The Age of Calamities by Senaa Ahmad is the mostly deliciously weird short story collection I’ve enjoyed since Kelly Link’s White Cat, Black Dog. There’s one story that pivots around a dinner party of notable figures–Marilyn Monroe, John Adams, Nefertiti–socializing uncomfortably (as well as anachronistically) inside what seems to be a lushly appointed and vaguely haunted dollhouse. That’s a good conceit for the collection as a whole. There are beautiful rooms and haunted houses throughout the stories, not just the one with a literal ghost town at the edge of the atomic bomb testing site. There are familiar figures made strange through circumstances beyond their control: too many Napoleons crowding into one dilapidated house, Joan of Arc harried by faceless saints to take over the body of a runaway wife. Along with the jewel-like prose, the impression is of a cabinet of curiousities curated by someone with an eye for sorrow as well as beauty.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko. This novel sprawls, although it is only around 300 pages. It opens with the adolescence of its main characters, three Asian American girls growing up in very different families in New York and New Jersey in the 80s and 90s. This feels familiar–family drama, coming of age–although distinctive, as the first section of the book follows one girl’s development into a performance artist. The next section switches to the perspective of her friend and occasional collaborator, a tech specialist who manages to escape the dot-com bubble with her fortune intact (her morality, slightly less so). Then the novel switches to the perspective of their third friend, now in her 70s, still squatting in a NYC walk-up and doing gig work in a near-future dystopia. I admire this move, although it created the sensation of the novel spinning apart after its tight period-piece chapters. The future vision here is less defined, less concrete, but made impactful by its proximity to the earlier lives of these women who grew up without cell phones and aged into a surveillance society.
Heart the Lover by Lily King. I absolutely did not mean to, but I read this book in one afternoon. It is deceptively simple, opening with a love triangle among English majors at a small college. Cozy, familiar, gossipy, page-turning. But halfway through, there is a time jump; the ingenue is married to someone else entirely, two kids, has had a whole writing career. And suddenly, she has the opportunity to reconnect with these long-ago loves–not for a trite renewal of the triangle, they’ve got other things going on–and it becomes an opportunity to really reckon with the force that love and fear and the decisions we make when we’re young can have on us as adults. I cried.
Voice of the Fish by Lars Horn. A strange, often elegiac book-lenth lyric essay. Throughout, the author intersperses images of water and the creatures that live there–mythological allusions and historical footnotes as well as real fish observed, real rivers they dipped their feet into. As they recount their experiences traveling before and after coming out as trans, recovering from a terrifying attack and a disabling injury, and seeing their own body as a medium for artwork (their own or others’), the aquatic imagery emphasizes the potential slipperiness and fluidity of physical form.
Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, translated by David Hackston. This was such a richly detailed and vibrant historical fiction of centuries-old discoveries, when men sailed blindly across the sea and starved on uncharted islands, and scientific classification depended on luck, room in the ship hold, and the anatomical knowledge and artistic skill of underrecognized minions (including women). The beast of the title is Steller’s sea cow, a gentle manatee-like creature that lived near the Aleutian islands between Russia and Alaska until it was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. Mere decades later, natural history scholars were trying to piece together its life and death from skeletal remains and sailor’s sketches. This novel would make a good companion for The Sixth Extinction–I recognized many historical figures from the history of science–and the Andrea Barrett short story collections like Natural History and Ship Fever, although Beasts of the Sea is more visceral storytelling than the latter. The narrative really captures moments closeness and coziness–shipping a grand piano to a remote Alaskan village, starting an exploratory journey with a cup of tea–which emphasizes the brutality of the colonial project when its dignitaries massacre sea otters, violently suppress rebellion, and die of avoidable illnesses.
And I’m about halfway through Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall, which is a beat for beat retelling of Moby-Dick except in space, with lesbians. Is it good? That is the wrong question. Am I have a good time? Absolutely.
Elsewhere
I simply cannot resist an art forgery story!
Deep dive into The Disappearance of the Public Bench
A website that shows what information your browser is leaking about you.
A slightly underwhelming but still interesting oral history of Moulin Rouge, which is somehow 25 years old?
I really enjoyed the Vladimir TV series but I can’t argue with this assessment of how hot-washing weakens literary adaptations.
The Painted Book Cover Is Back
Mesmerizing, horrifying: Meet the woman dating Luigi Mangioni’s AI
AI in the news:
lol: Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (Velvet Shark, April 10, 2026)
The people building AI think it might be conscious. That’s not the most alarming part (Independent, April 26, 2026)
California will soon have more than 300 data centers. Where will they get their water? (Grist, May 3, 2026)
I Am Begging AI Companies to Stop Naming Features After Human Processes (Wired, May 6, 2026)
New Evidence Data Centers May Cause Hotter Weather (Forbes, May 19, 2026)
AI put “synthetic quotes” in his book. But this author wants to keep using it. (Ars Technica, May 22, 2026)
Specific news regarding the xAI data center in Memphis, which is impacting my hometown:
Musk promised his data center would reuse water. That’s now stalled. (Politico, May 5, 2026)
Anthropic Gets in Bed With SpaceX as the AI Race Turns Weird (Wired, May 6, 2026)
xAI Adds 19 New Gas Turbines Despite Ongoing Lawsuit (Wired, May 12, 2026)
This spring I’ve noticed a lot more coverage about how users dislike AI. I don’t mean individual people or organizations coming out against it–that has been happening consistently since 2022–but rather articles that report general consumer resistance to using these tools. It’s an interesting trend, because in some at the same time we also still have individuals like Richard Dawkins coming out as boosters, universities and other organizations making AI-focused promises, and of course no cessation of the ubiquitous ads. Nonetheless, something has shifted, and it’s not just the data center resistance.
The People Do Not Yearn for Automation (The Verge, April 23, 2026)
Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements (AP News, May 19, 2026)
Hating AI is good, actually (The Handbasket, May 20, 2026)
New tool alert: AI in journalism: Live tracker of scandals and mistakes
New resource alert: DAIR Institute’s Luddite Lab Resource Hub provides resources for unions, labor organizations, and worker-organizers fighting AI and automation at work. The lab provides strategies for worker-led governance and oversight of new technology through case studies, primers, and a resource library.
Minutiae
May passed in a blur. I turned 45 entire years old, and celebrated my advancing age by acquiring bifocal contact lenses and scheduling a colonoscopy. Just kidding. I did those things, but I also celebrated quietly. I felt a too busy and preoccupied to throw myself a party, but I felt good about that–I am lucky to have so much going on in my life that excites and engages me. I went to see Romeo and Juliet the ballet onstage, sitting close enough that I could hear the dancers’ pointe shoes strike the stage. (It was my first time seeing professional ballet since beginning my own amateur pointe journey, and I learned so much.) I went to see my partner’s friends put on an interactive play, which made me feel glad to be surrounded by people who still value creative work–the economy and inventiveness of contriving costumes from thrifted textiles, the labor of not only writing a monologue but performing it. I let my friends plan a weekend drinks outing instead of planning one for myself.
I kicked off the month by hosting an activity table at the schoolyard where I help maintain the rain garden. I started doing sunset stewardship in my favorite park, which is wonderful: golden hour over the lake while the birds call to one another and lurk around the edges of our weeding, in case of grubs.
It rained a lot in May, and between that and trying to shake off a lingering sinus infection, I cancelled and revised a fair amount of plans. Skipped dance classes. Downgraded long walks into short walks. I can’t complain, though. Sometimes the more modest ambition revealed some unlooked-for pleasure: Kittens at the used book and record store. Vegan ice cream with a ribbon of earl grey tea. Serviceberries just beginning to ripen in my neighborhood. I took myself to see an art gallery one Saturday, and on a whim joined some friends afterward to watch Excalibur (1981), a fantasy movie that is as old as I am and has aged about as well.
Sara Davis 