I’m flying to Philadelphia to see my family today so this week’s newsletter is short. Some books to pre-order (but not from Amazon, because they are evil)!

Pre-ordering books is a great way to support writers, independent bookstores, and publishers.

I like to buy books from local L.A. bookstores like Skylight, Stories, and Octavia’s Bookshelf. You can buy any book online at Bookshop.org; really, Bezos doesn’t deserve your money.

Did you know that new books are released on Tuesdays? Now you do!

The Edge of Space-Time

by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

As Chanda describes, “Inspired by the poetry, literature, film, and music that have shaped me as a scientist, The Edge of Space-Time is about the way physics, astronomy, and cosmology offer each of us – not just scientists – a powerful and important perspective on the world around us. I wrote The Edge of Space-Time because I wanted to give readers a feel for the rich experience that comes with seeing the world through the lens of particles, space, and time.

Although it’s about the fundamental nature of the universe, The Edge of Space-Time starts not with the Big Bang, but instead with a discussion about the power of metaphor in poetry. What are the abiding metaphors that shape us? Among them — our star stories. Our curiosity about the universe is part of what makes us, us.”

Coming 4/7/2026. Pre-order here

Ghosts of Distant Trees

by Erica Watson

My best friend’s first book! Erica and I met at the University of Arizona over 20 years ago. I love her writing and I’m so excited to read this collection of essays.

“​​In Ghosts of Distant Trees, Erica Watson traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska—its vast and shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and the subtle politics of inhabitation. Through lyric and narrative essays, she explores how built environments like Denali’s single road shape encounters with land, gender, weather, and community. Turning from iconic vistas to gravel, orange peels, and garden beds, Watson asks what it might be like “to get to know a place without immediately thinking of what threatens it.” Haunted by fire and thaw, these essays resist elegy, offering instead a complex meditation on belonging, vulnerability, and the fragile intimacies that persist in a warming world. This is writing attuned to detail, disruption, and the ethics of attention.”

Coming 11/11/2025. Pre-order here

Read This When Things Fall Apart

Edited by Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes’s podcast Movement Memos and her newsletter have been great sources of insight and motivation for me. If you are looking for guidance in increasingly precarious times, this book is for you.

“Read This When Things Fall Apart is a care package for activists and organizers building power under fascistic, demoralizing conditions. It’s an outstretched hand, offering history lessons, personal anecdotes, and practical advice about how to navigate the woes of justice work. A survival guide for the heart, this is a book for activists to keep close, and to share with co-strugglers in need.

Personal, reflective, and hopeful, Read This When Things Fall Apart harnesses the writers' individual moments of despair into living, breathing wisdom that chips away at the supposed inevitability of fascist life. Restorative like a letter from a trusted friend and invigorating like a story from a mentor, the book is an indispensable companion for all of us navigating challenging times.”

Coming 11/4/2025. Pre-order here

Poppy State

by Myriam Gurba

The ever-sharp author of Mean and Creep is bringing us another volume of personal narrative braided with cultural history.

“Myriam Gurba has lived in California her entire life, with its plants and soils, forests and ecology, immersing herself in the language of the landscape as refracted through the languages and memories of her ancestors. In Poppy State, California plants serve as structural anchors in a wildly inventive work of narrative nonfiction that is part botanical criticism, part personal storytelling, part study of place. Gurba traverses themes of language, power, ancestry, and California's ecology, in masterfully constructed sentences that seem to defy gravity, in the structure of a labyrinthine secret garden. The reader is invited to commune with California with Gurba as their guide, and is ushered through a compendium of anecdotes, reminiscences, utterances, lists, incantations, newspaper articles, and other ephemera.”

Coming 10/21/2025. Pre-order here

What a Time To Be Alive

by Jade Chang

If you haven’t read Jade’s first novel, The Wangs Vs. The World, go do that now. It’s delightful! And then pre-order her second novel because it’s sure to be just as fantastic.

“A deeply moving and often hilarious novel following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she’s finally beginning to reckon with her complicated past”

Coming 9/30/2025. Pre-order here