What We’re Reading–February 2026
When we have free moments, it can be difficult to choose whether we want to spend that time writing or reading. Fortunately, the winter months are often a period when we can manage more of both because we don’t have the temptation of sun and warmth to lure us to outdoor activities. If you’re looking for new reads, check out what Literary Mama staff have been perusing recently.
Editor-in-Chief Amanda Fields was able to get more reading done during her four-month sabbatical; a book she read during that time was journalist Karen Hao’s Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
“It’s a thoroughly researched book on the genesis and perpetuation of OpenAI and its counterparts,” Fields says. “It helps me understand the proliferation of this technology and describes the rhetorical frameworks set up by Altman and many others to sell mediocrity. And Hao reminds us of the vast inequities that have occurred as workers across the globe have worked to train LLMs for little compensation and without job security. Since I study rhetoric, I’m enjoying the way that Hao unveils and critiques the narrative force of a thing that it feels as if none of us can get peace from.”
Fields’s read reminds me of another nonfiction AI book that is a little older (published 2019) but eye-opening because it explains AI’s limitations in a way that the lay reader can understand: You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane, an AI researcher. There were so many times I laughed out loud at the limitations of AI and the vast amount of time and energy spent to train AI to do things humans can do much easier and with better results.
If the potential horrors of AI aren’t your thing but other types of horror are, consider Mister Magic by Kiersten White, recommended by social media editor Cecilia Kennedy whose college student son got her into horror when he was younger. She says of White’s novel: “It’s scary, heartbreaking, and unique: How trustworthy are childhood memories? How wholesome and nostalgic are those memories of favorite children’s television programs? Themes of friendship, motherhood, and parenting are woven in as well.” Literary Mama would love to know what you are reading! Comment below so we can add to our TBR lists.