Fat Swim: Fiction by Emma Copley Eisenberg. This slim volume of short stories turned out to be perfect to read during the early July heatwave. Every story feels like a summer story–not only because the title story takes place in a pool and another banger, “Lanternfly,” takes place at the shore, but because every main character is burning up with something and trying to cool down. Most of the stories take place in Philadelphia, with recognizable places and public figures, and I loved visiting them. And, of course, appreciated the emphasis on the body–the care of it, the ways that you are and are not aware of it, do and do not see yourself how others do. I took notes on a few of the stories for my future essay project about polyamory.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. This book seemed super buzzy when I put it on my library list, although it also seems that some of the buzz has died down. Perhaps because it’s a big idea book that doesn’t quite have the storytelling chops to carry its idea through. Still, it was an absorbing read for a delayed flight–I read 3/4 of it imprisoned in an airport and on a plane, surrounded by frustration and bad vibes that mirrored the author’s negative and unlikeable outlook. I think it would have been harder to get through if I hadn’t been trapped. Still, I didn’t hate it–until I got to the ending, which felt more cheap and shallow than surprising, and then I hated it with a fury.
The Company of Owls: A Memoir by Polly Atkin. I read all of this book on the plane ride home. It’s lovely and reflective–perhaps a bit dry at times, but I enjoyed seeing owls through this author’s eyes, particularly when she allowed herself to meander along associative paths, thinking about different words and experiences for being alone, connecting to the natural world as a person with a disability, and being open about how little we know about our nonhuman neighbors.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. I put this graphic novel on my list after I saw my college BFF and his daughter perform in a community theater production of the musical last month. I drank it up in a day, feeling acquainted already with the family but loving the opportunity to see more of their lives. Bruce Bechdel is an amazing main character: unlikeable, yet somehow admirable; unsympathetic, yet pitable. And the physicality of their lives in the museum-like Fun Home and the books–especially the books–shimmers off the page in these panels.
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan. So glad I grabbed this gorgeous book on a whim during a library run. I hadn’t read any publicity about it whatsoever, but it’s a lovely, lyrical near-future climate novel. In San Francisco, it hasn’t stopped raining for years and the remaining city residents have retreated to the top floors of high rises. The population has shrunk from death and departure, but the city is far from a grimdark survival scenario: there are rooftop markets, gifts of free produce and seafood when possible. The main character Bo, who is not yet ready to join her family up North, finds herself caring for a super senior citizen who is likewise far from her family, and listening to the older woman’s reflections on survival throughout the 20th century. Bo is an artist whose creative drive has been throttled by the constant emergency and the loss of her family, but she begins to paint again. It sounds a bit precious as I type it out, but the experience of reading it is reflective and grounded in physical reality.
I needed a comfort read, so I housed Pride and Prejudice once again. I last borrowed a friend’s beautiful copy in March 2025; this time, I had picked up a lightly annotated copy from a used bookstore, so I even marked some of it up with a pastel peach pen. Pure pleasure. This time, since I had recently rewatched the 1995 miniseries, I was more conscious of the novel’s three book structure and of the lines of dialogue which were redistributed for various adaptations (e.g. 2005 Mary’s rhapsodic “What are men to rocks and mountains?!” is actually Lizzie’s line, but it is rather Maryish, so that’s fair.) I also reread Piranesi by Susanna Clarke for the first time in awhile, since a friend read it for the first time and made me realize how little I remembered. It certainly hits different than during the pandemic, when we were all Piranesi, but it is a jewelbox full of miniature treasures and I loved revisiting it.
I started Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future by Alan Weisman, but have not finished it, as it is a doorstopper. I am finding it interesting, but not enjoying. I’m learning about myself that I don’t love hero narratives in my climate nonfiction. There are climate heroes, to be sure, and they deserve to have their stories told. But it doesn’t ignite my own sense of hope as much as reading about communities and collective action.
Elsewhere
How tech giants misread science fiction
I haven’t seen The Odyssey yet (I plan to, eventually) but wow did I love this zinger-packed review from translator Emily Wilson. She’s not mad, she’s disappointed!
A beautiful throwback to the sort of social media I used to love: an illustrator on Bluesky started reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time, and their live-posted responses are SO FUN to read. Fun, funny, empathetic. It’s the reason I started a reread myself.
Normally I would put this in the AI in the news section, as a sign of the times–but it turns out, this is an article about one of my local libraries and an event I actually attended. 🙂
Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech (TechCrunch, July 25, 2026)
AI in the news:
Google’s exponential path to climate-wrecking digital bloat (Ketan Joshi, July 1, 2026)
Trump Wants to Fast Track AI (Inside Climate News, July 6, 2026)
Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise (The Guardian, July 6, 2026)
I Didn’t Realize How Much AI Chatbots Were Stealing My Work—Until Now (The New Republic, July 10, 2026)
Anthropic sued for infringing neural network technology patents (Reuters, July 21, 2026)
AI advice made people three times less accurate but twice as confident, researchers found (The Next Web, July 19, 2026)
Elon Musk’s Memphis AI empire is the epicenter of the data center backlash (CNBC, July 16, 2026)
Tech
EPA exempts data center power plants from pollution limits seeking to prevent acid rain (The Hill, July 27, 2026)
Elon Musk’s xAI sues Minnesota over law to ban ‘nudify’ apps (CNBC, July 29, 2026)
AI Companies Accused of Destroying Rare Books After Scanning Them to Train Models (International Business Times, July 29, 2026)
Minutiae
July blasted in with a heatwave, so I spent the first days sheltering at home and then got on a plane to an even hotter destination–my childhood home. Seven adults and one preteen spent the holiday weekend swimming, napping, playing board games, and cooking enormous meals. We did a little touristy stuff–I loved a nostalgic trip to Beale Street, where I took my college friends even when we couldn’t drink, and a cafe-themed exhibition at the Dixon Galleries–and managed to squeeze in a lazy morning watch of Project Hail Mary, which I loved.
Heat and other extreme weather curtailed my outdoor work this month. My sunset stewardship session at FDR Park was cancelled due to wildfire smoke bringing air quality to unhealthy levels. My evening of rain garden maintenance was thwarted when we found the schoolyard locked up tight, presumably due to some damage from microburst storms which had ripped limbs from trees.
My friend group celebrated our friends born under the sign of Cancer by exploring Calder Gardens, followed by a feast of crabs. The gardens were lovely, bursting with native species and attracting pollinators; I took many photos there. The museum itself was spare and reflective and I’m glad I went, but also glad I went for free. The seafood boil was a hoot and a half: they brought us vegetables and crabs steaming inside plastic bags, swimming in butter. Love a meal that is also an activity. On another weekend, I went to see In the Mood for Love on the big screen and walked home on a rain-softened summer night, Yumeji’s theme looped in my head, romanticizing the world into slow motion. I went to see Shakespeare in the Park perform Hamlet with a profusion of Hamlets–four or five different actors alternated the lead roles, and every time Hamlet gave a monolgue, four or five more actors joined the speaker as if Hamlet’s inner moral and emotional turbulence were given form. The play was paused for a quarter-hour when a soft drizzle turned into a steady downpour, scattering audience members to seek shelter under the trees (or, for my party, to open our umbrellas and gather our picnic underneath). The rain passed, the sun set, and we watched tiny bats darting and whirling in the twilight, feasting on insects above the play.
The last half of the month was dominated by a frantic scrabble to piece together and submit my thesis manuscript, which I thought was an essay collection but turns out to be a sort of nature memoir. It was a weird time; I spent between 6-10 hours at the computer for days in a row, barely tasting food and taking little pleasure in anything else. I got irritable when I had to interrupt my process for a week to do my actual job, then had a hard time getting back into that flow state until I cancelled plans and could become a mean hermit. I learned a lot about my creative process. If I ever want to do this again–and I think that I do, I would like to write books plural–I will need to remember this and plan accordingly.
Sara Davis 