Reading & Knitting Round Up – Week 5 of 2020

This is the last Wednesday of January! It’s just amazing how we’ve already made a dent on 2020. I hope you’ve made a dent in your TBR and your pile of knitting!

On Wednesdays I link up with a couple of fun bloggers:

• Kat at As Kat Knits hosts Unraveled – a place for us to share our reading and knitting progress for the week;
• Sam at Taking on a World of Words hosts WWW Wednesdays. The Ws stand for What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish? and What do you think you’ll read next?

Please go check out their blogs and all of the other bloggers who link up with them!

Reading

Finished This Week:

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We Were the Lucky Ones did quite a number on me. I found I couldn’t read more than 15% of the book at a time, which is unusual. This was a WWII novel about a family living in Poland when the war reached its borders. It was heartbreaking and horrifying and I almost abandoned the book because I didn’t think my soul could take it. But – it was totally worth it in the end. I don’t know how the ending was even possible, but the author is a descendant of the Kurc family and was lucky enough to learn her own incredible family history.

While I was inching through We Were the Lucky Ones, it occurred to me that I could simultaneously read a much more lighthearted book, so I turned to Joy at Work. Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for an advanced copy of this book. I loved Marie Kondo’s previous two books and jumped at an opportunity to read her newest effort. Marie Kondo’s method of tidying has influenced me over the last several years — I adore her stance on finding joy in all aspects of our lives. This book focuses on finding joy in your workspaces. Much of it is similar to her previous methods, but I did find new insights on the importance of clearing digital clutter. Since reading, I’ve tidied the apps on my phone and my computer desktop. But I’ve yet to find beautiful solutions for all of these cords on my desk! Joy at Work will be published on April 7, 2020.

The Horse and His Boy is the third in the chronological order of The Chronicles of Narnia. I wish that more time had been spent in Narnia! But there were parts of this book that I really enjoyed, especially the hermit. I’m looking forward to moving to the next in this series!

Currently Reading:

I opened my Overdrive app last night to check my wait list position on a different book and found that How to Do Nothing had been checked out to me days ago! I must have overlooked the email during my time with We Were the Lucky Ones or one of the many illnesses we’ve been battling at home. I’ve been waiting for it for, literally, months! So I began it last night. It feels like a good follow up to Digital Minimalism, which I read nearly a year ago.

Reading Next:

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I got an advanced copy of Catherine House! It’s being compared to Donna Tartt’s Secret History, so I can’t wait to dive into it.

I’m really enjoying the Cormoran Strike series and I’ll be caught up once I finish this copy of Lethal White. I got a physical copy from the library – oh my! It’s a chunky one!

I’d like to make an effort to read more Agatha Christie this year. Surprisingly, my library doesn’t have many but her books are plentiful so interlibrary loans shouldn’t be an issue. Luckily, they did have Nemesis, which was the one I wanted to read anyway. I’m coming for you, Miss Marple!

(I’ve been including The Orphan’s Tale in this category for the last couple of weeks. Given how difficult We Were the Lucky Ones was for me to finish, I’ve decided to take a little break with WWII fiction and I returned it to the library early. I’ll get back on the waitlist when I’m feeling less fragile!!)

Knitting

My goal over the last week was to separate the sleeves from the body on the little sweater that I’m working on. Well, I’ve made it there and gone even further than I expected! I’m about 2 inches until my next set of directions (the hem? shaping? I can’t remember!). I hope by next week I’ll be working on the hem.

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How has your week been? Are you reading anything wonderful? Knitting anything you’re really enjoying? I got a lot of wonderful replies to yesterday’s blog post that I’m looking forward to replying to, but my youngest is still very sick and I think I’ve ran out of blogging time this morning (at 4:35am!!!). I’m worried that I won’t be able to reply to them as quickly as I’d like. So if you left a reply, I promise I will get back to you! Same with catching up on reading other blog posts – I am so behind!

I hope you all have a week full of knitting and reading that you love!