Unraveled, Week 45/2026

This week, thankfully, seems to be flying by, but I can't let a Wednesday pass me by without linking up with Kat and the Unravelers.

Since last we spoke, I've completed another triple-stranded charity hat:

and promptly cast on for another:

I'm sure there will be more of them in the near future, but this is my last one before I send off another batch to a collection. There's a special charity challenge this month for the Pigskin Party, and you can claim points for up to 10 items made for charity (with more points for those items if they were made during the Pigskin Party versus before). This current hat will be the 10th item I'll have made with the intention of donating it since the event kicked off, so I'm maximizing my points. I've also pulled out, as you saw last week, items I've been making for the last year or so. I sent off the first batch of hats last weekend, and this batch will include a cowl, some mitts, and some mittens in addition to hats.

As last week was a busy week at work, thereby diminishing my daytime reading hours, I did not read as much as I would have liked, but I did manage to finish three books.

The Bookbinder's Code by A.D. Bell (digital)

My rating: 3 stars

I was sent an ARC of this book for review only to realize it was a sequel, so before I could read it, I had to go read the first book. After doing that, I hoped that Lily Delaney had learned her lesson, but in The Bookbinder's Code, she finds herself again drawn into a dangerous world when her mentor, Mr. Caxton, disappears and she has to decode his notebook from his university days to find out what he and a group of friends did that would put their lives at risk all these years later. Lily is still determined and unconventional, with her loyalty to those she loves driving her to defy society's expectations. For as smart as she is to figure out secret codes and elaborate plots, though, she still seems to have trouble keeping herself out of danger. For the most part, I enjoyed this book and its world in which books become dangerous. But I had to suspend my sense of disbelief for a lot of it; as much as I treasure books and know that rare ones can be very valuable, I had a hard time believing the lengths some would go to -- including murder -- to get their hands on one. 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 26, 2027.

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan (digital)

My rating: 4 stars

This book was on the Booker Prize longlist this year, and while I wasn't intending to read all of the books, I almost always find some of them to be really intriguing. This was one such book. Dilara is a Turkish expat living in Italy with her husband and her father, a former academic and political dissident who is in the throes of dementia and declining rapidly. As the book opens, they've just finished a project to renovate their bathroom, but when Dilara looks after the builders have left, she discovers not a shiny new bathroom but a cell in an infamous prison in Turkey. Her husband, always highly anxious, flees, convinced that the authoritarian regime in Turkey will find out about the cell and imprison them, and soon Dilara is alone with her father, without a job or any way to support them, and finds herself increasingly drawn to the prison cell, especially as more and more women are brought in to neighboring cells. Although the premise is, naturally, impossible, it creates the backdrop for an exploration of the longing for your homeland, particularly when you cannot return, and for the loss of the life you once had, especially when the only family in your life is a parent who no longer recognizes you as their child.

I also listened to Sense and Sensibility, which is still among my top Austens, because I'd like to see the new movie; I realized not long ago that the plot that I have in my head is very much that of the 1995 movie, which is fairly faithful to the original text but makes some notable changes. I think the last time I read the book was when I was in high school, so it was very much due a reread.

Today is colonoscopy prep day, so a little later this morning I will be taking Ruthie out to the dogsitter's for a couple of nights and then doing my best to relax the rest of the day. Please send any extra good thoughts you have my way tomorrow! I have to report at the hospital at 8:30 for a 9:30 procedure, so I'm hoping to be home in time for lunch. I'm also hoping not to be so tired from the sedation that I can't take advantage of a dog-free day off to get some crafting done!