Not long ago, the mundane acts of daily life had distinct textures: the cold resistance of a key turning in a lock, the scratch of pen on paper, the satisfying click of a telephone keypad. In a new cover story for Vox’s July Highlight, writer Sara Herschander observes how these varied sensations have collapsed into a single, uniform gesture—the tap of a fingertip on glass. The piece argues that the migration of so many tasks to screens is eroding our sense of touch, with young children particularly affected by the flattening of sensory experience.

That screen-dominated reality is, paradoxically, the stage for this month’s most anticipated cultural releases. On 1 July, Netflix will premiere Enola Holmes 3, the third instalment in the mystery-adventure series starring Millie Bobby Brown as the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. The plot, as detailed by outlets from Buenos Aires to Mumbai, sees Enola’s wedding to Lord Tewkesbury interrupted by the kidnapping of her brother, forcing her to abandon the ceremony and plunge into a conspiracy that threatens her family. The film marks a directorial shift: Philip Barantini, known for the single-take police drama Adolescence, takes over, bringing a style that, according to the production, is more intense and dynamic while retaining the Victorian-era whimsy. Latin American audiences, where the franchise has a fervent following, will watch Brown reprise a role that, alongside Eleven in Stranger Things, has made her a streaming-era icon.

The month’s streaming menu extends well beyond Baker Street. HBO Max will launch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on 24 July, a science-fiction comedy spin-off from The Big Bang Theory that strands the comic-book store owner in a multiverse crisis. Amazon Prime Video counters with Elle on 1 July, a prequel series tracing Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods through her 1990s high school years, and Ride or Die on 15 July, a London-set action comedy pairing Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer as a secret agent and her bewildered best friend. Netflix, meanwhile, offers The Hawk on 16 July, a golf comedy co-created by and starring Will Ferrell, and a reboot of Little House on the Prairie on 9 July, transplanting the 1970s family drama to the 1870s Minnesota frontier with Australian actor Luke Bracey as Charles Ingalls. For Spanish-speaking viewers, HBO Max will present the final chapter of the Wicked film adaptation, Wicked: Por siempre, on 10 July, while the Telugu crime thriller Visakhapatnam arrives on Netflix on 2 July, reflecting the growing weight of South Asian regional content in global streaming catalogues.

Away from the screen, Australian publishers are offering a July book list that, in its own way, grapples with identity and survival in disorienting times. Maria Takolander’s debut novel The End of Romance imagines a fog-bound dystopia where a mother flees with her son to avoid his conscription into a colonising mission to a distant planet. Getting Murdoched by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson chronicles the global influence of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, while Worry Doll by Laura McPhee-Browne dissects a consuming affair between two women. Sally Piper’s People Like Us follows a divorced woman living in a caravan, and Naomi Parry Duncan’s Musquito re-examines the life of an Indigenous resistance leader executed in 1825, uncovering uncomfortable truths about the author’s own ancestors. These works, like the streaming titles, are consumed in moments of quiet focus—a contrast to the endless tapping that Herschander describes.

Perhaps the most tactile object in this month’s cultural landscape is the book itself. As readers in Sydney or Melbourne crack the spine of a new novel, they engage in a physical act that screens cannot replicate: the weight of the paper, the scent of ink, the sound of a page turning. It is a small, private ritual that endures, even as the world’s stories increasingly arrive through a pane of glass.