This Week's Miscellany (03/09/26)

Vikings of Technology, Wuthering Heights, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Screen Addiction, and more!

I’m Haley. Book midwife (editor), author, and single mom of four.

Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.

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Greetings, friends! I began this missive sitting in bed where I was recovering from the Flu followed by whatever upper respiratory thing my kids gifted me this weekend. But this morning I’m feeling mostly better and I’ve relocated to my front porch to watch the sun come up on this foggy Monday.

But I also noticed that the last TWM was sent out at the end of January! I missed a whole month!

But I did manage to

• lead a mini-book club for Wuthering Heights including a conversation with Katie Marquette (you can find all of the reflections and discussion questions in the “latest” posts here)

• review the new film: Please, let me save you from “Wuthering Heights”

• share some Lenty thoughts

(I’ve got an podcast interview with Washington Review of Books editor, Steve Larkin, about the film just waiting for me to edit and post, too.)

In non-Substack news, the new edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales that I edited has been released into the world!

Related: I interviewed Dr. Vigen Guroian about Snow White and Grace Fitzpatrick about fairy tales recently on The Votive Podcast.

I also did a book signing and led a women’s retreat in Houston, cheered my daughter on at the district History Fair competition, drove the kids to 13 different health-related appointments, and my son had a concussion that merited an ER trip. (He’s fine now.) We’re also juggling rehearsals for two different spring musicals. It’s a busy spring!

But despite the breakneck pace of everything and the sickness circulating in the household, we’ve been doing really well. Some really good developments in the kids’ lives to celebrate and a spring break trip just around the corner. (Can you guess where we’re going? More on that very soon!) Now that I feel like I’m on the other side of the grief wave I described last time TWM reached your inbox, I am reminded that even though it doesn’t feel like it in the worst moments of grief—joy always returns. Just wait for it.

Worthwhile Links:

Wuthering Heights looks lush but it’s a bad film and a worse adaptation by Benjamin D. Muir

The interpersonal dynamics that underpin Brontë’s story are warped into a vacuous caricature, missing the point with virtuosic flair. And make no mistake: there is flair. The visual design is bombastic, pointedly anachronistic, and utterly at odds with the novel’s gloomy Gothic countenance.

The Viking Era and the Humanities by Sam Kahn (h/t to my colleague Andrew Tolkmith for sharing it with me)

So, right now, we are sitting at the confluence of two epoch-defining, disruptive changes in the core activities of human societies — warmaking and communication. And both are being conducted by the same kinds of people — guys like Richard Hendricks — with their disruptive technologies.

Inside Switzerland’s Extraordinary Medieval Library by Mike MachEacheran

With intricate woodwork, balconied gantries and vast stockpiles of leather-bound tomes, it is one of the world’s best-preserved Baroque libraries. And for centuries, Switzerland’s largest and oldest monastery library has been regarded as one of Europe’s intellectual treasures.

How to Break Your Screen Addiction by Sr Carino Hodder OP for The Lamp

The consecrated religious life is given to the Church and to the world as a radiant witness: a witness to love, to freedom, and to the goodness of God. Perhaps, in the midst of the current anthropological crisis which Pope Leo has described, it is also called to serve as a witness to something else: to the joy and fulfillment of a life in which has at its heart neither productivity nor prestige, but rather the face-to-face encounter with divine and human persons by which we ourselves become fully who we are called to be.

Pinned by an Angel by Christopher Beha for The Lamp

Eventually I gave up even the intention to attend church on my own, but I continued going with my family at home. I would still have described myself as Catholic if anyone had asked. Plenty of people I knew described themselves as such, even participated more or less fully in the faith (especially when family was involved), while admitting when pressed that they didn’t really buy into all of it. I thought of myself as belonging to this ambivalent camp.

I might have remained there—as many do all their lives—had it not been for a chance encounter with a book.

Reading Lately

• The Design of Books by Debbie Berne (I highly recommend for publishing industry folks, authors, editors, etc who want to understand more of the process and art of book design! Book nerd heaven.)

What I’ve Been Listening To

• Did you know that before Hadestown was a musical it was a concept album and Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) sings Orpheus?!

Upcoming Events

• April 15th: San Antonio, TX: University of the Incarnate Word

• May 16th-17th: New Orleans, LA: Joie de Vivre’s Louisiana Arts and Culture Festival

• July 31st-August 2nd: Wichita, KS: Midwest Catholic Family Conference

Currently Watching

• Bridgerton Season 4 and Love Is Blind Season 10. (I KNOW it’s all trash but I DID HAVE THE FLU.)

Coming this week for Paid Subscribers:

How (and Why) I Travel Overseas with Four Kids series featuring how to get cheap flights and make travel with lots of kids possible.

And, if you saw “Wuthering Heights” and need a palate cleanser, paid subscribers can access my Ultimate Jane Austen Film Guide.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Haley

(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Podcaster)

Haley’s books

Haley’s Catholic Kids’ Cookbook

Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns

Haley’s Book on Jane Austen’s Novels

Haley’s Book about Radical Simplicity