealing with subjects like doxxing and grief. It is more enjoyable on the subjects of magic rather than disaster: the playful, breezy voice is at its best when describing scenes of characters falling in love and building a life together, and when its witches seek out ritual sites where the human landscape and natural world meet. I’ve enjoyed other books by this author and this one didn’t quite meet the bar for me, but I still had a nice time.
The End of Romance by Lily Meyer is a book that sounds like it was designed for me in a lab: the protagonist escapes a bad marriage (and oh, how I love a divorce narrative) and immerses herself in grad school, studying the philosophy of love and romance and family bonds (I’m listening!), swearing off anything more serious than casual dating herself until she accidentally falls in love with two guys (nonmonogamy!). And it was an enjoyable read that I drank up in just a few days, but it left me unsatisfied. For all the mentions of Foucault and Arendt, the narrative doesn’t really go too deep or too complex into the philosophical problems of love. Only the protagonist struggles with indecision while everyone else is relatively consistent and steady in their desires, like stock characters in an allegorical play. The book barely interrogates the romantic fantasies offered by the protagonist’s love interests, and doesn’t really reckon with the thorny ethics of her decisions. I would really have loved to read the book I imagined this was, though.
Some short poems and prose I liked:
Philip Larkin’s Koan by Paisley Rekdal
On My History of Kissing Everyone At Parties by Isabelle Correa
Elsewhere
I begrudgingly watched Imperfect Women as it aired–in the same way I have begrudgingly watched any number of powerful and exquisitely beautiful over-40 actresses make a meal out of insipid cardboard scripts–so I was very happy to read this devasting pan from Defector.
I’ve been experiencing some serious springtime crush vibes, so I felt seen and read for filth by this essay by one of my favorite newsletter writers: Crushes Should Lightly Humiliate You
In this house we love worker-owned media, so it was exciting to read about a new worker-owned site about food culture.
I never thought about it, but it’s true: The Fatherless Fantasy Of ‘Bridgerton’
(p.s. Defector is worker-owned media and you can sign up to read for free, although they are well worth supporting!)
For your nostalgia: Inside The Dragon Age II ‘Writers’ Pit’
(p.s. Aftermath is also a worker-owned site!)
AI in the news:
OpenAI closes Sora video-making app and cancels $1bn Disney deal (BBC, March 26, 2026)
It’s open season for refusing AI (Blood in the Machine, April 3, 2026)
Refusing to accept an AI-poisoned future of journalism (The Handbasket, April 3, 2026)
Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization (Futurism, April 8, 2026)
UK quietly increases AI emissions forecast 100-fold (Politico, April 24, 2026)
Data centers continue to be the focus of much legal, political, and rhetorical resistance–not least because we’re starting to see the real, physical impacts of building them in communities, compared to the relatively minimal value of the technology that demands we build more.
Bombs and Porn Are Bad Reasons to Build More Data Centers (The New Republic, April 14, 2026)
Number Go Up (Mother Jones, May + June 2026 issue)
Why Big Tech companies got quiet on climate change (Fast Company, April 14, 2026)
Elon Musk’s xAI Sued by NAACP Over Memphis Data Center (Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2026)
Want to Resist a Data Center? These Organizers Share How They Did It. (Truthout, April 19, 2026)
Anti-data center measures gain traction at state, local level (The Hill, April 24, 2026)
Minutiae
One morning I went on bird walk that ended at the Fair Amount Food Forest, where we got a guided tour and learned a lot about how to grow food in an urban environment. Afterword, I went on a walk with four complete strangers because one of them wanted to show us an eagle’s nest in the park. A woman with a curved spine led the way. A woman in a headwrap showed us how to strip Japanese knotweed stems for eating. Her two preteen daughters practiced bird calls. Our walk took us close to the Discovery Center, so we stopped there for a restroom break and to check out seeds from the seed library and to gaze at the resevoir birds. We saw a loon, which is not a frequent visitor to Philadelphia. I hope it found its stay as calm, friendly, and surreal as I found the city that morning.
Later that day, I went to a rooftop party and drank ciders as the sun set over the city, cackling with some of my favorites. April was a good month for feeling connected with my communities.
April is also when environmental stewardship starts to really pop off. It was cold and wet for most of the month, but warm and sunny on the morning I planted a couple of sidewalk trees with a crew of volunteers. I spent a Monday evening installing herbaceous plants in a schoolyard rain garden. (I was also supposed to lead a writing workshop at a big outdoor event in a nature preserve, but that did get rained out.) It was also a good month for Buried Creek Collective: we started accepting applications and they are trickling steadily in. The candidates all sound so interesting. We already have many more than we planned to accommodate, but we want to keep them all.
Normally I would have been busy with Earth Day activities, but I went to Memphis that week to help out my mom before and after her knee replacement. Fortunately my older cousin was also there, because there was a lot to do and organize. We tried to make it fun–we laughed a lot, despite the discomfort. We made a big family dinner one night when my brother and nephew came over. When I got back to Philadelphia, I felt that I had slipped out of time for a week–I was surprised to find that the calendar kept marching on while I was away.
Sara Davis 