Unraveled, Week 27/2021

Another good thing about the work week starting on Tuesday is that today is already Wednesday! That means it's time for my weekly check-in with Kat and the Unravelers to talk about my WIPs and what I'm reading.

Since finishing my nephew's blanket, my focus has shifted to a new design sample, which actually got all of my (knitting) attention over the weekend away.

I am using Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce, my old standby, in a special colorway called Keep On Going that Lisa created last year for participants in her Monthly Makes program (if you used up a certain amount of her yarn over the course of the year, you earned a free skein of this exclusive colorway). I really love how this is a self-striping and yet the stripes aren't so clearly defined but rather blend into one another. I'm planning something fun and different for the crown of this hat, but I still have a bit more of the body to knit. It's going to be a slouchy fit, and the crown will involve some rapid decreases, so I need to make the body a little taller than usual to account for that.

It has been another good week of reading, though I still only have just the one bingo. I'm getting closer and closer to a cover-all on my first card, though. Here's a round-up of this week's finishes:

After more than a solid month of reading, I finally finished The Autobiography of Malcolm X, something I had been meaning to do for decades. The paperback copy I read is one I've owned since probably the early '90s; I know it had to have come out in 1992 or later, because there's a plug for the Spike Lee biopic on the cover. I suspect I bought it after I read Roots, and I know I read that in the fifth grade (yes, I've always been an advanced reader). I found several pages in the first couple of chapters that had been dogeared, so I know I attempted to read it once before but didn't make it very far. And it's a dense book, so getting through it was a bit of a challenge. But it was definitely worth it, and I now have a better sense of who Malcolm X was and what he stood for. I gave it 4 stars.
Bingo square: Best-seller

I'd heard about Hour of the Witch on the What Should I Read Next podcast and was intrigued. It's the story of a young woman in Puritan Boston who wants to divorce her abusive husband, but her outspokenness and childlessness in an extremely patriarchal society leads just where you think it will -- to suspicion that she is a witch. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but it dragged a bit in the second, and I think the two sections/trials could easily have been combined into one and the book could have been just as satisfying if it had been half the length. No spoilers, but I also think the ending was wildly unrealistic. I gave it 3 stars.

Bingo square: About religion

The Nickel Boys was a reread for me; I'd first read it a couple of years ago when it came out, and I know I rushed through it because it was a library book. This time, I didn't feel the same urgency because I had a physical copy in my hands, courtesy of the neighborhood Little Free Library, but all the same I managed to read it in one day, during our drive home from Michigan on Sunday. It was just as much as a gut punch the second time, but I think I picked up on more on the reread, in part because I knew of the twist that's revealed at the end. I also felt it to be a really timely read given the recent revelations about the so-called residential schools for First Nations children in Canada. If you haven't read this book yet, I'd highly recommend it. I gave it 4 stars again.
Bingo square: Buddy read (with Mary)

I had been meaning to read Americanah for several years and was glad that book bingo finally gave me to the push to do it. I decided to listen to this one, and I'm so glad I did; the narrator does an excellent job of performing quite a few different accents and helps to bring the characters to life in a way that I'm not sure would have happened for me if I'd read with my eyes. The story follows two Nigerians, childhood sweethearts, who follow different paths -- one to America, one to England -- and then reconnect years later back in Nigeria. It explores how their conceptions of race, nationality, class, and identity become shaped by their disparate experiences. It's a big book (the audio was 17 hours, I think), but very good. I gave it 4 stars.
Bingo square: A Diverse Spines selection

My bingo cards are filling up, and I'm hoping to complete the first one this month:

I'm currently reading Suite Française for the Originally published posthumously square, and I've got Dear Senthuran on loan from the library. The former is actually two books in one and was planned to be a five-part sequence of novels. I finished the first book last night, and I'm hoping for a quieter work day today so I can plow through much of the second. It's going to be another 90-degree day here, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, so once I get my walk out of the way, it'll be a good day to stay in the air conditioning and read!