Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read The Web Renaissance Takes Off by Anil Dash.

Sign me up.

(I’m trying to make a web-related pun here about Lucrezia Borgia, but it’s just not happening.)

🔖 Read Ambient Co-Presence by Maggie Appleton.

This sounds really nice. My favorite locale for physical ambient co-presence is a university library, which I use a Winter Whale sound video to replicate at home. I use a few co& working sessions via a Mighty Networks or Zoom to do this, too. I wonder what the role of services like Focusmate or Flow.club is here.

Gonna be updating my about page soon. If you were going to choose something to include on my about page, what would it be?

Finished reading: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 📚

I’m late to this party but happy to finally be here. As sweet and hot as the romance here is, it’s the portrayal of fibromyalgia that makes my heart sing.

🔖 Austin Kleon’s list of 100 things that made his year is excellent, as always.

Responding to this post on gift-giving:

For me, the sweet spot for a gift is when you can use it to show that you’ve paid attention to what the person needs or cares about. Not because you want to be smug or feel good about yourself, but because as the receiver of a gift, it feels good to be seen.

Most years, I only give gifts to family, which certainly makes this easier. In recent years, I also pick an annual formula, for example, everyone gets a book or everyone gets a T-shirt.

This year, everyone got a donation to something they care about plus a token to unwrap.

• My brother got patronage of Defunctland and a Defunctland brochure.
• My sister got a symbolic adoption of a red panda through the World Wildlife Fund and a DVD of the Spirited Away stage show.
• My brother-in-law got a donation to the Order of the Good Death and an occult-themed cocktail recipe book.
• My mother got a donation to the American Cancer Society and a T-shirt with a meme she likes on it.
• My father got a manatee adoption from the Save the Manatee club and a Jeopardy! card game.

Each of these gifts says:

1. I noticed something that’s important to you.
2. I noticed something you enjoy.

There’s no perfect formula for gift giving, but I find using it as an opportunity to say “I see you” is a useful principle.

🔖 Read 2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott.

How about, from now on, we make every year the year of the personal website – and make the internet human, creative, personal, and weird again?

I’m down.

Leigh Bardugo encourages people on New Year’s Day to Begin As You Mean to Go On, meaning to spend 15 minutes doing something you want to do more of this year.

So I spent 15 minutes journaling with Esmé Weijun Wang’s Rawness of Remembering journaling course.

Some notes on my reading year 2023. I read 47 books. I overwhelmingly read romance, much more than any other genre. I have no regrets about that. There wasn’t a single book this year that stood out as more of a favorite than the rest.

We Could Be So Good is the one that grabbed me from the first sentence.

Mr. & Mrs. Witch is the one that set me on my path of reading mostly romance.

Dept. of Speculation is probably the one I read fastest.

I don’t finish books I wouldn’t recommend, so try whatever on this list looks good to you!

🍿 Watched Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story.

A fascinating documentary about a fascinating person.

Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚

I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.

Me: I started this book last night and read only one chapter before bed. Now I’m on page 214.
W: Sounds like my wife.
📚

It is not humanly possible for Helena Greer to write fast enough to meet my desire for Carrigan’s content. It’s generous of her to give us a book a year. Yet I’d read however many she wrote as quickly as I could.

📚🗨️ “I want to live my life being irrationally hopeful. Loving people and fish and cities with my whole heart.” Jake Maia Arlow, How to Excavate a Heart

Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚

Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.

Yesterday my mom, who in April 2022 was told she would probably never walk again, walked (with a walker and people around to spot her) up my front steps, into my house, and over to the couch. This is the result of months of hard work and physical therapy. ♥️

🍿 Watched Hats Off to Christmas.

This is the most paradigmatic Hallmark Christmas movie. It has everything:

• a struggling small business
• a suit guy
• who is going back to his small hometown after life in the big city
• a wheelchair-riding moppet
• who miraculously recovers from the injury that made him need a wheelchair
• a woman being stupid because of a conversation she eavesdropped on
• who is a young widow
• two chaste kisses
• a happy ending

Is it a good movie? No. But is it a laughably bad movie? No. Haylie Duff is incredibly winning and the reason I kept watching. Her chemistry with her costar is non-existent but she’s so cute, I didn’t care.

🗨️📚 “the emptiness was the absence of myself.” Alison Cochrun, Kiss Her Once for Me

Finished reading: Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun 📚

This one was so lovely it made me cry. I can’t even sum up. Go read the description if it sounds good to you, try it out. Highly recommend.

I made this Funko Pop of myself using this Microsoft Designer prompt and I love her so much.

My little family is in the production of A Christmas Carol honoring the retirement of the director of the theater where W & I met. At rehearsal last night I looked at a particular spot on the floor of the theater & thought, “That’s where I fell in love with W.”

In today’s issue of Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders writes about how to fix GoodReads to avoid people review-bombing books to lower their ratings.

I haven’t used GoodReads in a long time but Anders brings up a point that has me wanting to share how I write about books online. Anders shares an anecdote about losing a bunch of star ratings on songs in iTunes and then switching to a simple love/don’t love system, then says:

And I feel like with books, it’s pretty similar. Did you like this book or not? Would you recommend it to your friends? Would you look out for more books by this author in future? The important questions are all yes or no.

And this is how I tend to share books when I’m writing about them quickly.

If I loved a book, I’ll end my short post with “Highly recommend.” If I like it, I’ll just share that I finished it and maybe a brief description. If I don’t like it, I probably didn’t finish it, and I probably won’t post about it at all.

When I write a full review, I share a summary, what I loved, what I wanted more of, what I need to warn you about, and who should read the book. I only write this kind of review about books I would recommend.

Since 2007 I’ve had a policy of only publishing positive reviews on my website and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Bringing back The PhD Story’s predictive text New Year’s Resolution:

My resolution for 2024 is to be a good time.

Finished reading: You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Oh my goodness I love it. Matthew Prince starts out as a spoiled party boy but Janovsky slowly pulled the onion layers back until I loved him. And his love interest Hector is wonderful. Highly recommend.

📚 Listening to Patrick Stewart read A Christmas Carol and it’s just feels like having Jean-Luc Picard read it to you. 😍