Unraveled, Week 35/2022

It's Wednesday -- again?! I'm having a little bit of a hard time keeping track of what day it is this week because Rainbow's first day of school was yesterday (a Tuesday), which is a weird day to start school, if you ask me. She had a great first day and was very excited to tell me all about it when I picked her up yesterday, so now we just have to make it through the rest of the week.

As per usual, I'm linking up today with Kat and the Unravelers and giving an update on my making and my reading.

Knitting has been a bit slow the past couple of days because work has been very busy. I got a bit annual report dropped on me late last week that has been filling up my days, but I should be able to finish it up today, and then I'm hoping there's a bit of a lull. I've still been working on my Quotidian Tee pretty much every day, though, and I'm almost ready to split for the front and back after finishing the last of the decreases Monday night.

That ball off to the right is all that's left of my third skein of yarn, and I'm hoping to take some photos of my process when I join the next skein.

I'm thinking that I might give this project a little bit of a break, though, in order to whip up some socks. I cast on a pair last week while I was at the orthodontist with Rainbow (you saw just the cuff last Wednesday), and I'd like to get them done to give to my sister-in-law for her birthday next week. That might be a tall order, but I figure that if I can't quite manage the pair, I could at least give her one completed sock and then give her the other one as soon as it's done. These are just plain stockinette -- I'm letting the yarn do the work -- so they should be fast.

Reading this past week has been all about quick books. I've finished three, but it feels a bit like cheating because they were all so fast!

My first book was a reread of Sorrow and Bliss in preparation for the Read With Us discussion next month. I read it earlier this year, prior to the announcement of the Women's Prize, but at the time could only get it on audio from the library. I really loved it, but I also wanted to experience reading it with my eyes, so this time I read it as an ebook. The good news is that I liked it just as much. I still found it to be laugh-out-loud funny at times, heartbreakingly sad at others, and overall very well written. I think it's a really clever way of addressing how and if mental illness has an effect on interpersonal relationships and the impact of a label (in this case, Martha's illness is made up and isn't even given a name). This is a still a 5-star read for me, and I'm looking forward to talking about it!

Next I listened to two short audiobooks by Julie Otsuka, both less than four hours: When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic. Although I read them in the order in which they were written and published, I'd recommend you read them in the reverse order if you plan to. Buddha follows the immigration of Japanese "picture brides" who came to the California prior to WWII and is told largely in the first person plural, giving a sense of the collective experience of these women who were promised an exciting new life in a new country and instead found lives of hard work and frequent discrimination.

From those varied stories with common through-lines, Emperor focuses on one (unnamed) Japanese American family in San Francisco, beginning just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The father has been arrested and sent away to a prison camp, and soon the wife and two children are on a train headed to an internment camp in Utah. The story follows their experience and those of the others in the camp for the duration of the war and their return to their homes afterward. 

Both books are well written and impactful in their stories of the treatment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, but they really only scratch the surface of a part of U.S. history that's often not told. I'm interested in reading more, so if you have recommendations, let me have 'em! I gave both books 4 stars.

Currently I'm reading the next selection for the Erdrich-along, The Plague of Doves, though I've only just started because I have been so tired the last few nights that I've only managed a few pages before I've been ready to call it a night.

What have you been making and reading this week?