Monday Miscellany: Standing strong and sure

Notes from April 6 - 12

Apr 13, 2026

It’s been a week of changes here—new haircut, new piercing, new glasses frames on order—and with my 40th birthday a few short days away, I’m feeling energized and optimistic. There’s just something about switching things up, you know?

Once again I’m thinking about free will, this time in the context of aging, of shedding a bit more self-consciousness with each passing year, of following my whims when it comes to appearance and figuring out how to feel more and more like myself as I get older. Life is short, I’m realizing. So I got bangs!

Read this week

It’s been a decade since Maria Semple released a novel, and a little more than that since I first read and fell in love with her breakout Where’d You Go, Bernadette. So I am delighted to tell you about her new one, Go Gentle, which comes out tomorrow!1 Like Bernadette, this one has a bit of a mystery at its core. And it’s very quirky. It won’t be for everyone, but I had a good time.

Go Gentle follows Adora Hazzard, a middle-aged philosopher, mother, and divorcée, who lives in a historic old building in New York with her “coven” of fellow single women2 and serves as moral tutor to the twin sons of an extremely rich and famous family. Her focus is Stoicism, and any time a problem arises, she has the exact Epictetus, Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius quote necessary to solve it. But when she meets a handsome stranger seemingly by chance, in line for the ballet of all places, she suddenly feels something unfamiliar, something that flies in the face of her beloved Stoics: desire. And as she learns more about this man, how he might be connected to her employers, a suspicious art deal they’re brokering, and even her own past, she has to figure out how her emotions fit in to her previously simple and cerebral life.

I don’t know that I ever fully came to understand Adora as a character, but I love how weird and smart and multi-faceted she is. While scrolling Maria Semple’s wikipedia page I found out that she wrote for Arrested Development and had a tiny part in I Heart Huckabees, and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Go Gentle gets adapted because the vibes are totally in line with both of those things and I could absolutely see it as a movie.

Having somehow met almost all my April release deadlines (one more to go, but that’s for next week), I took a break after Go Gentle to read something from my older unread shelf: Dig by A.S. King. This was a used bookstore find back in 2021 and is freshly on my radar because the author will be visiting my local bookstore for an event this week.3

Dig is the story of a family, kind of, but a super dysfunctional and fragmented one. We bounce between multiple different perspectives as identities are slowly revealed and connections gradually established. It’s about whiteness, racism, privilege, and complicity, and though sometimes those themes felt a little forced or heavy-handed, I liked the emphasis on breaking generational cycles and being the change. There is also a bit of magic at play, which adds intrigue and keeps the pages turning. I think I would’ve really eaten this up as a teenager.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

Let me add my voice to the chorus: Project Hail Mary (2026) is so good! The adaptation is pretty faithful, hitting most of the major plot points of the book and not changing anything too egregiously. The casting is spot-on, Ryan Gosling simultaneously smart and funny and self-deprecating and earnest, his friendship with Rocky silly and tender. The visuals and music are stunning. I loved the addition of Carl, played by Lionel Boyce from The Bear. At 2 hours and 36 minutes, it’s a long film, but I was captivated throughout and never once checked my watch. Andy Weir’s blend of high stakes, humor, and emotion translates perfectly to the screen, and I left the theater teary and smiling, with my hand on my heart. I can’t wait to see it again.

This week I made it my beeswax to watch The Devil Wears Prada (2006) since the sequel is opening in a few short weeks! It was as I remembered: an upsetting amount of fat jokes,4 but also Meryl Streep serving peak ice queen, a classic Anne Hathaway glow-up montage featuring Stanley Tucci as fairy godmother of the Runway sample closet, a super nostalgic early 2000s soundtrack, and so many excellent Emily Blunt moments. It holds up. Now I kind of want to re-read the book, too.

I recently found The Lego Movie (2014) on blu-ray for cheap at the used bookstore and snatched it up to finally watch since I remember hearing good things about it when it came out.5 And yeah, ‘twas fun! Full disclosure, I got too cozy on the couch and might have drifted off a little toward the end, but the 92% I was conscious for was a great time. I liked the characters, and the lego animation, and how the live action section pulled everything together in a heartwarming way. And it was nice, after having known the song “Everything is Awesome” for many years, to experience it in its original context.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 6