Monday Miscellany: Everything is distortion and yelling

Notes from March 30 - April 5

Apr 06, 2026

Hello friends, and welcome to a newsletter bursting at the seams with good things to read and listen to! There were truly no misses this week and I can’t wait to say more.

But before I launch (accidental space pun) into it, what have you been enjoying lately—books, music, podcasts, hobbies, recipes, etc? How are you staying alive and sane?

Read this week

Alas, I haven’t gotten around to seeing the movie yet, but as I hinted in last week’s newsletter, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir was a truly delightful reading experience. I went into it relatively unspoiled and liked it that way, so I won’t say too much about the plot—only that the story begins with our protagonist waking up from a coma and slowly piecing together who and where he is, which turns out to be a middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace, on a space ship headed toward a distant star. And maybe he has to figure out how to save all of humanity back on Earth?? It’s casual. Andy Weir has a real talent for including lots of Technical Science Stuff without it being overwhelming to Non-Science People (me) or distracting from the emotional core of the narrative, and for perfectly balancing high stakes with humor. I can’t wait to see Ryland’s adventures played out on the big screen.

My book club’s pick for this month’s meeting was Culpability by Bruce Holsinger. As the title suggests, this is a novel all about blame and responsibility, and it centers around a collision that the Cassidy-Shaw family experiences in their autonomous minivan, one that is unfortunately fatal for the elderly couple in the other car. Teenage son Charlie is in the driver’s seat, dad Noah is the passenger up front, and mom Lorelai is in back with daughters Izzy and Alice, and right before impact Charlie jerks the wheel to avoid a hazard, which disables the vehicle’s self-driving system. So who is at fault here? The answer might seem clear at first, but over the course of the book we find out more about each family member and their potential contribution to what happened, and things become much murkier. Holsinger is taking a subtly suspenseful look at a timely topic, which I summed up at our club conversation as “compelling but also kinda made me want to die?”1 This is a page-turner for sure, with plenty to discuss.

Speaking of wanting to die,2 I was so locked into Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen that I went out to read on the front porch after my nephew’s birthday party on Saturday, just planning on “a few minutes before I make dinner,” and then accidentally stayed a full hour and a half to finish it. The premise is heartbreaking (content warning for loss of an infant): Cleo and her best friend Paloma both become pregnant around the same time and, even luckier, go into labor almost simultaneously—but while Paloma comes home with a healthy baby, Cleo’s does not survive. To put it mildly, she is wrecked. She isn’t due back at work for a year, but she doesn’t know how to fill her days; being in the house near the well-stocked nursery full of things her daughter will never use feels impossible. So when a new job opportunity pops up unexpectedly, assistant to the director at the funeral home where they held her baby’s service, Cleo figures why the hell not and accepts. While terrible, her journey through grief is also tender, and bizarre, and sometimes funny, and ultimately full of warmth and hope. The vibes reminded me a little of Emily Austin’s work, which of course I adore, and if you’re a fan of hers, or of tough-but-rewarding stories about lovable weirdos, I definitely recommend checking it out when it releases on April 14.3

So remember last Monday when I said I might’ve overcommitted re: early copies of upcoming releases for this month? Well after I finished that post, two more that I’d forgotten requesting showed up in the mail, both of which come out tomorrow, and damned if I didn’t make it through them in less than 48 hours combined. 😅 Fortunately they were short!

The jacket copy calls Body Double by Hanna Johansson4 (translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson) “a Hitchcockian literary thriller,” but I would summarize it a bit more crassly as “the best kind of mindfuck.” It’s about a couple of women, Naomi and Laura, who meet by chance in a department store when one of them accicentally takes the other’s nearly identical coat. From there we alternate between their perspectives as they go about their daily lives, one working at a radio station and the other typing up transcriptions for a ghostwriter, the two coincidentally crossing paths a few more times before eventually becoming friends (or more?) and moving in together. It gets weird! Time is wobbly—is this linear, or are certain sections flashbacks? Naomi and Laura start to look more alike, but who is imitating whom, and why? What is going on here?? And the best part is that there are no clear answers! Just delicious ambiguity and the opportunity for intense speculation. YUM. Everyone go read this and let’s talk.

Me immediately after finishing *Body Double*

Last but not least, I made my way through Transcription by Ben Lerner in one sitting this morning and figured I’d go ahead and tell you about it since it’s coming out tomorrow! I was encouraged to request it from the publisher5 after reading Sara Hildreth’s intriguing review, which mentions memory, technology, and the crisis of a broken phone. Indeed, the opening section—one of three, each centered around and named for a different hotel, something I haven’t yet cracked the meaning of but am pondering—is immediately gripping in its urgency. The narrator, right before a final interview with his 90-year-old mentor and former professor, drops his phone in the hotel sink, rendering it unusable and stranding himself without a recording device to capture the conversation. His instant sense of panic, of being completely unmoored, is tangible and upsettingly relatable.6 What follows is largely thought- and dialogue-based and reminded me a bit of Larisa Pham’s Discipline from earlier this year; but where Pham muses about art, nostalgia, and the passage of time, Lerner is more focused on memory, technology, and truth. It’s only 130 pages, but there’s a lot to think about here and I can see myself mulling over these ideas for quite a while to come.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Recent listening

When it rains, it pours! For the last few weeks I’ve been working through a backlog of new episodes from the podcasts I subscribe to, but now that I’m caught up, I have more headphone time available for music. Which is good because there’s a freaking BOUNTY of it right now. This little round-up of four new and new-to-me albums barely scratches the surface of what’s on my list to check out.

Bleeds by Wednesday has been in heavy rotation this week because they played a show in Winston last night7 and I had to prepare! What impressed me most about these songs was their range—one minute the vibes are down-tempo folksy americana (“Elderberry Wine,” “The Way Love Goes”) and the next everything is distortion and yelling (“Pick Up That Knife,” “Wasp”). Something for everyone, indeed. In her September 2025 review for NPR, a really thoughtful and beautifully written piece, Ann Powers estimated it to be the rock album of the year. If you’re a fan of Waxahatchee you will definitely like Wednesday.

In other concert-prep news, The New Pornographers’ new album, The Former Site Of, released on March 26 and I really like it! The songs are uptempo and poppy but the slightest bit subdued compared to some of their earlier releases. The vocal harmonies are bright and perfect. The vibes are akin to Challengers, maybe my favorite of their records, and though I can’t explain exactly why, it’s bringing me a lot of joy. I’m looking forward to many more listens as next month’s show at Haw River Ballroom gets closer.

VOLUMES: ONE by Bon Iver is finally here and I’m sure “Heavenly Father” is relieved for its siblings to be out in the world and available to share the burden of my enthusiasm.8 Now I can also obsessively listen to masterful live performances of “666,” “Man Like U,” “Hey, Ma,” and “33 ‘GOD’,” just to name a few! The two Bon Iver shows I’ve been lucky enough to experience have been some of the most impressive and memorable of my adult life so far—and so what a treasure, the feeling of being there preserved on vinyl to revisit whenever I wish. I hope that, as the title suggests, there will be more to come in this curated live series.

I had no idea that a new Robyn album was on its way, so when I opened Qobuz a couple Fridays ago and saw Sexistential among the new releases, I literally gasped in surprise and delight. Our tiny otherworldly robot queen! Yes!! Even though these tracks are all about middle age and motherhood and other such Serious Topics, they are just as catchy as her songs of yore. Give them a listen and if you don’t instantly find yourself illuminated by purple flashing lights doing the electric slide on the surface of the moon, I owe you $5.

Wednesday at the Ramkat on Easter Sunday

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 30