Unraveled, Week 15/2023

It's Wednesday, and I'm starting the day with an early dentist appointment, so I actually wrote this post on Tuesday evening so I wouldn't be too rushed -- after all, Wednesdays are my favorite blogging days because it means catching up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've been doing a fair amount of knitting the past couple of days, but I can't show you what I've been working on because it relates to that design submission I had accepted at the end of March. I've got a quick turn on that (the pattern is due at the beginning of May, but I want to get it out of the way ASAP), so I've paused my other projects while I get to that. I have, however, been spinning, and I officially passed the halfway point on my singles on Tuesday.

I've been doing quite a lot of reading the past week, and somehow I finished four books! There's been a heavy focus lately on women authors in general and the Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist specifically.

I ordered a couple of the books from Blackwell's (which is such a great resource for books before they're released in the United States), one of which was Homesick by Jennifer Croft. If her name sounds familiar, you might know her as a translator who has worked with Olga Tokarczuk. I read the "novel" version of this book (there's also a memoir version that was previously released stateside), as that's the version on the Women's Prize list. Though this is categorized as fiction, it's very clearly about Croft and her sister as they were growing up. It's weird and sad but also touching. I understand that in the memoir version there are photos, but this version is all prose. I gave it 4 stars.

Because it's National Poetry Month, I decided to make a point to read more poetry, and last Thursday things were quiet enough for a bit to allow me to sit and read through Ada Limón's most recent collection The Hurting Kind. I've read a few of Limón's poems individually in the past, but reading an entire collection really allows you to get to know a poet, and reading this one left me wanting to get to know her more. I've found that like my favorite poet, Robert Frost, she uses imagery of the natural world as a canvas for her emotions. I expect I will go back and reread this collection several times in addition to exploring her other collections. I gave this one 4 stars.

I had bought Memphis, a buzzy debut novel from last year, when it was a Kindle deal several weeks ago, and I decided to read it given that it's on the Women's Prize list and already in my hands. Before I started reading it, though, Katie filled me in on some of the controversy surrounding the author's behavior in response to criticism of the novel, and it's possible that knowing about that may have influenced my feelings about the book. I found some really beautiful writing and some great characters, but the book did not flow together in a cohesive way, in my opinion. I'm not sure if that's a failure of the writer or the editor, but other way, I found it to be a bit unsatisfying as a result. And I also spotted several grammatical errors, and we all know how I feel about those. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally I listened to an audiobook I'd long had on my TBR list, a nonfiction work that's part true crime and part biography. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee was not quite what I was expected. The background on the trial referenced in the title makes up more than half the book, and Harper Lee isn't really mentioned until the second half. It was well written and well researched, but didn't really contain anything revelatory about Lee. I will say that I learned more about her and her relationship with Truman Capote, but I felt that the background on the murder case and related life insurance fraud didn't add much. I gave it 3 stars.


Even though I said I wasn't going to try to read the entirety of the Women's Prize Longlist, I expect I will have read quite a few of them before the Shortlist is announced! I had already read three of the titles to start with, finished two more in the last week, and have started two more -- Cursed Bread, which Katie was kind enough to send me after she read it, and The Bandit Queens, which I got as a Kindle deal. After those, I have Trespasses (another Blackwell's purchase) and Stone Blind, which Margene sent me. I just have to hope that the Shortlist contains many of the titles I will have read by then!

In addition to the book, Margene sent me a skein of yarn she thought looked to be to my taste:

She was right -- would you believe I bought a skein of this exact colorway several years ago but had never knit it?! I guess Rainbow and I will have some matching socks in the near future!