Unraveled, Week 52/2021

I think the days are going by faster as the number of them we have left on vacation get fewer -- and this is also the last Wednesday of 2021! Thank you to Kat for hosting this weekly link-up; as Bonny noted in her post today, having an Unraveled post each week has been a great anchor and something to look forward to.

I don't have a terribly exciting knitting update this week because I'm still working on the same two projects: my May(be) Queen and my doubled sock yarn hat. After focusing more on the sweater for a period, I pulled out the hat a couple of days ago and have been giving it more attention.

I know these projects looks like they're almost the same size, but it's a bit of an optical illusion -- the hat looks larger than it is because it was closer to me when I took the photo. I won't be finishing the sweater before vacation is over, but I'm hoping I might finish the hat. I haven't weighed the yarn that's left, but I'm pretty certain I am more than 50% done and finishing up the rest in the next few days is quite reasonable.

Reading has been been a bit more productive; this vacation is typically a time when I get a lot of reading done, and this year is no exception. I have finished three books in the past week and will likely finish at least one more before the year is over.

When I was trying to find an audiobook to listen to while out on my longer walks, I remembered that it had been more than a year since I last listened to a book in the Maisie Dobbs series, and luckily the third in the series, Pardonable Lies, was available from the library with no wait. I've really enjoyed this series so far, and I liked this one, too, even though I figured some things out fairly early on (though the final reveal was still a surprise to me). It kept me company for three long walks, and then I finished listening to the last hour or so one night before bed. I gave it 4 stars.

One of the hard-copy books I brought with me to read was Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich's first novel and the first book we'll be discussing in the Erdrich-along next year. I wanted to get a bit of a head start, but I also wanted to read this at a time when I could give it my full attention. Technically this was a reread for me, as I know I had another copy (now long gone) in high school, but I remembered none of it. Perhaps I never actually read the full book, or maybe I was just too young to fully appreciate it the first time. It's everything I've come to love in Erdrich's books -- funny, sad, heartbreaking, life-affirming. There are hints to later books (particularly The Night Watchman), and I expect to see echoes of this first novel in her later books. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I read State of Terror after my mother finished reading it (it was one of her Chanukah gifts this year) and passed it along to me. Both authors are good writers whose other books I've enjoyed, but this one fell kind of flat to me. It was a good vacation read -- I didn't have to think very hard to read it and it kept me turning the pages -- but not a great book. It certainly had the humor that I've come to expect from Louise Penny's books but not the character development that I love about them. And frankly I had a hard time keeping some of the characters straight. I told my sister-in-law (she and my brother joined us here yesterday) that I thought it read like political revenge porn -- there is no wondering at all who some of the characters are meant to be. I gave it 3 stars. Not great, but not terrible.

I'm currently reading two books: Libertie, which I am listening to on audio and am about halfway through, and Still Life, which I finally got from the library after a long wait on the hold list and only just started before bed last night. The latter is 460+ pages long so may not be finished until next year, but I'm listening to the former at 1.5 speed and should make it through the rest of the book over the course of my walks in these last days of 2021.

Tomorrow I plan to post a wrap-up of my reading this year, and on Friday, I'll take a broader look at this year we're about to bid farewell to. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're working on and reading in this last week of 2021 and what you may be looking forward to starting soon.