Unraveled, Week 31/2022

Happy Wednesday, friends! The week is flying by already, which I suppose is a good thing for a week back at work after a vacation. As usual, today I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers to talk about what I'm making and reading.

I did some quick baby gift knitting as a palate cleanser after finishing my brother's sweater (and thank you so much for your many compliments on it!), but now I'm on to my next garment, and it's for me.

This is the start of my Twofer Tank (Ravelry link), which I've had on my list to make since Mary made hers. I have only made a couple of warm-weather tops in my knitting career but haven't chosen the best fibers. This one I'm knitting in Knit Picks CotLin, a machine-washable cotton/linen blend, and I am really enjoying knitting with it. I started this top on Monday and even having not spent that much time on it already have something that looks like a top! This tank is worked from the shoulders down, starting with the fronts; last night I joined the back straps, so now I just have to work a bit more on the back before I cast on stitches for the underarms and start working in the round.

I also picked up the C2C crochet blanket I started for Rainbow several months ago. This is likely a long-term project, but it does go pretty quickly when I work on it. And it matches my knitting this week!

Reading has been pretty phenomenal this past week. I've finished five(!) books since last Wednesday, but one was a short story and one a very short audiobook, so don't be too impressed.

I had picked up a copy of Tony Morrison's 1983 short story Recitatif earlier in the summer at my local bookstore. It's a quick read but a powerful one, and this edition includes an excellent introduction/analysis by Zadie Smith that I think is actually longer than the story itself. This tells the story of two girls, later women, who meet in a shelter as children when their mothers find themselves unable to care for them for a time. They connect again several times as adults, at different points in their lives, and learn how their lives compare. What is most intriguing about this story is that one girl is Black and one is white, but we never know which is which, so it makes for a really powerful way to examine our prejudices and assumptions as readers. I gave it 4 stars.

Next I turned to Maggie O'Farrell's backlist in my continuing effort to be an O'Farrell completist. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox was my first pick, and it felt very much like what I expect from the author: multiple timelines, hints at what is to come, and several stories that come together at the end. While I did figure out a plot twist that is revealed toward the end early on, it didn't spoiled it for me. I also really enjoyed the fact that this novel is a bit of commentary on the history of women's unconventional behavior being labeled madness. There are some elements of this book that are rather troubling, but the writing is good and propulsive, and I enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars.

Next up in my O'Farrell list was My Lover's Lover, the last one I could find available from my library, and I could only find it on audio. This is one of the author's earliest books, so I think she hadn't quite hit her stride yet, and the format was likely also not the best because it wasn't always clear to me when the timeline had changed. I think this is probably my least favorite of her books that I've read so far, and mainly that's because I didn't really like any of the main characters. There's a bit of a nod to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, including a reference to the Hitchcock film version of it, but in my opinion, it's not as successful as the earlier book. I gave it 3 stars. I now have one book left to read to have read all of O'Farrell's backlist, and a hard copy is on its way to me!

I listened to In Love, Amy Bloom's memoir of her husband's decline into early onset Alzheimer's disease and his decision to end his life via "accompanied suicide" in Switzerland, in its entirety on Monday. It's a very short book -- less than 5 hours on audio -- and read by the author, who speaks slowly enough that I upped the speed to 1.5. As you would imagine from the subject, it's an emotional and heartbreaking book, but Bloom does an excellent job of describing how she and her husband navigated the devastating diagnosis and the very difficult decision to choose when the end comes. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I read a book that Mary mentioned recently, The Undertaking by Audrey Magee. I was actually more interested in reading her newest book, The Colony, and finally found it on Hoopla but only on audio. I decided to start with Magee's first book because I wanted something to read with my eyes. This one tells the story of two Germans during WWII, a soldier who wants to get away from the Russian front and marries a young woman in Berlin in order to get leave for his honeymoon. It then follows the couple throughout the war and their efforts to survive. While the book certainly highlights the horrors of war -- on all sides -- I'm not sure if it's meant to make the reader feel sympathy for those committed to the Nazi cause. While ultimately both of the main characters come to reject the story they've been told by their government, it still gave me a bit of an icky feeling; I wanted to know if they survived the war, but once I finished the last page, I was no longer invested in what happened to them. I gave it 3 stars.

Up next for me? I think either The Glass Hotel or The Tsar of Love and Techno, both of which I bought at my local bookstore earlier this year and have been waiting to get to.

What are you making and reading this week?