Reading & Knitting – Week 21 of 2020

It’s mid-week and time to catch up with Kat at As Kat Knits. She hosts Unraveled Wednesday – a weekly gathering of knitters and readers who share their current projects. I don’t think you’ll find a kinder and more welcoming group of bloggers on the internet, so please visit as many of them as you can!

I have good news – my library is now offering curbside pick up! Last week Gretchen mentioned that her library was offering this service and I thought it was brilliant. Then I got a notification from my own library that they’d be doing the same! I was thrilled and put in my requests over the weekend. I hope that your library can offer this soon!

Reading

Finished This Week:

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It’s been a fantastic week for reading. I managed to find three books that I couldn’t stop reading or listening to – I love it when that happens!

I was hesitant to spend my reading time with The Hobbit. I enjoyed my time in the Shire with Bilbo when I last read this in high school, but really struggled through the adventure sections. I enjoyed it all this go round and am so glad that I gave it another chance! I especially enjoyed Bilbo’s constant yearning for his cozy burrow.

Megan Miranda books are always so fun and play with timelines in smart ways – The Last House Guest was no exception. This one was a tiny bit confusing to me, but I think it was because it was on audio and difficult for me to keep up with the timeline. Miranda’s new book will be published in June and I can’t wait to get on the library waitlist for it!

I can’t remember where I heard about The Things We Cannot Say, but I’m thankful that I did! I’d been on the Overdrive waitlist for this for a long time and it finally came through this week. It’s a fictional WWII novel, which you know I love. And the present day storyline featured a mother and her autistic son who reminded me so much of my own Bug that it was uncanny. I can’t tell you how moving it was to see my own son’s behaviors and my own feelings on a written page like this and I just couldn’t stop reading. This is in contention for my favorite read of the year!

Currently Reading:

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Before starting this, I’d never heard of Ruth Reichl or read Gourmet Magazine but Save Me the Plums has been a really fun read so far! I love reading how ultra-hippie Reichl initially refused the offer to be Editor in Chief of this prestigious magazine because of how stuffy it had become and she felt she didn’t have the skills needed. I can’t wait to see how her tenure turns out (my guess is that it’s pretty good)!

When We Left Cuba is my current audiobook. I read the first in this series, Next Year in Havana, last summer and have been waiting for some warmer weather to return to it. I’m excited about this book because there was a single sentence in Next Year in Havana that previewed this novel’s quest. At the time, I didn’t know know there was a sequel and I literally shouted WHAT?? when I read that sentence. Imagine my delight when I learned that Cleeton had more to tell! When I read Next Year in Havana, I realized that I knew nothing about the Cuban Revolution and had never read anything set in Cuba, so this has been a great series to rectify that oversight. And Beatriz is pretty awesome!

Abandoned This Week:

My second abandoned book of the year! The premise of Gravity is the Thing was so intriguing to me: a young woman starts receiving chapters of The Guidebook after her brother’s death when she was a teenager. Finally, she receives an invitation to stay at a hotel to discover the truth behind the mailings. But when I started reading it, the tone wasn’t quite right for me. The main character was just a little too joke-y and in her own head. There are just too many good books in the queue to try to finish something that’s making me cringe, so I’ve moved on!

Knitting

I continue to be amazed by the progress one can make by simply knitting one row at a time. Or even one stitch at a time. I’m still working on my Birkin sweater and enjoying the growth that I see. The body is finished and I’m now tackling the sleeves. I can almost taste my next project!!

I was thrilled to see so many of you have also signed up for the Through the Loops Mystery Knit Along! It will be so encouraging for me to see everyone’s progress and I hope it will keep me motivated to stay caught up with the clues. I’m glad I ordered my yarn from knitpicks when I did because it still hasn’t shipped due to Covid slowing everything down. I was hoping to share my yarn selection with you today, but perhaps I can on Friday or in next Wednesday’s post.

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Happy Wednesday, friends. May the rest of this week offer you good books, enjoyable knitting, and lots of coziness!