Notes
Want to read: Blade of Secrets by Tricia Levenseller 📚
My kid and I are building NYC for the Ninja Turtles & Marvel Superheroes to adventure in, so of course I had to build the @nypl Schwarzman bldg on 5th Ave complete with Patience and Fortitude.
📚 I first read SHADOW AND BONE 5 years ago, on a hammock at the beach, when I was 7 months pregnant. I was too impatient to do a re-read before the show, but I hadn’t read the other Grishaverse books so I refreshed my memory with the Wikipedia plot summary and powered through SIEGE AND STORM, RUIN AND RISING, and SIX OF CROWS just in time for the show. I’m reading CROOKED KINGDOM in a more leisurely fashion.
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Alina’s connection with Morozova’s stag really resonates with me because my last name is Yiddish for stag. What’s a bookish connection to your name?
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[A silver stag silhouette pendant sitting on top of a paperback copy of Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone which rests on top of a crocheted wrap in green, blue, and purple.]
I had to do one more round of formatting this morning but at long last my dissertation has been accepted by my university!
I started a bookstagram account. You can find it at kimberlyhirsh.reads if you want to follow along. Right now this almost 20 year old picture of me kissing books is the only post over there.
Here are seven bookish facts about me:
💀 My favorite book since 7th grade has been Piers Anthony’s ON A PALE HORSE. I love that it’s about what it’s like to BE Death.
📓 The most recent F2F bookish event I attended was when @austinkleon visited Flyleaf Books on tour for KEEP GOING. That was > 2 years ago.
🚪I love stories with hidden doors that lead to secret rooms. I think the most recent of these I’ve read is @erinmorgenstern’s THE STARLESS SEA.
📕 When I was in middle school, I volunteered as a summer program assistant at my local library.
🌳 My current favorite reading spot is a hammock on my back deck.
🎒 I used to be a middle school librarian.
💒 I’ve only been to the Library of Congress once that I can remember. It was a spiritual experience.
📚 Your turn! Let me know a bookish fact about you!
Me, watching STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS: Battle, battle, battle. When are we going to get another DIPLOMACY episode? (Padme is my prequel era fave, OF COURSE.) 📺
I fixed the formatting problem which was in fact my fault. When I tried to fix one thing it did another thing and I didn’t realize it and was too tired to check over and through 245 pages last time. But I think it’s fixed for real this time PLEASELETITBEFIXEDOHMYGOODNESS.
I’ve been attending to my mind almost exclusively for 6 years (and arguably for almost 40). Time to give some attention to her neglected sisters, my body and spirit.
Was playing Ninja Turtles with my kid & his action figures & kid made Leo tell Donnie he’s just a toy & I made Donnie have a full-on existential crisis over this. My kid handled my projection with great grace.
I am filled with rage over the number of formatting revisions I am having to make to my dissertation, especially as the most recent one they requested is something I thought I already did. I am so tired and so angry and just want to be done.
🔖 I’ve started calling my kid Little One & after reading Meg Elison’s How Lwaxana Troi Became Our Space Aunt I couldn’t be happier to be aging into my natural camp grand dame-ness. 🖖🏻📺
I was thinking last night about why characters who look a mess but are competent when it counts are some of my favorites and I realized that’s how I perceive myself. (That’s why I need this sticker from Anxiety Productions.)
Want to read: THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOME ECONOMICS How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live by Danielle Dreilinger 📚
You should probably look at Laz Marquez’s #StarTrekGala art project because it’s AWESOME. 🖖🏻🎨📺
🔖📚 Austin Kleon writes today about [wintering and dormancy] (https://austinkleon.com/2021/05/04/wintering-and-dormancy/), quoting Katherine May’s book Wintering. I’m reading the book right now. What I didn’t know before reading but appreciate is that May is writing about leaving academia.
🔖📺🖖 Read The Measure of a Man Demonstrates the Many Forms of Love by Anna E. Gant
🔖📺🖖 Hrisoula Gatzogiannis’s The Only Work Ethic I Care About Is the One on Star Trek details what Picard explains in the TNG episode “The Neutral Zone.” A 20th century man asks “What’s the challenge?” & Picard says “To improve yourself… enrich yourself.”
I’m thinking about metaphors for how people consume information. Infodemic. Infobesity. I think there are more thoughts to be had here, potentially even scholarly thoughts.
I want to share that if you have panic attacks fueled by imposter syndrome more than 2 weeks after your dissertation defense, you are not alone, because I did that today.