Open Tabs #33

08.03.25 -- reading, watching, listening (let's catch up!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Open Tabs, where I share my recent reads, current obsessions, and media consumptions every Sunday!

Hello, I am back from my (unplanned) summer hiatus. Summer is nowhere near over, and the sweaty, humid heat is not waning. But I feel like I missed the spirit of it…and I’m sorry to say it, but I’m ready for autumn.

I can’t even begin to get into why I disappeared, but I’m sure I will write about it at some point. The last 2 months were some of the most difficult I’ve ever experienced, and I’m still trying to process everything. Now, I am craving a sense of normalcy and a return to routine. So this seems like a good place to begin.

I’ll treat this as a catch-up edition, and hopefully return to weekly/bi-weekly editions of Open Tabs on Sundays. I miss writing and reading and feeling excited about this kind of thing. So let’s see what I can do here! (And hello to all the new subscribers. You are arriving at a strange time, so bear with me.)

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Reading [Books]

I didn’t read a single page for almost 6 weeks…but I jumped right back into reading and managed to finish a few things recently.

• The Exhibition of Persephone Q by Jessi Jezewska Stevens

I read the first half of this during the first week of June, and the second half a couple weeks ago. It’s a short book and I’d normally breeze through it in a few days, but my reading experience was interrupted by life. It touches on themes of memory, identity, and selfhood, and I think it’s a fine book. Unfortunately, this novel never got a fair shot from me as a reader.

• A Short History of Trans Misogyny by Jules Gill-Peterson

In this non-fiction work, the author centers what they label trans-femininity (notably, something different than the simple categorization of trans women). They follow a history and a lineage that stretches beyond the contemporary-western-liberal conception of trans identity—which continues to limit us to a gendered binary; instead pushing for gender- and sexual-expansiveness, through an understanding of how the colonial-supremacist mind forced this idea of “femininity” on groups of people it sought to suppress, marginalize, or criminalize, thereby creating the “trans panic” that permeates our culture today. I would also recommend reading Andrea Long Chu’s Females, which I talked about in a previous letter.

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

I read Moby Dick a few years ago, and in its wake, I sought out more seafaring novels. This one just happened to be there at the time, so I added it to my shelves. When I was ready to re-enter the wide and wonderful world of reading a couple weeks ago, I wanted something adventurous and totally outside of my normal reading style. This 500-page historical-fiction-fantasy-pirate novel did the trick. I was hooked, I was entertained, and it did what I needed it to do. What more can I say?

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Reading [Online]

• Where will the next literary movement come from? (Dirt)

• The Road from Gaza (The New York Review)

• In a Burning World, Witchcraft is on the Rise (Atmos)

People are typically called to magic in an attempt to reclaim power during particularly oppressive times. A surging interest in witchcraft is “always simultaneous to a downsurge in quality of life, an upsurge in right-wing persecution, and heightened scarcity,” said writer and witch Alice Tarbuck.

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Reading [Substack]

• & life goes on — joy in abundance

• the mitford girls and the art of correspondence — the anchoress archives

• it’s called mysticism, sweetie — isabela cervantes

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Watching [YouTube]

• Dua Lipa versus the literary landscape (Below the Fray)

A fun video, and I ended up watching everything else on this channel. Admittedly, I have not watched/listened to any of Dua Lipa’s author interviews, but I’ve now added some to my watchlist.

• Day in the Life of a Sister (Orange Diocese)

• performative readers, ‘book girlies’ & the aesthetification of books (The Book Leo)

• Art in the Consumer Debt Crisis (Shannon Kim)

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Birds from The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1754)

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Listening [Music]

Some of what I’ve been listening to the last couple of months.

• I quit — HAIM

• Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat — Charli xcx

• Curse — Unknown Mortal Orchestra

• The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We — Mitski

• True Magic, Deluxe — Salute

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Listening [Podcast]

• Edward Said and the Question of Palestine (Throughline)

• Mona Awad reads “The Chartreuse” (The Writer’s Voice)

• In Covid’s Wake (If Books Could Kill)

• “Play It As It Lays” (Overdue)

I also caught up on the previous season of Rehash, about internet subcultures (emos, sea punks, homesteaders, etc.). But now there’s a whole other season that I am totally behind on…

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Googling

• vertical earth kilometer

• New Zealand birds

• How much caffeine is too much

• Lightning bug symbolism

• St. Louis rail strike 1877

• ficus macrophylla

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Books on my Radar [TBR]

• Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

• Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

• The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han

previously…

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