Unraveled, Week 32/2025

Happy Wednesday! It's shaping up to be a beautiful day here, and it's my favorite blogging day of the week. Time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers!

First, I'll let you all know that Ruthie was a real trooper at her vet appointment. Though I'm sure they say this to all the dogs who come in, the staff really fawned over her and kept telling her how cute she was. She also got lots of treats and an entire individual container of peanut butter -- all of which came out of her on the way home, poor thing! But she did really well with getting her vaccines and will go back for the second round in three weeks. We also got good recommendations for further training and some things to try to help her be less anxious. And this practice also offers what they call "happy visits," where you can schedule a time to go in for a short period of time where nothing scary happens so that the pet doesn't associate going to the vet with only the traumatic stuff.

As for the knitting, the Hitchhiker has grown a bit since you last saw it (it's my go-to afternoon nap knitting) and I managed to finally cast on my summer top using the linen/silk yarn. I don't have a lot to show for a couple of evenings with it (it's a pretty involved pattern, so I'm pausing to check it frequently), but it sure is pretty.

I finished a pair of books this week.

After last week's Lily King finish, I decided to delve into her back catalog for an audiobook and found Euphoria available on Hoopla. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really look into what it was about before borrowing it because I knew I like the author's work and wanted to read more of it. This novel is set in New Guinea in the 1930s and focuses on a trio of anthropologists: American Nell Stone; her husband, Fen, from Australia or New Zealand; and the British Andrew Bankson. All three are studying the native tribes. Soon it becomes clear that Fen resents his wife's success and that Bankson is in love with her, and in the context of upheaval within the tribe with whom they're living, it all comes to a head. I didn't realize until later, when looking for more information about the book because so much had flown by me on audio, that these characters are based on real people -- Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson. I thought the writing was good and the narration of the audiobook was well done, but I didn't love the story and felt like I was missing a lot by not reading with my eyes. I gave it 3 stars.

Black Cake was popping up a lot of places a few years ago, and I'd heard it mentioned again recently following the publication of the author's most recent book, so I thought I'd give it a try. This is a novel about adult siblings who are estranged but who come together following the death of their mother and soon learn that nearly everything they knew about her was a lie. The mother tells her story, via a recording she made for her children when she realized her time was limited, taking them back to an unnamed Caribbean island (presumably Jamaica), then to the UK, and finally to California. Through it all, the constant is the traditional black cake, a recipe handed down from one generation to the next and signifying the connection to home, even across oceans and continents. I thought it was a fairly entertaining read, though I figured out a number of the mysteries before they were revealed and thought that there were maybe too many cliffhangers from one chapter to the next. It's a good summer read, for when you want the pages to turn quickly and don't want to have to think too hard. I gave it 3 stars.

It seems I'm in the mood for family stories, because that's how you could classify both of my current reads: Banyan Moon and The Map of Love. 

I'll leave you with this, one of many positions that don't look comfortable in the least to me but in which Ruthie seems to like to sleep: