My Favourite Human: My July 2025 In Media
July has been COLD and it has been VERY RAINY, which means that I, a hoodie gremlin who thrives in low lighting, have had a fantastic month. I was also diagnosed with a major Vitamin D deficiency, but you can’t prove to me or a court of law that those two things are related.
Let’s talk media!
Books read:
Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter (2019)
Format: Paperback (Faber & Faber)
I only recently discovered Max Porter via a 2023 video of him performing a poem on the British arms trade. It’s powerful stuff, well worth spending thirteen minutes of your life on, and it led to me immediately looking him up and smashing order on his debut novel. Though I say “novel” here only because that’s what the publisher calls it. Lengthwise, I’d call this a novella, and one made up of a series of narrative poems at that.
And folks, I absolutely loved it. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers follows a nameless family who are adopted by an anthropomorphic crow after the sudden death of their wife and mother. What ensues exists out of time and space, flitting between the perspectives of the dad, the two sons (who form a singular entity on the page, distinct only to each other) and the crow. It’s a gorgeously chaotic and authentic exploration on the bone-deep, lonely experience of losing a loved one, with a side of academic contemplation on the function of crows in literature. Weird, wonderful, and had me sobbing my eyes out in the bath. A+.
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker (2025)
Format: Audiobook, read by Greg Tremblay (Basic Books)
I followed June’s terrible journey into the mind of the techno-dweeb here, and then lost my whole damn mind. More Everything Forever sees Astrophysicist Adam Becker dive into the spacefaring dreams of tech billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and more, and the ideologies that allow them to justify draining every single resource on the one (ONE! SOLO! SINGULAR!) habitable planet in the known universe in order to achieve them.
Letting a strong authorial voice shine through amidst his research and interviews, Adam Becker brought joy, hope and validation to my heart by not only patiently dismantling the scientifically dubious theories behind each of these visions of the future (many of them built on a colossal misunderstanding of science fiction), but by advocating fiercely for a future in which humanity is content to stay and caretake our miraculous little marble. I found Becker’s book to be surprisingly beautiful, and I’ve already purchased a physical copy to reread and violently underline.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (2025)
Format: Paperback (Orbit)
Magical school books have become a whole subgenre of their own, but Tesh has put a refreshing spin on the whole thing by placing a teacher at the centre of The Incandescent. Saffy is Head of Magic at a prestigious British boarding school, and it’s her job to keep the demons drawn to the aura of young, untamed magic at bay. But Saffy has a history with the school’s most poweful demon, and one that may compromise her responsibilities when the demonic shit hits the fan.
I loved a great many elements of this book. Shifting the focus to the adults allows the teenagers in the story to act like the flawed, goofy, naive seventeen-year-olds they are (rather than the 20-somethings adult readers of YA tend to want them to be). I really dug the exploration of guilt and the impacts of youthful mistakes on adult psyches. I enjoyed the discussions of class, and I thought the mechanics of the school and responsibilities of the teaching staff were in clever conversation with that certain other magical school that looms ominously over the genre. I also loved Saffy as a character, and you’re always going to have my attention when there’s a large, surly, weapon-wielding female love interest. But structurally? Narratively? I was underwhelmed. I’ve read and enjoyed all of Emily Tesh’s books (four total), and while this is not my least favourite of hers, I think it’s probably the wobbliest. But that just places The Incandescent into “like” rather than “love” territory. If I sound disappointed, it’s because I really thought this book was going to be a slam dunk. Ah well.
Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser (2022)
Format: Audiobook, read by Rebecca Lowman (Penguin)
After all the tech industry reading, I decided I needed a change in my non-fiction subject matter as well as a change in tone. “Something nicer,” I said to myself, and foolishly picked this excellent book about the history of various textiles across the world, going back hundreds of years. Which, if you know a single thing about textiles, encompasses a bloody history of colonisation, oppression, slavery, genocide, violent negligence, and the birth and growth of capitalism.
Fashion and textiles have been at the heart of capitalism for as long as capitalism has existed, and as a result are now up there with fossil fuel and tech as our biggest polluting industries. An absolute ethical nightmare. By dividing her book into five parts (linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool), Sofi Thanhauser enlightened me, depressed me, filled my brain with fascinating tidbits, and made me terrified to buy anything new ever again. Which is the sort of hyperbolic reaction that I know will pass, but in its wake I’m planning to be much more discerning about the fabrics I purchase, who I purchase them from, and curbing the habit to buy new things for no reason.
She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark (2024)
Format: Paperback (Faber & Faber)
I was out and about an uncharacteristic amount in June, and the best kind of book to have in your bag when that happens is one full of short stories.
I was already familiar with Eliza Clark from her fascinatingly nasty novel Penance, which is told in a fractured, mixed-media style and really captures a sense of time and place alongside the visceral horrors of being a teenager, so I was intrigued to see what she’d do with short stories. A bunch were exactly as grotty as I’d been expecting, some quite a lot less, and one was so purposely unpleasant I wanted to fling it out the car window. Clark also pleasantly surprised me by dipping her toe into science fiction and some more surreal, contemplative stories.
Short story collections are, for some reason, a hard sell to publishers and readers alike. Despite our shortening attention spans, you can’t even bribe most readers to choke down a short story from an author they already like. But I love them. Anthologies are tasting platters to find new authors, and collections are a rare opportunity to watch an author play. You get to see them experiment with genres, themes, narrative positions and styles — some of which they’ll never touch again, while others are the seeds from which their future novels will grow.
MEDIA WATCHED:
Murderbot (Season 1, 2025)
Streamed on Apple
Speaking of science fiction misunderstood by billionaires, Murderbot season one has ended! Murderbot season two has been greenlit! Long live Murderbot!
Murderbot season one is the screen adaptation of the first book in Martha Wells’ beloved book series The Murderbot Diaries. The series (which is still ongoing with six novellas, one novel, a slew of short stories and counting) follows an AI in a semi-organic body made for killin’ who secretly hacks the code keeping it servile and, with the help of some new friends, slowly and painfully learns to be its own person with disgusting emotions. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, there’s really interesting self-identity stuff, and like all good sci fi, is a searing critique of capitalism and techno-supremacy.
It was always going to be a challenge adapting a series of such internal books — The Murderbot Diaries are told entirely via Murderbot’s internal log, and it tends to leave out anything it finds uninteresting — but I really loved the direction showrunners Chris and Paul Weitz took this first season. Deploying Murderbot’s voiceover and imposing its internal display onto the screen were obvious but effective, and utilising Murderbot’s entertainment feeds (Sanctuary Moon is a large but nebulous presence in the books) as a coping mechanism from calming itself down to navigating small talk was a really great decision. Contrary to the people of the internet, I relish having a show to look forward to every week, and I thought the decision to keep each episode to a network half-hour (closer to 20 minutes than 30 as the good televisual God intended) meant that everything was gloriously snappy and kept up momentum.
Best of all, the cast! I thought there were some misses in the expansion of the human storylines, but the casting was on point for this truncated version of the Preservation Alliance crew. Having been familiar with Alexander Skarsgard for a few decades now, I was not one of the people skeptical about his casting as our conflicted bot, and was happy to see my faith vindicated. That man is a little freak trapped in a demigod’s body, and he brought all of his awkward, lost-little-alien energy to our genderless bot. He also played wonderfully well with Murderbot’s two major scene partners for the season: David Dastmalchian’s suspicious Gurathin (whose character was fleshed out quite beautifully for the show) and the incredibly warm Noma Dumezweni as planetary administrator and mission leader Mensah. One flaw of the books for me has always been that, despite Mensah and Murderbot’s relationship making up the heart of the first four novellas, we don’t actually see them interact all that much in book one. The show makes up for this, building a bond between them that makes me absolutely ride or die for their friendship and more than justifies the final words of dialogue of the season.
In summary: I was delighted by Murderbot. I cackled, I cried, I will pay actual currency if anyone makes available the Murderbot dolly from the intro sequence, and I am so very excited to see what they do with future seasons. My instinct is that, rather than stick to a 1:1 approach to the novellas and the seasons, they’ll tackle both Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol in season two, then dedicate a whole season to Exit Strategy. But who knows! Not me! Check back in three years to see if I’m wrong.
K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025)
Streamed on Netflix
I may be thirty-eight years old, but I am so easily gotten by animated, family-friendly media that is well done and contained certified musical bangers. Bonus points for magical girls and friendship. So when you present me with K-Pop Demon Hunters, the spiritual next-of-kin to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sailor Moon, and Into The Spiderverse, and wrap it in a delicious demon boy band bow that pays tribute to and pokes gentle fun at the highly orchestrated industry behind K-Pop, I am a lost woman.
Anyway, I’ve already seen this twice and a third time is rapidly approaching on the horizon.
The Bear (Season 4, 2025)
Streamed on Disney+
I guess I’ll just say up front that I am a person who really, really, really loves The Bear. At four seasons in, I’m not watching it begrudgingly to keep up with discourse on the internet, I am watching it because every member of that fugly restaurant has my entire heart.
If you’ve somehow missed everything about the chef show where everyone yells and wins awards, it’s an ensemble piece revolving around a young(ish?), highly praised chef, Carmy, who somehow simultaneously looks exactly like Gene Wilder and the statue of David as he tries to build the restaurant of his dreams while grieving the suicide of his big brother. While it’s not the final season, season four sees Carmy reach a kind of apotheosis and it’s absolutely fucking beautiful. This show is deeply rooted in a time and a place (post-COVID Chicago), and is a celebration of human connection and the dangers of losing it. Every character in this show is so exquisitely constructed in their complexity, their motivations, their flaws and their generosity. The celebrity cameos are, if we’re being honest, a bit fucking much, but the core cast keep it well-anchored despite John Cena occasionally popping up to chew the scenery. And while the heart of this show is the endlessly loveable Ayo Edebri as Sydney (who I want nothing but the best for, and who I will fight every Sydney x Carmy shipper on behalf of), Jeremy Allen White as the deeply traumatised, emotionally stunted Carmy is a revelation. God, what that man can do with his giant, terrifyingly blue eyes.
I love beautifully told grief stories, I love stories about non-romantic love, and I love stories about dysfunctional families biological and chosen. In The Bear I have all of the above, and I have it in spades. Go get your fourth basket of Emmys, team, I don’t care what category it’s in.
The X-Files (Season 1, 1993)
Watched on DVD
My partner is a long time fan of The X-Files, but as my parents were the wise sort of people who didn’t want to relive the sleepless weeks that followed my viewing of Gremlins, the only X-Files episode I ever saw as it was airing was the very funny Simpsons crossover. But post our Twin Peaks rewatch, I wanted more David Duchovny and more early-90’s weirdness. And it turns out that my parents were right to keep me from this show, because it’s spooky as hell! Jibblies aside, though, I’m having such a good time with Mulder and Scully’s dynamic (Duchovny and Gillian Anderson really are both stunningly attractive, and I didn’t realise they had such flirty chemistry from their first scene together) and the show’s commitment to not explaining or even solving all that much. The show often feels like a spooky anthology with a consistent framing device. Oh, network procedural television pre-rewatch culture, what a thing we lost in you.
We have already continued on to season two, and all this has resulted in my partner finally purchasing himself a copy of Mulder’s “I Want To Believe” poster with my full support.
In Short: I attended The Last Jedi live in concert with my mother, and while I enjoyed the accompanying orchestra (the poor, exhausted string section! The ebullient brass section!) it really confirmed that I’ve fallen out of love with the Star Wars movies. Also, rewatching it for the first time since Reylo shippers took over the publishing world was unintentionally hilarious, because what do you mean so many people have lost their minds over these two cardboard cutouts? I have never seen two people with less chemistry. The mind boggles. Because no month is complete without a little Muppetry, I convinced my partner to watch Muppets Take Manhattan with me. It was not difficult to do. A more difficult sell that has lasted months (years?) was Disney’s Tarzan, which he finally conceded to and was fully on board with before the end of the intro montage, and rightly so.
MISCELLANEOUS MEDIA I ENJOYED:
If Books Could Kill: Not a new to me pod (I’ve been on this bandwagon since Ep 1) but Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri have finally taken on He’s Just Not That Into You, and the result is reliably hilarious. I also feel extremely validated in that I paused the episode to rant to my partner about the very bad He’s Just Not That Into You movie and how the movie actively contradicts the premise of the dang book, and then Michael hit all the same beats. What can I say, I like to be right.
Better Offline: Yet another tech podcast, this time hosted by tech writer and passionate ranter Ed Zitron. I like this one because nobody hates Sam Altman, Dario Amodei or AI more than Ed Zitron, and also because he has good chats with other tech writers.
Panic World: This is the companion podcast to popular culture newsletter Garbage Day, hosted by Garbage Day writer Ryan Broderick. The pod focuses on how the internet changes culture, and then reality across multiple topics. Recent episodes include conspiracy families, JK Rowling’s public spiral into villainy, a cult that uses Minecraft to recruit young people and the history of Slenderman. Ryan and his producer Grant do a great job of separating moral panics and hoaxes from genuinely concerning movement, and if you’re a parent of internet-using (or soon to be internet-using) youths I really think you should get on this one.
And that was July, 2025! Thank you so much for reading along! If you’d like to yap about any of the books, TV shows, movies or pods I’ve posted here, you can find me, as always, @feedthewriter on Instagram and Bluesky, or via a good, old-fashioned email. There may also be a comment function attached here now, idk. If there is, somebody leave on so I can see if it works.
K love you byeee!