Freedom: Essays by Zinzi Clemmons. I’ve had this on my hold list since I heard of it, since the author’s debut What We Lose made a big impression on me. These essays made for slower reading and digestion, but I appreciated them so much. They weaved together scenes from the author’s life and her parents’, in South Africa and southeast Pennsylvania and New York, in the literary world and academic world and as far away from both as she could get. In one essay, she lays her lonely and alienating experience as a mixed-race teen growing up in Yeadon and Swarthmore (right outside of Philadelphia) next to that of her high school friend, who grew up and died in underresourced but community-forward Chester. In another, she grapples with the fallout after she came forward as one of the many women Junot Diaz harmed. My powers of summary fail me, but these were important stories, beautifully and painfully told, and well worth reading.
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel. Once I started reading Exit Party, I could not stop reading Exit Party until I finished. I think this novel might now be my favorite of hers, even surpassing Station Eleven which is saying a lot. From the very first lines, it presents a gripping scenario: springtime in a disunited States that is crumbling into smaller militias and city-states; a group of survivors struggling to find a moment of joy and connection in an elegant party that is somehow not quite right–in a life-changing way. Many of Mandel’s preoccupations and set pieces are on display here: the strange beauty of abandoned places, the yearning for art and meaning even in an uncertain, dangerous life; the allure of crime; the desire to be and do better. They all unfold seamlessly in the interlocking stories of two parallel realities.
Euphoria by Lily King. I’ve become a Lily King completionist this year; I love how her books explore the delicate but completely ordinary passage from young book-loving student to struggling writer, with both affection for her characters and the insight provided by time and age. Euphoria… is not that. But it’s not not that. I was rather taken aback when we first meet two of the principal characters here, Fen and Nell, 1930s anthrolopologists shamelessly mining the tribes of New Guinea for material for their next books. Is this book a little bit racist? I wondered. Some of its characters certainly are. In the end, though, I was utterly absorbed, and I admire how King manages that trick of making her characters compelling and legible although not necessarily likeable. The anthropologists, too, are trying to figure out how to be human and how to be writers, and finding it difficult to be both.
Dead Beat by Leigh Bardugo. If you asked, I would have told you that I really liked the first two novels in this trilogy of doorstoppers about Ivy League secret societies and magic. But after several years, I actually remembered very little about them. So I stumbled through the 400+ pages of the trilogy’s conclusion, half-remembering as I went–oh! Grays are ghosts! oh right, they had to save one of their friends from Hell. But honestly, I didn’t need to know what was going on. Rather like Martha Wells’ Demon Queen, what I wanted from this book was the experience of hurtling through a genre novel with my heart racing just a little, and I got it. And it’s a fairly tidy conclusion, all told.
The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty. Speaking of hurtling through genre novels! I was excited to see the sequel to The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi at my library. It took me a little less time to find my footing with this one–I hadn’t retained much from the first novel in the series, but it was easy enough to slide into world of the Indian Ocean in the middle ages–and if anything, the treasure and villain of this volume were far more compelling and complex. I loved watching the magic and mysteries unfold at high speed.
I did not mean for this to be the case, but in October, almost every single book I read was by a female author whose work I had previously read. The exception was The Idiot by Elif Batuman, which I started at the beginning of the month and finished after my run of pageturners. The Idiot was an abrupt change of pace, slowly unfolding a year in the life of a Harvard freshman as she learns about the limits of language–the unspoken rules at Harvard, in Paris, and in the Hungarian village where she teaches English; the labyrinthine communications with her feckless older crush; the impossibility yet inevitability of communicating across linguistic and cultural barriers. It felt smart and observant, but I felt that I wasn’t in my best form to read and contemplate it. I yearned for more book candy, the adolescent pleasure of staying up too late to finish a good story.
Elsewhere
Long read, but with some interesting ideas I’d like to return to: Reading Is Not Dying
How to Protect Your Right to Culture
Ugh, I hate that the AI news I collected this month takes up far more room that cool and fun essays I read. Honestly, I hate that I have to think about AI at all. But until regulations and real conversations about the adverse impacts of this technology become the norm, I have to keep collecting evidence for my “maybe we shouldn’t use our limited environmental resources for this” file. And there was a lot of news this month, regarding a wide variety of problems:
How the bad science of AI doomerism is good for big business (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 30, 2026)
US datacenter discharged large amounts of pollution for almost a year with no permits (Guardian, October 1, 2026)
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month (Guardian, October 1, 2026)
Philadelphia Inquirer employees secure new union contract with raises and AI protections (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 2, 2026)
One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center (Gadget Review, October 7, 2026)
AI’s Water Strain Includes Surging Demand From Electricity Use (Bloomberg, October 12, 2026)
As AI takes on more tasks, what happens when people have to jump in to clean up after it? (The Conversation, October 14, 2026)
Friends don’t let friends feed their data to AI agents (The Verge, October 15, 2026)
Most Americans say AI is bad for society, oppose more data centers (ABC News, October 21, 2026)
AI is devastating higher education, but the system was already broken (The Conversation, October 22, 2026)
Cognitive surrender: Artificial intelligence’s threat to democracy (The Hill, October 23, 2026)
39 meta-analyses, 39 positive findings: An audit finds serious flaws in research on AI in education (The Hechinger Report, October 26, 2026)
SpaceX loses bid to toss NAACP lawsuit over Memphis data center air pollution (CNBC, October 31, 2026)
Minutiae
Buried Creek Collective continued apace. We got on Zoom and stayed up too late talking to people from organizations around the city. We went to the Fairmount Water Works and looked at their dam, their mussels, and the speedy little zooplankton in river water samples under their microscopes. Afterward, I went with my co-facilitator to hear a music performance that took place at the facility that processes my weekly compost bucket; the musicians incorporated sounds from the vermiculture bin. We went to the Schuylkill Center, and explored the paths on a gorgeous autumnal day while picking the brains of their staff. A few of us went early and planted a few trees in their new stormwater management project–a nice confluence of our weekly topics, from climate change impacts to flood mitigation to ecology and habitat. I continue to feel really lucky and lit up by having these conversations with other thoughtful writers, and feeling so connected the city and its resources.
What else? Climate week came and went at my workplace, a little disappointing as was the case last year. I went out with one of my fellow volunteers and took samples from various points along a creek, sometimes crouching in the shallow water and sometimes hauling up buckets from a bridge. I spent an evening staffing a table for Tree Tenders at a neighborhood event, talking about sidewalk trees to anyone who wanted hear.
October was more focused on my volunteer and community labor than I realized. But I did some fun things as well! I went to see an orchestra play music from video game soundtracks in a Roxborough park on a lovely early October weekend; they were playing the Fallout 4 theme when my friends and I walked in, which was somehow both epic and adorable. One of my new friends from the perimeter walks invited me to the theater with them; it was a charming and funny play, but we also delighted in critiquing it on a brisk walk home. I went to see one of the Buried Creek cohort perform a historical horror play, which was absorbing and incredibly rich with worldbuilding (even before the foley effects). I went to see You Can See Everything with a few friends in a completely sold out theater, which is really the way to do it; the moments that might make you laugh or gasp or mutter were amplified in a packed crowd. And I dressed as a moth and took some gluten-free treats to a friend’s Halloween party, where I watched a little of Psycho (my first time!) and caught up with some old acquaintances.
One night, I walked home from ballet on the perfectly crisp autumn air–not too cold, not yet. The moon was full and brilliantly white, the sidewalk was scattered with dry leaves, and I happened walk by an old cemetery. I thought, this is a perfect October night; I’m so glad I was out tonight to experience it. Then with a jolt I realized it was almost Halloween, and the month was almost over.
