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.)
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?
Reading [Online]
The Road from Gaza (The New York Review)
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.
Reading [Substack]
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)
Listening [Music]
Some of what I’ve been listening to the last couple of months.
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…
Googling
vertical earth kilometer
New Zealand birds
How much caffeine is too much
Lightning bug symbolism
St. Louis rail strike 1877
ficus macrophylla
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…
Open Tabs #32
Welcome to this week’s edition of Open Tabs, where I share my recent reads, current obsessions, and media consumptions every Sunday!
Thanks for reading today’s issue of Empty Head! Subscribe to receive every Open Tabs in your inbox + new book reviews and essays, and other musings.






Still loving this. Opened ‘Where will the next literary movement come from?’ and just read the whole thing. Fascinating!! Recommending Pioneer Works Broadcast and specifically https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/garth-greenwell-jordan-kisner-too-much 👭