Want to read: Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright 📚
🔖 Read today:
- 6 Ways to Maximize Your Reading Time During the Pandemic - I can’t tell whether some of these suggestions are jokes, but they all make sense to me.
- time for new rules. A lot of these rules work for me.
🎮 I finished playing Final Fantasy VII Remake yesterday. I had fun with the game and I adore Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie, more than I did when I originally played Final Fantasy VII about 20 years ago. Marlene is the best part because she looks kind of like my kid. FFVII is in a weird spot for me because it was the first console game I really played, and I played it at a time when I really needed it, emotionally. I’ve tried replays in the past but never made it through. My understanding of the plot has always been… fragmented? And wasn’t made better by watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I deliberately halted a replay before going into the remake so I wouldn’t be constantly comparing them, and I’m happy with that decision. Anyway, I was confused by the ending but didn’t dislike it, and once I talked with W. about it, I found that I actually wished they’d gone bigger in the same direction. I’m now doing a playthrough of the original, and after that I may dig into some of the Final Fantasy VII Compilation titles before going back and doing a plus game replay of FFVIIR.
Lest I think I’m doing nothing during this social isolation time, in addition to raising my kid & dissertating, I’m also planning a consulting business, reading about writing, brushing up my coding skills, and agreeing to do some volunteer research comm. And playing video games.
I’m struggling to dissertate today. My main task for the next little bit is just to correct AI transcriptions of my interviews. It’s not immensely draining, but today even that task is too much for my brain. I blame the weather. It’s cloudy and rainy here today.
Thinking of changing my website’s title (but not my domain) from “Kimberly Hirsh” to “Kimberly Hirsh is a lot.”
🔖🎵🎭📚 Read 8 Musicals that You Might Not Know Were Based on Books by Emily Neuberger.
I’ve been grieving the fact that public performances likely won’t be a thing for the next couple of years. I grieve it both as an audience member and as a performer. Neuberger’s book is going on my to-read list, as her main character’s early experiences with musicals are nearly identical to mine. The musicals and books she writes about are now on my radar if they weren’t, or things I’m going to make a point to revisit if I was already familiar with them.
I bet Neuberger’s book would pair well with The Secret Life of the American Musical, which acts as a Poetics for musicals, describing their shared structural features.
🔖📝 Read How to Write 1000 Poems in a 1000 Days by Nick Asbury. More why to than how to, this is a moving read and a great argument for making art in response to crisis.
👦 My kid just told me that Iron Lychee is a whole bunch of Iron Mans [sic] inside one giant Iron Man.