Monday Miscellany: She awakens to powers previously unknown

Notes from February 24 - March 2

Mar 04, 2025

Rabbit rabbit! Welcome to a new week and a new month. I didn’t plan this, but my first read of March was a memoir about a wild hare, and yes, I know hares are different from rabbits, but it still feels appropriate and correct. I also watched a couple of good movies last week that I’m excited to talk about, so without further ado, let’s get into it:

Currently reading

Since seeing Grady Hendrix on tour at the end of January, I’ve been looking forward to reading his new book, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. The novel follows Fern, a 15-year-old who becomes pregnant and is sent by her parents to a home for unwed mothers in Florida. Everything there proceeds fairly predictably for a while—she meets the other girls, eats meals, does chores to earn her keep, and stays out of sight as she awaits her due date—until a bookmobile comes to the home and Fern ends up with a mysterious little paperback called How to Be a Groovy Witch. Suddenly she awakens to powers previously unknown and finds herself in the midst of a supernatural struggle she never imagined or wanted.

Like Hendrix’s other books, this one is compelling and fast-paced; I do think it could, (and maybe should?) have been shorter, but I nevertheless made quick work of its almost five hundred pages. I also wouldn’t say it’s my favorite thing he’s written; of the ones I’ve read, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires wears that crown. But for the most part Witchcraft absorbed my attention and kept me on the edge of my seat. A few scenes, notably those involving difficult or particularly gnarly births, had me reading through squeamishly squinted eyes! Hendrix clearly did a lot of research about both witchcraft and the history of these sorts of “homes,” and I appreciated his comments in the acknowledgments and his recommendation of Ann Fessler’s book The Girls Who Went Away as a source of more information.

Speaking of quick reads! The weather on Saturday was absolutely perfect, sunny and mild with a cool breeze, and I took a long overdue walk to my strollway bench, where I started Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. This is a memoir, out tomorrow (March 4) from Pantheon, about Dalton’s experience finding a stranded day-old leveret (the word for a baby hare, just one of the many things I learned while reading) and caring for it over a period of several years. She doesn’t give the animal a name, since she is very adamant that it isn’t a pet, and she allows it full autonomy, arranging her home so that it can come and go as it pleases. Sometimes the hare spends all day indoors, next to Dalton as she’s working at her desk, and sometimes it disappears for long stretches outdoors before returning weeks later. But the two slowly develop a relationship of trust and respect, and it’s truly lovely to read about.

Now I had come to appreciate that affection for an animal is of a different kind entirely: untinged by the regret, complexities and compromises of human relationships. It has an innocence and purity all its own. (145)

Having kept rabbits as pets in the past, I enjoyed spotting some overlap between their behaviors and how Dalton describes the hare. She does a lot of research as she’s getting to know this animal, and in her reporting of what she finds, she notes a lot of differences between hares and rabbits that I also loved learning about. One of my favorite facts concerns “a process known as ‘superfetation’, by which hares are capable of carrying two litters of leverets simultaneously,” which is “another unusual attribute not found in rabbits” (91). Basically, hares can get pregnant while they’re already pregnant. Nature is wild.

There is so much more I could say about Raising Hare, but I also don’t want to go on too long. In a nutshell: it’s beautifully written, simultaneously factual and emotional, completely engrossing, a balm. Five glowing stars from me. If you’re interested in animals, nature, conservation, slow living, or the attention economy, you will find something really fulfilling in these pages.

A rediscovered fave: La Botana in Winston-Salem, NC

Added to my to-read list this week

I was feeling a little cagey on Wednesday after being in the house for too long, so we escaped to the used bookstore for a browse before grabbing dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant. These are the books I left with:

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead: It’s a mission of mine to get through Whitehead’s whole backlist eventually! So far I’ve read The Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree: This feels like a good year for some cozy low-stakes fantasy. I enjoyed Baldree’s previous novel, Legends & Lattes, and I imagine this one will scratch the same comforting and escapist itch.

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Currently watching

During that same used bookstore browse, we found a couple of DVDs to take home: Save Yourselves! (2020) and Be Kind Rewind (2008).

Save Yourselves! was new to us, and we watched it immediately. It’s about a young couple who realize they’re way too online and it’s rotting their brains, so they escape their home in Brooklyn for an off-grid week at a cabin out of town. The problem is that, while they’re unplugged, a mysterious alien force descends from space and they don’t realize it until it’s maybe too late. I really loved John Reynolds in Search Party and he is great in this too—he and Sunita Mani have a fun dynamic. This film is tense yet silly, a soupçon¹ of sci-fi mixed into a very relatable real-world setting.

Jordan and I had both seen Be Kind Rewind, but many years ago. We’re fans of Michel Gondry’s work, especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and The Science of Sleep (2006),² and the combination of Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) and Jack Black as Mike and Jerry is top tier. Mike works at a video rental store owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), and when he’s left in charge while his boss is away, Jerry comes in, fresh from a failed power plant sabotage maneuver that has left his body magnetized (just go with me here), and accidentally erases all the VHS tapes. So the two friends scramble to record over the ruined tapes with their own remakes of the lost films so they can continue running the rental business and avoid getting in trouble with Mr. Fletcher. The included clips from their “sweded” versions of popular movies were some of my favorite parts.

¹ Oh hell yes, I love an opportunity to use this word.

² AND, I would be remiss to omit, the incredible music video for “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters!!