Unraveled, Week 47/2025

How is it Wednesday again already? Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I am still working on the same two projects but at least am getting closer to finishing them. I got a bunch of work yesterday and so only managed a handful of rounds on the socks, but the evenings have been dedicated wrap/shawl knitting time, and the rows are getting shorter:

I managed to leave Ruthie for about two minutes to snap a photo of this upstairs while the sun was actually out (not that it did much to warm things up) so you could get a better sense of the actual color of the yarns. I'm hoping I'm able to stretch this out and get a bit more length when I block it, because as written it's not a very big wrap, but I think the mohair/silk will make it very cozy. I might have to find a pretty shawl stick or other closure for it.

I've once again had a good week of reading with four finishes, though two of them were ARCs.

In Life: A Love Story, 92-year-old Flo has received a terminal diagnosis and knows she doesn't have much time left in her life, so she resolves to write a letter explaining some things to Ruthie, the now-grown little girl who used to live next door and was like a daughter to her. Flo has decided to leave her house and all her possessions to Ruthie, but she also wants to leave behind some life lessons she's learned. In giving the history of some of the objects in her house, some of which might seem worthless or mundane, she shows that what matters isn't always things but the memories and the people they recall. This is a quiet book, and while it's not without difficulties that arise in people's lives and marriages, it's a peaceful and welcome departure from the news. That said, I also found it to be rather schmaltzy and, at times, a little over-the-top with religion. Your mileage may vary. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published March 17, 2026.

After enjoying her forthcoming novel so much, I decided to listen to Anna Quindlen's most recent release. After Annie follows a family in the year following the sudden death of its mother. There's the husband who is overwhelmed at being the sole parent and the one who rarely did much of the heavy lifting of parenting before. There are her four children, the oldest of whom, her only daughter, finds herself feeling responsible for her three younger siblings. And there's her best friend, who finds herself slipping back into drug addiction without Annie to keep her on the straight and narrow. It's a sad story, as you would expect, and it certainly highlights how much work mothers do to keep their families running, but it paints a picture of how families can come together after a tragedy. I gave it 4 stars.

Some time back, I bought a used copy of The Language of Goldfish because I couldn't find it any of the library apps (probably because I think it's been out of print for a while). This is a book I can remember reading multiple times as a young teenager, and I wanted to revisit it as an adult because my memories of it were vague and I was curious about what it was about it that spoke so loudly to me. This book follows 13-year-old Carrie as she struggles to adjust to living in a new place and growing up. She begins to have episodes of visual hallucinations and even has an instance of losing awareness of time and where she is before she attempts suicide. Following that, she is hospitalized and then goes to see a therapist every day to address what was causing her such distress. I can't say that I loved this book as much on a reread (at least as an adult) as I did as a young teen, but it at least held up relatively well in the time that's passed. It was probably pretty advanced for when it was published, in fact, in that it addressed mental illness frankly and as something that should be talked about and addressed. Adult me, however -- particularly the adult me who has a degree in psychology -- felt a little frustrated that Carrie's illness was never really defined and that her therapist didn't seem to do much other than listen to her talk. But all the same it was nice to read something from my childhood that didn't surprise me with something like overt racism for a change. I gave it 4 stars.

If there's one historical era I've read more about than any other, it's the Holocaust and WWII, so it's always a pleasant surprise to learn something about the history of that time period that is new to me. Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World introduced me to the documents known as yizkor books, volumes created as memorial records of the towns and shtetls essentially erased by the Nazis. They describe what life was like in these places and what sort of people inhabited them in addition to containing lists of the names of those killed. While the book addresses this topic generally, there's also a focus on the town where the author's relatives came from, making this a memoir of sorts, too, as her study of the yizkor book for their shtetl was able to tell her things about the family left behind that her grandmother and great uncles could not and would not discuss. I found it to be a fascinating read. My only disappointment in the book is that the ARC I received did not contain the photos that are referenced in the back of the book -- I would have loved to see those family photos! But that just gives me an excuse to pick up a physical copy of the book when it's published. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 20, 2026.

What are you making and reading this week?