Spring 2026 Round-Up
Links, books, articles, recipes
Wow, okay, I haven’t done one of these since last… September? Yikes. Okay, so we’ll do a spring roundup, using the word “spring” as loosely as the American academic calendar. I, by the way, am done with the semester! I am enjoying my two weeks of freedom, which are FLYING by, between spring finals and the beginning of my summer class.
[Edit: this took me so long to finish that my summer class has now begun lololol]
What I Read in January-April (Books)
(An inconclusive list, since I have, proudly, read 23 books so far in 2026!! I’m really happy with how deeply I’ve plunged back into reading after a few months of not doing much of it.)
-My Friends by Fredrik Backman
I’m a big Backman fan (Anxious People and A Man Called Ove are my favorites) but this one was a miss for me, unfortunately. I’m not even really sure I can articulate why. It felt too reliant on coincidence and a sort of forced whimsical feeling that was oddly reminiscent of the most self-conscious Tumblr posts of 2014. I’m not articulating this well, but tbh I don’t really feel like Backman did either! Perhaps some of the awkwardness could be blamed on the English translation? I’m not sure, but this book being a bit of a disappointment has certainly not turned me off from enjoying Backman’s other work— I’m overdue for a reread of Anxious People.
-When Thoughts And Prayers Aren’t Enough by Taylor Schumann, which I reviewed here.
-Company by Shannon Sanders
I love the idea of a short story, but I rarely sit down and actually devour an entire collection. I think short stories tend to intimidate me. My high school experience with them was not great, and though I’ve grown to appreciate a good George Saunders as an adult, I always worry that I am too dumb to understand prizewinning short stories. And maybe I am! But I was not too dumb to enjoy Shannon Sanders’ linked short story collection, a string of beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking or even terrifying (Mote! MOTE!!) vignettes about many different branches of a single family tree. Her debut novel, which is releasing in July (and you best believe I WILL be writing about it) centers on one of the characters in Company, and though you don’t need to have read Company to enjoy The Great Wherever, why wouldn’t you?? (Favorites: Mote and The Everest Society)
-Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
I’ve been in and out of therapy here and there since my first baby was born (currently in) and I actually picked up this book thinking it would be aimed more at self-help (i.e. explaining to the skeptical reader why therapy is a good idea) but it turned out to be a memoir, in turns infuriating and moving. Lori Gottlieb is a licensed therapist who wrote a long-running therapy advice column to help ordinary people work through ordinary and extraordinary problems. The people she writes about in this book (I assume many identifying details have been changed) draw you in before you realize it, and Gottlieb's own journey toward self-awareness, though interesting, plays second fiddle to her heartfelt storytelling about her patients. Julie's was my favorite.
-Famous Last Words by Gillian Macallister
I don't want to give too much away about this one but it's a page-turner of a thriller, and it manages to feature a new mom without falling back on a postpartum psychosis plot crutch or putting a child character in danger to build suspense! I recommend going into it as blind as possible.
-Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
I knew very little about TB before I opened this book; my experience was limited mostly to Ruby Gillis’ tragic death from “galloping consumption” in Anne of the Island and Doc Holliday’s blood-spotted handkerchiefs in Tombstone. And that painful bubble injected under the skin every few years when I worked in healthcare and at a nursing home, of course. But beyond that, I didn’t give TB much thought— certainly not as a contemporary and present problem. I was, obviously, So Very Wrong. EiT moves at a rapid pace through the historical thread of TB’s relentless grip on humanity, while deftly blending fact-based, nerdy writing
-Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, which I wrote about in great detail at The Pom, with a plethora of spoilers. Tl;dr—I did not regard it with great affinity.
What I Read in January-April (Articles)
Motherhood in the Age of Incels by Lindsay Fickas
These are the precious years; the seasons in which I can retain some control. It’s the brief time when I can say something, and they will still give weight to my comments. But I know it is all fleeting. Friends will take precedence and the world will fight for their attention. We can only arm them with what we know and hope they won’t use those weapons against us someday.
Let Us Read by Karen Swallow Prior
“One of the things that draws me to reading is the way it is at its best quiet, solitary, and slow. Even though we learn to read in community and long to share that experience with others, mostly, we read alone. Reading is, ultimately, an individual, private, interior event. That interiority is what makes reading so powerful, so important, so worth doing more and doing better.”
Our Children’s Schools by Bess Kalb
When the children in West Bloomfield, Michigan were rushed out of their Jewish preschool by security guards in bullet-proof vests yesterday, some holding hands, some looking warily over their tiny shoulders, I saw my child. It bears saying: When I saw the starving children in Gaza lining up for food, I also saw my child. My hands shook with rage and fear for their mothers as I wrote so many words advocating for ceasefire in the name of all children. When I saw the little boy in Iran who would be decimated by American missiles last week, I saw my son. That is how motherhood works.
Sometimes, being “slow to speak” is just silence in a bad disguise by Rachel Darnall
Imagine a justice system where judges and juries never passed a verdict: they just looked and looked for more evidence, more angles, more testimony. Would we admire a court like that, or would we recognize that they were simply unwilling to take responsibility for passing a verdict?
The World Needs More Weirding Right Now by Amber Sparks
Artists may be the only ones who can excavate the future in America at this point, as the United States loses doctors, scientists, brilliant innovators, as we close our doors again to the immigrants who made us modern in the first place.
In Defense of Your Problematic Mother-in-Law by Lauren Ahmed
Women have long been praised for taking the smallest slice of pie, needing the least sleep, and never denying their children or partners anything lest we be viewed as ungrateful and selfish. Our mothers and grandmothers likely felt a lot of the same pressures we do now, but they didn’t talk about them so openly. They lacked the venue, and possibly the audience. They were left wondering, holding colicky babies in dark bedrooms while their partners held court at dinner parties downstairs, if anyone else felt the same way.
On Care and Close Reading by JoAnna Novak
As I page through the stories, I realize I’m not reading my prose, which feels inert, ossified; I’m reading for her thoughts and edits—there are so many of them—which seem to vibrate on the paper. They’re a guide. To becoming a better writer and a better teacher and a better reader. Perhaps to becoming a better mother. Because mothering is about reading. About being sensitive to the nuances of tone and expression. About understanding where a description (“her mother’s grim lips”) might be communicating something deeper and affirming that. Check.
What I Wrote
I Promise It Will Get Easier at The Pomegranate
“It isn’t the cold exercise sending a surge of warmth to my heart as I watch them; it’s pride and love and marveling. They are magical. They are two little people, learning how to be, and I get to watch them.”
Is Everyone Lying to Me? at The Pomegranate
“When I look at other mothers of young children, in a similar season of life to mine—kids below elementary age, middle-class income, working and/or going back to school, or staying home to do what feels like 24/7 childcare—who seem to be surviving motherhood with more grace and poise and accomplishment, I often find myself descending into bitterness. No one can do ALL that. She homeschools and works full-time and keeps her house clean and still has time for hobbies? All that with a few chore charts and a willingness to get up at 4 am? She’s got to be lying.”
Having Babies Did Not Make it Okay For My Stomach to Look Like That at The Pomegranate
“With the ever-growing pressure to squeeze the female body into smaller and smaller sizes, with Ozempic and intermittent fasting and mushroom coffee supplements galore, a campaign to get postpartum women to embrace their larger selves must be a good thing. Pushing back against bounce-back? Yes. I’m here for it. I am! I don’t really take issue with what this type of post says, but with what it implies.
If it’s okay for your body to look like babies grew inside it (because they did) then is it not okay for your body to look like babies grew inside it if they didn’t?”
All the Children are Mine at The Pomegranate
“My own baby, long and thin like a spaghetti noodle in an orange jersey, ping-pongs back and forth across the soccer floor, waving at me, unaware. He is safe in a climate-controlled gymnasium surrounded by friends who want to play and adults who want to help him learn. Did the Iranian mothers who sent their daughters off to school yesterday morning think the same?”
Acceptance Emails Which I, a Struggling Writer, Have Fantasized About Receiving at Jane Austen’s Wastebasket
“We have installed a tracker on our automated submissions email that analyzed how many times all our submitters refreshed their inbox to see whether they’d received an acceptance. The most tenacious page reloader gets accepted. You won, and it wasn’t even close.”
Stuck on a Poem? Dumb it Down for my college’s literary journal blog and on Medium
“Imagine you’re Wordsworth, scratching out ideas with a quill pen on a sheet of old-timey foolscap. You want to write about the restorative power of nature, about how a brilliant burst of color on a spring day can stay with you for years afterward. Great. But you won’t be able to throw out a perfectly enjambed lyrical ballad on the first try.”
What I Am Currently Writing
I started a quick-and-dirty recipe-and-money-saving blog at Meal Plan on a Budget!
I’m also working on something bigger, in a longer form, which I am keeping close to my chest right now, but will be ready to talk about soon! I’m also scratching out ideas for the annual JASNA essay contest, and thinking about doing another Summer of Jane Austen here on Substack again.
What are you writing? Reading? Thinking about? Leave a comment and let me know!