Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein. Perfect summer read, packed with delicious scenes and some heady implications without too much philosophizing. This book, like Yesteryear, asks “If you hate your life so much, why don’t you just live in the past?” But it is ten thousand times more fun, and the turn it takes toward the end actually makes sense within the logic of the book. Narrator Ash, who considered herself a failed actor before she stumbled into a job with a time travel agency, is a cynical observer when she is assessing the shambles of her life or leading the ultra-rich on pleasure trips the Wild West–but in a fun mean-girl way, rather than a joyless hypocrite way. And there is plenty of glitter and glamor in reading about the time travel trips she and her fun, frivolous colleagues take for their own amusement, despite–or maybe because of–the dark underbelly of this dubious technology, which they try not to notice. Kind of like…. everything in tech, really.
The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters by Sasha Bonét. This is a a quietly seething memoir of one family of Black mothers and daughters in Houston–the ways they love and fail one another, how they hurt and protect one another, and how love and pain are carried forward (like water) through generations. An intense read, but evocative and reflective.
Pool House by Mary H. K. Choi. I felt that I should enjoy this book more than I did–I like the way it layers different character POV chapters with 3rd person omniscient passages about its characters’ lives, especially since two out of three of them are actors and tend have that omniscient/external view of themselves due to media coverage. And I did warm up to their codependencies and petty hopes and fears, but their world is just so claustrophobic and seedy (like the titular pool house) that I couldn’t really open my heart to them.
I read the long poem Nature Poem by Tommy Pico, or sort of reread since I’d had excerpts assigned in classes years ago, but it was such a pleasure to read cover to cover in full. It’s funny, voicy, plaintive, with a few moments of staggering beauty that the narrator tries (winsomely) to defuse with jokes.
I wanted to squeeze in one more environmental book this month, so I finally picked up my borrowed copy of The Pine Barrens by John McPhee, which is a short book that details the forests, industries, and culture of this unique region in the mid 1960s, before it was officially conserved and protected from developments such as an airport. I’ve loved visiting the Pine Barrens and appreciated them all the more once I read more about their history and ecology.
Tubi had Dublin Murders, a television miniseries that mashed up In the Woods and The Likeness by Tana French. It’s fine, I think, as a TV series. But as a way to revisit the characters and mysteries and made-up Dublin Murder Squad that I enjoyed so much in the books, it was awesome. The series inspired me to reread Faithful Place for the first time in awhile. After I inhaled that, I immediately picked up Broken Harbor, which I skipped in my 2021 Dublin Murder Squad reread. French’s murder mysteries are page-turners and packed with psychological head games; they make you feel like you are in very capable hands, even when the narrating detective is falling apart (and they always do). Rereading them offers a little more space for reflection. The contempt I noticed in 2021 is not just reserved for youth culture but for early aughts culture in general–for people who go along with the crowd, for fat people, for vulgar people whom neither the detectives nor the novels can spare any sympathy for. They are still absorbing, page-turning reads with fascinating, compelling characters, and I may read them again someday. But right now, I confess I love them a little less than I had.
Some short poems and prose I liked:
Assistance by Abbie Kiefer
Someday by Mary Oliver
How We Disappear by Alessandra Olanow
What I Am Telling You, Jessica, Is That Those Chickens Are Fine by K.T. Landon
Elsewhere
House museums AND bathroom logistics? Yeah, I’ll read that.
How to Make a Good First Impression as a Woman examines recent research on how fatness impacts women’s economic mobility.
Oh, this is fun–I was a food culture writer during the age of food blogs and have cooked many a Smitten Kitten recipe, so I enjoyed this retrospective from Ravenous: The Blogosphere Came and Went. Smitten Kitchen Is Still Here.
Ravenous, as a reminder, is a worker-owned food publication! You can sign up for the newsletter for free to read their articles.
Much to read about Dolly Parton, but I liked this meditation on books, looks, and your public vs. private personas.
AI in the news:
Google pauses AI satellite images, after fears of deepfakes in the sky (NPR, July 31, 2026)
Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying (The Nerve, August 4, 2026)
The Simple Way to Stop the Hidden AI Bailout: Rewrite Bankruptcy Law (Center for Economic and Policy Research, August 5, 2026)
Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Entire Country (The New Republic, August 7, 2026)
The AI Slop Backlash Is Actually Having an Impact (WIRED, August 10, 2026)
A huge AI datacenter is planned near Mar-a-Lago. The Everglades could pay the price (The Guardian, August 12, 2026)
AI’s climate problem is worse than we thought (HEATED, August 12, 2026)
The Real Reason Data Center Gas Power Plants Are So Dirty (Wired, August 14, 2026)
AI could help fossil fuel companies create more emissions (Grist, August 15, 2026)
The big scandal of August is that big tech companies are buying up old books, scanning them to feed their LLMs, and then literally pulping them. Abysmal.
AI Companies Are Pulping Our Humanity (Hyperallergic, August 3, 2026)
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility (404 Media, August 17, 2026)
Minutiae
At the beginning of August, I was still revising my MPhil thesis before submitting its final form. I like the revision a bit better than I liked the first attempt. I really did learn so much from that process. But, once submitted, all I wanted to do was read books and play Skyrim. It’s been a weird month, therefore.
Some highlights: I spent a warm, sunny, perfect day at the pool in my friend’s apartment complex. I went to Glen Foerd and paddled around on the Delaware, looking at birds. I took a train to Trenton one evening to meet some friends for dinner, then a train back; I spent more time on the train than at dinner, but got a lot of reading done. I attended not one but two happy hours with my local volunteer group, which was probably one too many, but I wanted to be supportive and it was rather nice to sit and chat with folks I hadn’t met yet. I went to FDR Park for some sunset weeding. And I took a weekend to relax in the Adirondacks, where I photographed many brightly colored mushrooms, accidentally fell asleep on the sunny beach of a mountain lake, watched an osprey dive for fish again and again, and enjoyed dinner and cocktails with the doors and windows wide open, no bugs or humidity to dissuade us.
September will be packed. It’s nice to have a fallow period.
Sara Davis 