Unraveled, Week 7/2022

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Despite having a troubling dream right before getting up this morning (I was back in school, although it was online, and I was late for class!), I'm happy to welcome another check-in with Kat and the Unravelers to catch up on making and reading.

While I am still trying to focus on my Shifty as my main project, I've been a bit distracted by new things. The sweater doesn't require a ton of attention, but it needs enough that I can't read with my eyes and knit on it at the same time. So I felt like I needed to start a new, smaller project that I could work on while reading and that would be suitable for on-the-go crafting (not that there's very much of that these days). For about a year, I've had a mini skein set from Marianated Yarns that she dyed to match the amazing colors so many women wore to the inauguration last year. I've had a design idea for it for several months now, and yesterday I finally got myself off my butt and started it.

The set had a total of eight minis, but because I'm planning to use one after the other, in order, and I didn't want a ton of ends to weave in, I used a Russian join to connect them as I wound them. That meant that I had to take a little extra time to wind up with one cake of yarn, but I look at it as spending time now to save time later. This will be a brioche cowl with some easy increases. Even if I decide not to turn it into an actual pattern, it'll be a cowl that I will wear and enjoy.

And yes, that is Bernie on my stitch marker. Marian was selling them at the same time as the mini set as a fundraiser for a local food bank, and I couldn't resist.

Remember how I had no finished reads to share last week? I'm more than making up for that this week with four books finished.

Like Mary, I have a goal of becoming a Maggie O'Farrell completist this year, so I thought it only made sense to go back to where it all started and read her first published novel, After You'd Gone. In what I've come to recognize as her signature style, this book jumps around in time and perspective, giving you snippets of the larger story that all come together at the very end. It was difficult at first to get a grip on this, not because of the writing but because the format of the ebook I got from the library (it was only available through the Libby app itself, not as a Kindle ebook) -- often when the narrative changed in time or perspective, there was no visual indication of it, meaning that it looked like just one paragraph ending and another beginning. Once I got past that, I found it to be the writing that I've come to know and love from O'Farrell. I gave it 4 stars.

My next finish was my very first book from NetGalley, which I finally signed up for last month. I was intrigued by the description of Great or Nothing, a more modern retelling of Little Women in which the March sisters are navigating the difficulties of World War II and their grief over the death of Beth just before the book opens. A book written by multiple authors can sometimes feel disjointed, but it works quite well in this case because each author is responsible for the voice of one of the sisters. And though Beth has died before the book starts, her voice is still heard in the form of poems between chapters, almost as if Beth is watching her sisters from beyond the grave and offering them encouragement. I really liked how this book felt faithful to the original story but also took the characters in some new directions that felt appropriate to the more recent past. I received this ARC from NetGalley and Delacourte in return for an honest review, and I do recommend it! I believe it's classified as a YA book, but I really enjoyed it and also feel like it's one that Rainbow might like as well. It comes out next month, if you're interested. I gave it 4 stars.

I heard about Assembly from Mary a few weeks ago and listened to it in its entirety on Sunday afternoon (it's only about 2 hours long). Wow. This is a really powerful debut novel that says quite a lot in a very small number of pages about racism, sexism, and other Really Big Issues. There is so much, in fact, that I've since put the ebook on hold at the library so that I can reread it with my eyes a bit more slowly to fully appreciate everything it has to say. There isn't a lot of plot in this novel; rather, it's more of a character study of the unnamed Black women at its center and how utterly challenging and exhausting it can be to exist and try to succeed as a Black woman in today's society. Though it's set in England, I imagine it's very applicable to the United States as well. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I finished What Strange Paradise, which I know many of you have already read. It feels strange to say that I enjoyed reading such a sad book, but the writing was truly beautiful and the story ripped my heart out. I don't think anyone goes into this book expecting a happy ending, but I'm not sure I expected to be quite as devastated. I think this is a very necessary read for anyone who feels numbed by all the suffering in the world and doesn't want to lose their sense of the humanity of all people, and it would make an excellent book club or book group read because I think it would make for a great discussion. I gave it 4 stars as well.

I'm currently actively reading two books from the library: I'm almost halfway through What Storm, What Thunder, and yesterday I started listening to Know My Name, which I've long had tagged "to read" on my library app and finally managed to borrow when there was no wait. I suppose I'm in a phase of very serious reading at the moment and will need something lighthearted soon.

What are you making and reading this week?