NaPoWriMo 2025: Day 3

“Write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-three-11/)

If I were to name what I am
I would say I’m a punnerist
Far more than a poet.
Puns, like poems, play
With language. The distance
Between them closer than
Some imagine. Poems, like puns,
Come at the world simultaneously
Sideways and direct. Face on,
Askance. There’s joy in playing
With meaning, with space, with
Tone, with expectations. There’s
Far less distance between poems
And puns and painting and
Art is how we see the world

Differently

NaPoWriMo 2025: Day 2

“Write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of ‘fact,’ and something that seems out of place in time” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-12/)

I didn’t include all of these, but that’s OK. This was inspired by an image of Georgia O’Keeffe’s kitchen mixing bowl from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

You owned the same mixing bowl as my grandmother:
Plain, glass, perfect function with no concern for aesthetics.
So utterly in contrast with the beauty of your work.

Maybe you were always more like my grandmother
Than I realized. She lived a life of function
But yearned to create beauty.

The vibe doesn’t match, a frisson of expectations,
Ideals abutting reality, the humanization of you,
The idealization of her. Nested potentialities.

Would you have been her, had your life shunted
Onto a different path? Would she have been you,
Had her treasured dreams come true?

I would have liked to meet the her-that-was-you.
Beauty and function, dreams deferred and dreams fulfilled.
What is, what was, what could have been.

NaPoWriMo 2025: Day 1

“Take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/april-1-it-begins/)

Automatism
Automat
Auto

If ever there was an ism
to encapsulate our times

Car-addicted,
convenience obsessed,

So eager to offload our humanity
to AI,
algorithms

We’re making automatons
to take our place,

And making automatons
of ourselves

NaPoWriMo 2025: Early-Bird Prompt

A portrait poem (https://www.napowrimo.net/na-glopowrimo-are-nearly-upon-us/)

She doesn’t look like someone who changed the world.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she just looks tired.
Worn down, worn out, worn thin.

But I do know better, and what I see transforms:
Strength at last able to let go, wisdom earned in pain,
the hard-lined, stark beauty of righteousness.

I know that I will never know her.

I know history, what others say of her,
What little she said of herself,
the accumulation of facts.

I know what I see, how she seems,
an agglomeration of my assumptions,
who I need her to be.

To me, her eyes speak of trials witnessed and lived,
hard held principles tested and enduring.
Survival.

She is a potent symbol of hope.
She was a person who lived.

I will never know what’s missing.

Book Review: City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley

Cover of the book City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley — *City of All Seasons*
by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley
Titan, 2025

This review was first published by Booklist on April 1, 2025.

**STARRED REVIEW** This dark fantasia of magical realism is set in a city split in two, one version stuck in perpetual winter, one in unremitting summer, both cut off from the rest of the world. The mystery of how it happened is inextricably knotted up with the conflicts in the town’s most powerful family. Two cousins separated by the split must unravel the mystery, defy authority, and find their way back to each other. This is one of those novels that’s impossible to describe without reducing its magic. It’s strange and eerie, familiar and alien, compelling and off-putting, deeply rendered and mysterious, meditative and unexpectedly comforting. It feels more like a modern fable than contemporary fantasy. It’s an examination of family, conflict, and love, and how people and places imprint on each other, a kaleidoscope of time and atmosphere. The world and characters are equally complex and believable, and both are essential to the story. Readers must be willing to suspend disbelief for the premise and accept that there really isn’t a full explanation for what happens. But if they allow themselves to immerse in it, the experience is quite wonderful. Recommended for fans of Seanan McGuire and Stephen King’s fantasy work.

NaPoWriMo 2025: Untitled 1

“If you could tell your younger self anything, what would it be?” she asks.

I ponder the passionate ignorance of my youth, and I know my answer:

“Nothing,” I tell her.

The most important lessons can’t be taught by the telling.
Experience must be lived, born witness to your own failures and successes.

Besides, younger me wouldn’t listen anyway, not even to myself.

“Old man! You surrendered your dreams too easily! I know I can do better than you!”

Book Review: Cosmic Bullsht: A Guide to the Galaxy’s Worst Life Hacks* by Chris Ferrie

Cover of the book Cosmic Bullsh*t: A Guide to the Galaxy’s Worst Life Hacks by Chris Ferrie — *Cosmic Bullsh*t: A Guide to the Galaxy’s Worst Life Hacks*
by Chris Ferrie
Sourcebooks, 2025

This review was first published by Booklist on March 11. 2025.

Ferrie’s latest “Bullsh*t” title (after Quantum Bullsh*t, 2023) takes on some of the most pernicious anti-science conspiracy theories with his trademark snark, put-downs, and pop culture references. He confronts stories about the origin of life, astrology, aliens, time travel, and the end of the world, taking readers through various non-scientific beliefs and summarizing the best current understanding science gives us. It has all the ingredients his fans have come to expect. He’s mostly preaching to the choir, as it’s hard to image this will appeal to anyone who doesn’t already agree with him, and he doesn’t really offer any new information on any of these topics. Nevertheless, it’s a solid overview of the real science behind the conspiracies. Perhaps most interesting, and what gives his work real depth, is the nuance with which he treats both science and non-scientific beliefs: despite the damage conspiracy theories can do, they tap into the essential human need for storytelling, and science can too easily become another form of dogma. Both are at their best when we embrace empathy, fascination, and inherent complexity.

Book Review: These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means by Christopher Summerfield

Cover of the book These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means by Christopher Summerfield — *These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means*
by Christopher Summerfield
Viking, 2025

This review was first published by Booklist on March 1, 2025.

**STARRED REVIEW** Summerfield, neuroscientist and former researcher at Deepmind, offers one of the most balanced and realistic assessments of the current state of AI technology as well as a summary of how AI was first conceived and developed. In doing so, he spends as much time exploring linguistics and neuroscience as he does with technology. Noam Chomsky is as much a part of this as Alan Turing is. Summerfield examines the philosophies of the major players in the AI sphere and spends some time assessing the various hopes and fears people have for it. Amongst the slate of AI-focused, pop-sci books hitting the shelves recently, this one does the best job of explaining for a lay reader how AI is structured and trained. But Summerfield takes it further, comparing the ways AI functions to the workings of the human brain to show not just the potential of AI for true intelligence and creativity but also that AI is fundamentally different from human intelligence. Those differences pose the biggest challenges to the next steps of AI development. This technology contains both tremendous potential and very real danger. Summerfield tackles all this with humor, wit, and candor.

Book Review: Dimming the Sun: The Urgent Case for Geoengineering by Thomas Ramge

Cover of the book Dimming the Sun: The Urgent Case for Geoengineering by Thomas Ramge — *Dimming the Sun: The Urgent Case for Geoengineering*
by Thomas Ramge
The Experiment, 2025

This review was first published by Booklist on March 1, 2025.

Solar geoengineering—altering the albedo of Earth to reflect more of the sun’s energy and cool down global warming—is an idea that has long floated around the periphery of climate-change-action circles. Ramge argues that it’s an idea whose time has come. It has the potential to make a significant, immediate impact and is easily reversible. It could be accomplished on a large scale with technology that’s commonplace right now. But Ramge also urges caution: it’s not a long-term solution, merely a step that can buy us time to meet necessary carbon-reduction goals. He sees a realistic danger that nonstate actors may take it upon themselves to pursue this path. There’s been very little research into solar geoengineering, so we don’t have a full understanding of the risks and possible consequences. The possibility that someone, somewhere, may turn to this approach creates an urgent need for better understanding and regulatory framework. Dimming the sun is a realistic and potentially powerful option to combat climate change. Ramge believes we should at least explore the possibility.

Saying Farewell to Booklist

I quit reviewing for Booklist. Or, more accurately, I let my editor know I need to take a break from reviewing for an unspecified amount of time.

I’ve been debating this move for a couple years, honestly. I’ve been really struggling to make myself read for a while now. I kept thinking I’d get back into it, that my reading mojo would come back, or at least that I could make myself do it, but it’s just been getting worse. I’ve been turning in my reviews later and later, and it stresses me out. I no longer feel that Booklist can rely on me for this task, which isn’t fair to them, and I no longer enjoy it because it feels like too much pressure.

I need a break. If I don’t feel like reading, I want to be able to just not read and not feel guilty about dropping the ball.

I hope I’ll want to read more if it’s just for fun and not an assignment. In truth, I’ve always had this issue: I didn’t read a single assigned text all through primary school. If you tell me I HAVE to, then I don’t want to! I have a powerful contrarian streak. Reading has always been an indulgent happy place for me. I don’t want it to be work. I’m a little surprised I was able to keep up these reviews successfully for as long as I did.

I’m clearly still coming to terms with this decision. But I feel like it’s the right decision for me right now.

There are a couple reviews I already submitted which haven’t been published yet, so I’ll post those when they are. But then I won’t be doing any new ones.

I’m curious: I used to write long-form book reviews of stuff I read just for fun. But I pretty much completely stopped writing just-for-fun book reviews once I started reviewing for Booklist. I wonder if I’ll go back to it. I prefer being able to analyze things in depth, so maybe this has also been part of my struggle. Working within the strict character limit of Booklist reviews was a fun challenge, it taught me a great deal and made me a better writer, but I’ve never been interested in brevity.

Anyway, that’s a thing I did. If you enjoy my reviews, I feel a bit bad that I’m ending them, but I think I need to. I may take them back up again in the future. We’ll see.