Unraveled, Week 11/2026

It's Wednesday again, friends, and it's time once again to join Kat and the Unravelers. Part of me thought I was being a bit silly casting on a fingering weight sweater when it had been so warm, but I knew that March in Pittsburgh is highly unpredictable and that turns out to have been the case. While it was 61ºF on Monday morning and I went for my run wearing nothing on top of my workout clothes but a light jacket to keep dry in the intermittent rain, by late afternoon it was snowing. Some parts of our area got six inches! I'd say we got about two, but because it had been raining all day and the snow was wet and then the temperature dropped overnight, we also had some ice. I can't say I was surprised that Molly had a two-hour delay yesterday, and actually I was pleased because it meant I couldn't go into the office for my meeting and had to join remotely so I could drive her to school for the 10 a.m. start. Oh darn!

In any case, while I still expect the weather to likely be too warm for a sweater by the time I finish it, I am making progress on it. I've started the colorwork, a little slow going at this point because there are some long floats, but once I move further through the chart it should move a little faster. There's just not that much to see right now.

I'm working through the gusset decreases of the second sock of the current pair, so I'm starting to think about what socks to cast on next (perhaps a pair for one of my sisters-in-law?).

It's been another excellent week of reading, largely done with my ears.

In Gliff, Ali Smith gave us a post-apocalyptic world where people disappeared without explanation and two young siblings left on their own made their way in the world with the help of a horse. In Glyph, adult sisters Petra and Patch haven't spoken in a long time but begin to talk again when Patch sends Petra a book that turns out to be Gliff. This gesture leads Petra to think about their childhood and the stories she told her younger sister to help her cope with her fear after a distant relative told them a story that scared her, in the process making up a ghost with an amazing realistic backstory -- something that ended up being an important part of their young lives in the wake of their mother's death. Patch, meanwhile, is dealing with her adopted teenage daughter's questioning of authority. An unexpected visitor in Petra's apartment brings the sisters together again, leading them both to question how much of their childhood stories were invented and what was real.

As is typical of Ali Smith's work, this novel isn't easy to describe or categorize, but it is fascinating and consuming. I've seen some reviews complain that it's overtly political and anti-war, but notably there is no specific conflict or position mentioned, only hinted at. What shines here are the stories, the dialogue, and the relationships. I gave it 4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published May 19, 2026.

Having recently read and enjoyed Tayari Jones's latest, I decided to turn to her backlist and read Silver Sparrow, a novel I'd heard praised often but never gotten around to reading. It tells the story of two half sisters, nearly exactly the same age. One is illegitimate but knows of the existence of the other. The other is the result of a marriage that came about due to a teenage pregnancy years earlier. As the two girls mature, the smallness of the Black community in Atlanta brings them close together again and again, so you know it's only a matter of time before everything is out in the open. Each sister is given an opportunity to narrate her own story, giving the reader a perspective from both sides. I really enjoyed this, especially because the audiobook had a different narrator for each sister's part, and the format allows Jones to showcase her strength in depicting female relationships. I gave it 4 stars.

The Beginner's Goodbye is an older book (it was published in 2012) that came across my radar recently when it was mentioned on the What Should I Read Next podcast. I'd actually never read anything by Anne Tyler before, if you can believe that! This one is about Aaron, a man in his mid-30s mourning the loss of his wife, Dorothy, in an accident. As he mourns, he reflects on their life together -- how they met, how they dated, and what their married life was like -- as he seems unable to move on with his life other than going to work every day at his family's vanity publishing company. I thought the story was entertaining enough, and the narrator was animated and enjoyable to listen to, but I had a hard time accepting that he was supposed to be working as an editor given that I caught at least three grammatical errors (something I'm surprised Tyler's editor didn't catch!). It wasn't a very long book and kept me entertained while I was out exercising, but I'm not in a rush to read more of Tyler's work. I gave it 3 stars.

I'd had All the Colors of the Dark on my Kindle shelf for a while, but two recent positive reviews by podcasters I listen to pushed me to finally read it. This is a book you need to be ready for, not only because it's nearly 600 pages long and because it deals with some, well, dark stuff. It centers around the friendship of Patch (so called because he was born with only eye), being raised by single mother, and Saint, an orphaned girl living with her widowed grandmother. The story starts in the 1970s in a small town in Missouri, one of several in the state where girls have disappeared. When Patch stops the abduction of a classmate, the consequences of that action unfurl over decades and impact several members of this small community. I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the story of the friendship of Patch and Saint, who feel like outsiders who don't fit in until they find each other, was beautiful, and the book itself certainly kept me reading. But it also felt unnecessarily long, and there was something about the writing that didn't sit quite right with me, though it's hard to put my finger on exactly why. The author is British, and at times it felt like he was trying too hard to make his narrative sound American (I noted that he failed several times at this by using the term "conker" for what I'd call a buckeye; I've only ever heard this term used by Brits). There were also instances where a verb was used as a noun and descriptive phrases that seemed convoluted to the point of not making much sense. On top of this, I thought some of the plot points were a bit derivative (I couldn't help thinking of The OA and The Shawshank Redemption). Despite these issues, I did enjoy it overall. I dithered about my rating but ultimately settled on 4 stars -- it gave me several afternoons' enjoyment, after all.

Finally, partially influenced by a trailer of an upcoming TV series, I decided to reread The Testaments. I read it when it first came out in 2019 -- it was a rare hardback book that I preordered -- but didn't remember many details, so I decided to listen this time. Perhaps the current state of the world also has made me seek out stories where oppressive governments are taken down from within. In any case, I enjoyed the reread just as much as I did my first one, and I really appreciated the cast, including Margaret Atwood herself, doing the narration. I know some readers were unhappy with this sequel, but it was hugely satisfying for me. I gave it 5 stars (again).

I'm still slowly working my way through The Odyssey, and I've just started The Paris Express. I'm about a quarter of the way through both.

What are you making and reading this week? And have you seen snow, too?