Unraveled, Week 15/2024

It's Wednesday again, so it's time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers! I'll give you one guess as to what's on my needles this week.

The exciting news is that I'm ready to bind off the second sleeve! So all that stands between me and a finished sweater is the neck ribbing and the ribbing at the bottom of the body. But I have quite a lot of yarn remaining, so I think I am going to add some more length to the body because the sweater is quite cropped as written.

I will likely be starting a chicken soon, if only because I'm craving some color other than brown. Also, you all know what I'm not typically a monogamous knitter, and as much as I'm enjoying working on this sweater, I need a little variety.

Despite feeling like I've been doing a lot of reading this past week, I've only finished one book, but at least it was a good one!

You may remember that I started reading There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak's forthcoming novel, back when Mo and I were in Florida, but I paused when a library hold came in. Once I could get back to it, though, I was hooked. This novel follows three characters in three different timelines: Arthur, born into poverty in Dickens's London; Narin, a Yazidi girl living in Turkey with her father and grandmother in 2014; and Zaleekhah, a water scientist recently separated from her husband in London in 2018. These three seem entirely unrelated, but their lives all find a connection in water and in the culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Arthur finds success in being able to read cuneiform tablets unearthed by archaeologists and finds his life's passion in translating the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Narin, whose mother died and whose father travels for work, suffers from an illness that is rapidly taking her hearing, and as the Turkish government is planning construction that threatens to flood the village where she lives, her grandmother is determined to take her to an ancient holy city in Iraq to be baptized. Zaleekhah is trying to make a home on a rented houseboat and reflecting on the work of her late mentor, whose theory that water could retain memory destroyed his professional reputation, and of the rivers that have been buried over the centuries. Connecting these three storylines are the themes of memory, of hatred that arises from misunderstanding, and of the many important roles that water plays in life as well as the dual nature of all humans -- that even those who create beauty or knowledge are still capable of cruelty. I really enjoyed this book, though I found the characters to be a little flat and underdeveloped and would have liked to have gotten to know them better. I gave it 4 stars.

I received a digital ARC of this book from Knopf and NetGalley in return for an honest review. This book will be published August 20, 2024.

I am still reading Martyr! and also have started an audiobook from my TBR, From Scratch, as well as another ARC, Long Island Compromise.

What are you making and reading this week?