Last Post in October | 2025

Anne Shirley had it right when she swooned about Octobers, didn’t she? This month has been gorgeous and we’ve finally gotten some rain this week! I am shocked every time I step outside and am greeted by all of the colors on the trees, as if they’re going down in flames for the year.

I missed my blog post last week! I’ve found myself restless recently and have had no interest in sitting down to write. But I realized this morning that I will fall hopelessly behind if I don’t enter something into the record, so here I am with just a little update about life around here:

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Home Stuff:

We have continued to focus on school and good, long walks! As we move towards the colder weather, I’m taking stock of our board games and figuring out what’s going to be the most fun for the kids to cozy up with. This summer we’ve had Sorry!, The Game of Life, Clue, and A Bunch of Fun Guys (linking that one because it’s not as well known as the others and it’s really cute) on repeat. We found Risk at Goodwill this week, which was exciting. Matthew has been wanting to play but it’s intimidating because of the time requirements. And Mary’s posts has gotten me interested in mah jongg, so I’ve been learning to play that thanks to youtube videos and the free trial at https://realmahjongg.com/. I’m looking into investing in a set of tiles and maybe teaching the kids and Matthew to play?

Personal Learning:

I’ve been able to keep up with my personal learning plan! I’ve made it through the Revolution, the main efforts of writing of the Constitution, and the death of nearly all of the Founding Fathers. Now we’re debating democracy in its early days: who has the power? The states or the people? It’s so fascinating to read about this and watch it continue to play out today. What an experiment!

I’m also still very happy that I’ve divided up my reading in this way. As enjoyable as each of these books are on their own, I’m not sure I would have had the fortitude to read any of them straight through and I appreciate how they build off of each other so well. I’m very, very pleased with my early morning thinking hour!

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Knitting:

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My goal two weeks ago was to finish the shoulder ribbing. I am happy to report that I’ve finished the shoulder ribbing, shoulder shaping, seamed the shoulders together, and started the first sleeve! I took this picture last night before I sat down to knit, but I made some progress on that sleeve while watching Stranger Things. Unrelated to knitting but feels important to mention here: Matthew and I are trying to rewatch all of Stranger Things before the new season premiers. We only get to watch TV together on Saturday and Sunday nights after the kids have gone to bed, so it’s been tricky for us to make progress because I fall asleep so quickly at night. Knitting has been a way to keep my eyes open!

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And I’m about to start the toe decreases on this Confetti Cake sock! I want to get that toe finished and stitched together and my next sock started today because I like to have a simple stockinette stitch project at hand while we’re doing school and when I’m sitting down to read throughout the day. So fingers crossed that I get myself in a good position for that before the week starts.

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Reading:

I’ve found it really difficult to just sit down and read these last two weeks. I’ve been so restless! But still – I cannot end the day without reading at least a little something given that it’s my primary coping mechanism and the world is so wacky right now. So here’s a few thoughts about the books I’ve finished since I last checked in here.

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)

“Do you see the way people move through life – and I mean, just the little bits of their lives you can see? Most of their movement through life is invisible, it goes on inside of them, so for us it exists beneath the surface. Their own private worlds, their imaginations.” p208

This book was translated from Arabic and won the International Booker Prize in 2019. It was put on my radar by Mary who chose it for her Women in Translation project this year. Celestial Bodies was haunting and beautiful and required careful reading to put everything (and everyone!) into context, but it was worth the effort. It’s set in Oman and centers around three sisters and their different choices in life. We hear from many different perspectives throughout time, it’s almost dizzying to take in all of the changes of Oman and how this family tried to adapt.

At the heart of the story is a mystery about what happened to the mother of one character we hear from often. The book carefully peels back the efforts to hide the truth and we find out the heartbreaking details near the very end. I’m glad I stuck with this powerful book and I’ll be carrying these sisters with me for a long time.

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The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)

This book reminded me of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny in a lot of ways, but I felt The Inheritance of Loss explored the effects of colonialism and poverty in India much more deeply and I think this is my favorite of the two. In this novel, we primarily spend time with three characters: a young girl named Sai; her grandfather, The Judge (I listened on audio and while the story gave his name, this is how I think of him); and the judge’s cook’s son, Biju. Their stories were all fascinating, especially The Judge’s backstory.

I chose to read The Inheritance of Loss this month because of my effort to read Female Prize Winners in 2025. My goal this year has been to read one a month and I am keeping up so far:

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A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)

“Aren’t you different before different people? Aren’t you sometimes harsh and sometimes kind?”

Another book set in India this month! In A Guardian and a Thief, famine has struck India in a bad way. We begin the story with three main characters: Ma, her father, and her 2 year old daughter. They’ve received their coveted Visas and are meeting Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor in seven days. They have just enough food that she’s pillaged from her job to get them through when a thief enters their home just a week before they’re set to leave and takes pretty much everything. This sets us on a kaleidoscopic journey to finding their way out. This book was one gut punch after another. I spent most of my listening time with my mouth wide open and my hand on my heart. This was shortlisted for this year’s National Book Award for Fiction and I’m anxious to hear what more people thought about it. I found it was a fantastic story that put climate change front and center.

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Ripeness by Sarah Moss
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)

“I don’t know how much of this you want to know either. I don’t know what you might think you want to know and then wish you didn’t know. You’ll be old enough yourself now, to see how times change, how something you do or say or think can be perfectly ordinary and reasonable and ten or twenty years later deviant or even criminal…” p 107

This feels like it might be my favorite of the year so far? Edith tells her story in dual timelines: as a teenager on the cusp of starting Oxford in the 1960s and as a 60-something in post-COVID Ireland. As a teenager, Edith’s French mother, who barely escaped the Nazis, sent Edith to care for her older sister Lydia, a ballet dancer on the verge of giving birth to her illegitimate child in Italy. And as an adult, Edith is reckoning with what happened that fall, along with the state of the world as we know it. This book is about so many things: the control we have over our own bodies, conservation of Earth, the care of immigrants, our own belonging in the world. It’s impossible to sum up in just a couple of paragraphs. I loved the writing – there were moments of reading when I simply swelled with contentment. Does that ever happen to you while reading? This was one of those books that just left me so satisfied.

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Okay – the dog is barking and Colton is awake, so I must wrap things up this morning! I hope your week is a good one and that you find time to do things that are important to you. Take good care!