Monday Miscellany: Thoughtfully considered and lyrically composed

Notes from May 12 - 18

May 20, 2025

The weather this past week has been perfect for reading on the front porch, and trust that I’ve been taking full advantage. That’s where I’m writing from now, in fact. The sun, having dipped below the roof line, is warming my face while songbirds announce the closing of the day, their chirping occasionally punctuated by the distinctive laugh of my neighbor Georgia in her lawn chair across the street. The vibes are unparalleled.

I’m feeling content after a fun and fulfilling weekend, and ready for whatever the coming days will bring. I hope Monday has been kind to you, too. ♥︎

Read this week

It’s been a while since a work of fiction has burrowed its way into my existence like Orbital by Samantha Harvey has. I resisted at first—okay sure, a Booker Prize win is impressive, but is this actually for me or am I just feeling FOMO because of the hype?—but finally caved this week thanks to the monthly art museum book club discussion I’ve started casually attending.

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For such a short novel, taking place over the course of a single 24-hour period, Orbital is substantial. The narrative is mostly internal, following the observations, thoughts, and memories of a team of six astronauts as they orbit Earth aboard a space station. But oh, the places those streams of consciousness go! Through her characters Harvey considers a nearly endless list of topics—family, bereavement, the environment, politics, art, perspective, progress, beauty, mundanity, weather, stewardship, science, meaning—and weaves them into a tapestry so simultaneously quotidian and profound that I cried on multiple occasions.

Take this musing, on the collection of sound recordings we sent out with the Voyager spacecraft back in 1977, for example:

What chance that any such life form will ever discover it, this golden disc, much less have any way of playing it, much less decode what the brainwaves mean? An infinitesimally small chance. Not a chance. But all the same the disc and its recordings will wander, trapped for eternity, around the Milky Way. In five billion years when the earth is long dead, it’ll be a love song that outlives spent suns. The sound signature of a love-flooded brain, passing through the Oort Cloud, through solar systems, past hurtling meteorites, into the gravitational pull of stars that don’t yet exist. (134)

This is not a plot-driven book, nor is it really a character-driven one. It’s an extended meditation on images and ideas, thoughtfully considered and lyrically composed—a piece of writing that is going to stick with me for quite a while to come. If this sounds interesting to you, I absolutely recommend it.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I may 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! ♥︎

Currently listening

Lately I’ve been completely consumed by two albums, equally stuck in my head despite being stylistically and thematically quite different: SABLE, fABLE (2025) by Bon Iver and Even in Arcadia (2025) by Sleep Token.

A lot of what I’m loving about both of these is their variety. SABLE, fABLE starts out with a gentle, acoustic vibe akin to that of For Emma, Forever Ago (2008) before transitioning into more experimental sounds that are closer to 22, A Million (2016) or i,i (2019). And Even in Arcadia is truly all over the map, a genre-defying blend of pop, indie rock, melodic metalcore, and ten thousand other things.

I’m still absorbing and mulling over these albums, and I imagine they’ll continue to play on repeat during the week to come, so you are cordially invited to join me back here next Monday for some additional (and better fleshed-out) thoughts, if you are so inclined. 😂

Anticipation station

With May already more than half over, I’m starting to look ahead to next month’s reading list, some upcoming movies, and other fun things on the horizon:

For my various book clubs, I’m excited to read Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Heartwood by Amity Gaige, Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus, and Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson. (Nobody here has a book club problem. Don’t worry about it.)
I heard about Friendship, a new dark comedy from A24, a couple months ago and I’m so pumped that it’s finally coming out this week!
Flashlight, the latest novel by Susan Choi, is one of my most eagerly awaited releases of the year and will be available June 3.
I’m not generally a Sports Girlie™ but Jordan and I go to a Durham Bulls baseball game with my parents every summer, and that’s happening next month. Sitting in the stands with a slice of pizza, a beer, and some people you love, surrounded by the smell of shelled peanuts and the hazy light of a slowly setting sun, is one of those nostalgic seasonal experiences that just can’t be beat.