Finished reading: Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid 📚

Finished reading: Game Changer by Rachel Reid 📚

📚 Thank goodness someone is thinking of the men (novelists). 🙄: https://kimberlyhirsh.com/2025/11/18/thank-goodness-someone-is-thinking.html

Finished reading: Run Posy Run by Cate C. Wells 📚

It’s a little embarrassing that it took me watching Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein to understand that Mary Shelley is both Victor AND the creature, not just Victor. (It’s not news that I make too much of her alignment with either of them.) 🍿

🍿 Victor Frankenstein has postpartum depression.

Finished reading: Dream A Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚 If your public library, like mine, is having a delay in ordering new books due to the closure of Baker and Taylor, may I suggest checking out an author’s backlist? Susan Elizabeth Phillips would be a great choice.

Finished reading: The Magpie Lord by Kj Charles 📚 KJ Charles’s writing is so reliably delightful.

🔖 Read W.E.B. Du Bois’s Remarkable Data Visualizations in Jillian Hess’s newsletter, Noted. It’s thrilling to see how DuBois established practices for both data collection and data visualization that continue to be critical in the social sciences today.

Finished reading: Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase 📚

💬📚 “…I feel like both her confidante and her baby…” Eve Chase, Black Rabbit Hall

Finished reading: A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas 📚 So far I’ve liked each book in this series better than the last.

🔖 Read Monster or victim?: The fascination of Hedda Gabler, the ‘female Hamlet’ who divides opinion by Miriam Balanescu (BBC). Why not both?

Finished reading: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher 📚 Why is fungus so goth? I don’t know but it is and it’s excellent. A very different take on gothic fungus from Mexican Gothic.

Finished reading: Again The Magic by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Finished reading: I Must Say by Martin Short 📚🎧 Martin Short is a delight and listening to him read his memoir is wonderful.

🔖 Read What’s next after the historic No Kings protest? by Daniel Hunter (Waging Non-violence). Reading about defections gives me hope.

You can *care* about many things and you can only take concrete & sustained action on 1 or 2 things.

🔖 Read No, you don’t need to optimize your morning routine. This post from Fenn Priest is a gift. I’m so glad Katy Peplin linked it in her newsletter.

Finished reading: The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker 📚

Finished reading: Worth Fighting For by Jesse Q. Sutanto 📚

Finished reading: Worth Fighting For by Jesse Q. Sutanto 📚

Let's learm about each other like we were 10 years old. Favorite Color: Black 🖤 Favorite Dinosaur: Maiasaura Favorite Sweet: Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Favorite Cartoon: Animaniacs (1993)

I have to say that the Cousin It costume wins the Durham march today

Taking things to the next level by insisting everyone refer to cornfield mazes as "metroidgrainias"

🔖 Read The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Story. This is a super interesting read about comparative mythology. I had to borrow The New Yorker from my library in the Libby app to read it.

🔖📚 Read The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist. Book heist! Fascinating stuff!

Book parties for the end of the world

Finished reading: The Death of Jane Lawrence: A Novel by Caitlin Starling 📚

🔖📚 Read A Texas District Has Just Banned Students from Secondary School Libraries. In New Braunfels ISD, middle and high school libraries will be closed for an indefinite amounts of time while books are reviewed. Read the article for suggestions on how to defend the freedom to read in Texas.

It is once again that time of year when I ponder changing my notebook set up.

Finished reading: A Court of Mist and Fury (a Court of Thorns and Roses, 2) by Sarah J. Maas 📚

🔖📚 Read To Haunt and Be Haunted: On the Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe by Ed Simon (Literary Hub). I love that Simon is able to draw lines from Poe’s work to his burial, from his burial to his exhumation, to multiple author’s taphephobia to Barthes and the death of the author.

Finished reading: The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang 📚🎧 I love what I know of Esmé Weijun Wang, as a teacher, writer, and fellow traveler through the wilds of chronic illness. She reads the audiobook and her sweet voice lends such warmth to her beautiful essays.

🔖📚 Read New NC law means teachers are providing fewer books for their students to read. This bill requires schools to publish a complete catalog of all texts available to students. It creates an administrative burden and has a chilling effect on students’ access to materials.

Finished reading: The Cloisters by Katy Hays 📚 This is on the list of key titles for gothic fiction at NoveList Plus. It definitely skews more dark academia than traditional Gothic. More ambition and dangerous thirsd for knowledge than dread and family secrets.

Almost every gothic novel since Rebecca is Rebecca, and Rebecca is Jane Eyre. 📚

Finished reading: All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles 📚 Listen, I already knew KJ Charles was great because I read most of her Society of Gentlemen series and loved it. But after reading this bit of gothic perfection, I want us to become best friends.

Finished reading: Worth Any Price by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Hello and welcome to the best month. 🎃👻⚰️🧛🏻‍♀️

If you've done in-person research at any of the following presidential libraries in the last 8 months, can you please follow me/contact me—soon—for a story I'm working on (can be off the record)? Hoover FDR Truman Eisenhower JFK LBJ Ford Carter And either way, can you please share this request? 🙏

14,292 games released on Steam in 2025 alone. 1100 new board games at SPIEL. The sheer number of games being released now, all over the world by all these different sizes of teams, really boggles the mind, but what *really* boggles the mind is still having to *defend game studies* despite all that.

Finished reading: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett 📚 There are some authors whose writing (and fine, online presence) makes yyou want to be friends with them. For me, Kristen Arnett is one of those writers. Maybe someday.

📚💬 “Oh, this clown will never run out of bits, because every gag is taken from the endless wellspring of her own self-loathing!” Kristen Arnett, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

📚💬 “How can I turn this into a bit, I wonder. That’s how my brain always chooses to process trauma or grief or anxiety.” Kristen Arnett, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Finished reading: With Teeth by Kristen Arnett 📚 Kristen Arnett’s books are sad, funny, and ultimately hopeful. I don’t often miss the Florida of my early childhood, but when I read her work, I do. I tore through this one in one day.

Finished reading: Home for the Challah Days by Jennifer Wilck 📚 Sweet, like an apple dipped in honey. A Hallmark movie if Hallmark made Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur movies.

Paging @cupcakegoth.bsky.social, look how @kjcharleswriter.com wrote us a queer Gothic romance.

Finished reading: When Strangers Marry by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Finished reading: The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang 📚🎧 Esmé Weijun Wang writes beautiful prose. This book is intense and upsetting; over and over again I found myself sympathizing with a character only to be appall... https://kimberlyhirsh.com/2025/09/23/finished-reading-the-border-of.html