Unraveled, Week 32/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's once again time to join the fun with Kat and the Unravelers.

It's continued to be a wet week, with occasional heavy downpours and thunderstorms. Yesterday I was running behind when I went into the office and left without an umbrella (I didn't want to make myself even later by digging through the closet for one) only for it to start raining pretty hard. Luckily, I was able to get the newly licensed driver to come pick me up! As much as it saddens me to know how quickly Molly is growing up, it is very helpful to have another driver in the house.

On Monday night, I finished plying my current spin, dealing with some tangles at the end in an effort to use every last bit of singles; I anticipate that some of that messy yarn at the end will be removed.

While I didn't weigh the fiber beforehand, there was supposed to be 2 oz. in each bundle, so that's ostensibly 6 oz. of finished yarn. The next step is to skein and wash and then likely wait several days for it to dry, as it's incredibly humid here because of all the rain, but I hope to be able to show you some finished yarn by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, I'm on the third mini skein on my hat, and it's currently measuring a partial Ruthie:

I'm not particularly enjoying working with this yarn, as it's on the coarser side. If I had to guess, I'd say the 3-ply minis are a Corriedale base, whereas the 2-ply skeins might be superwash Merino. I am hopeful that the hand of the yarn will improve once the finished hat is washed, as it's very possible that the person who dyed the yarn wasn't particularly skilled at it and may not have rinsed the yarn as much as they should. At the very least, a bath in warm water with some wool wash will add a bit of lanolin.

Reading this week has been all nonfiction and heavily dominated by ARCs. I finished three books.

An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America by Keri Leigh Merritt

4 stars

For most people who have learned about the history of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, the term "white Southerners" will conjure images of violence and hatred. But not all Southerners supported segregation, and some brave ones spoke out against it and worked with the more well-known leaders in the movement to fight it. That said, throughout history, the role of women in political movements has always been minimized and, in some cases, even forgotten, so I was not surprised that despite her record of prolific work in support of racial equality and her friendships with such famous names and Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., I had never heard of Lillian Smith. This biography proved to be an excellent way to rectify that. Lillian Smith spent the entirety of her adult life writing essays, works of social criticism, and novels to advocate for racial equality and to attempt to show that racial discrimination harms whites as well as Blacks. As a queer liberal woman unafraid to share her opinions, she faced backlash and very real physical threats, yet she didn't let anything stop her, and she used what power she had as a white woman to uplift and promote people of color who often faced much worse. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know her and her work a bit, and I am glad that this biography is doing its part to ensure that Smith's story isn't lost to time. 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. It will be published on September 29, 2026.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

3.5 stars

I loved Stanley Tucci's memoir Taste, especially its gorgeous descriptions of food, so I thought this second work would be as enjoyable. And partially it was. There are still some elements of memoir and personal life, and I loved the parts when he talked about cooking for himself and his family, but this newer book also contains a lot of complaining about how bad food is as well as what seemed to me to be an awful lot of name dropping. I know, he's a famous actor and he knows a lot of other famous people, but sometimes the mention of celebrities seemed rather irrelevant to the discussion of food. That said, I love listening to Stanley Tucci talk, so to have him in my ears for about six hours talking about food was overall a good experience. It also made me want to eat a lot of pasta.

The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice by Natalie Livingstone

4 stars

The Nuremberg trials are famous for bringing a sense of closure to the horrors of World War II and some sense of justice to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. They've been written about extensively and dramatized on screen. But, as far as I know, little has been documented about the small but significant group of women who were present at the trials. In The Nuremberg Women, Natalie Livingstone focuses on eight women from varied backgrounds, nationalities, professions, and political beliefs to show the importance of their involvement. We get to know a brief biography of each woman, her role in the trials, and a bit about her life afterward. As a collection, these profiles show that these women all played a crucial role, but those roles often were behind the scenes or downplayed as less important than those of the (male) lawyers and judges. What was particularly fascinating was learning about how their views of the trials changed over the years and colored their experiences of the Cold War in the decades to come. War is so often characterized as a masculine arena, but these women -- a lawyer, three journalists, an artist, a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, and an interpreter -- all recognized that wars inflict suffering on women just as much as men and that they should have a voice in the processes of reckoning that follow a war. 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. It will be published November 3, 2026. (Side note: There's currently a Goodreads giveaway for this book, if you're interested.)

Currently, I'm in the last third or so of This Time Tomorrow (reading on paper before bed), I'm more than halfway through a historical fiction/magical realism/mystery audiobook called The Sirens, and I'm reading yet another ARC that I already think might end up being one of my favorites of the year.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 31/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers! This Wednesday finds me with just one knitting WIP (because I did end up finishing the purple hat), and it's the handspun scarf, on which I've now started decreasing:

Apologies for the washed-out photo

I was intending to increase until I'd used just slightly less than half of the yarn, but I realized if I did that, my scarf would be very long, which kind of defeats the purpose of making a little scarf. So I decided to increase until I had 45 stitches in garter stitch (yes, to match my age) and then started decreasing. I'm a bit worried now, though, that maybe I flew past that halfway point. Keep your fingers crossed I don't have to play yarn chicken! I figure the worst-case scenario is that I have to back and reknit, and honestly that wouldn't be so bad -- it's quite lovely to knit with merino/silk handspun!

Speaking of handspun, I'm working on my third bobbin of singles for the merino/silk/angora. I'm hoping to wrap up that spin this week to correspond to the Tour de France Femmes.

Reading! I've got three finished since this time last week.

I really enjoyed The Help, so I was interested in Kathryn Stockett's new novel The Calamity Club -- but I needed some persuading when I saw how long the audio was (28 hours!). I won't bury the lede: It was absolutely worth it, and it also didn't really take that long to listen to because the readers were slow, so I was able to increase the speed to 1.75x. Set in 1933 in Oxford, Mississippi, this novel is told from the point of view of Birdie, an unmarried 20-something woman who is the sole support to her mother and grandmother following the death of her father, and Meg, an 11-year-old living in an orphanage after her mother seemingly abandoned her. Birdie travels to Oxford from her small town to ask her married sister, Frances, for a loan to help pay back taxes when the family home is at risk. But when Frances's husband disappears, along with much of his family's possessions, Birdie has to step up to help Frances and her mother-in-law. Meg, meanwhile, is poorly treated at the orphanage, particularly by the woman in charge of running it, and still doesn't fully believe that her mother left her on purpose. Birdie's volunteer work helping out with the accounting books at the orphanage brings her together with Meg and gives her a personal interest in the girl's future. And when things start to get particularly dire, a woman named Charlie comes into Birdie's life and proposes a solution that seems dangerous and preposterous -- but just might be what will save them all. There are some ugly words used in this book and some ugly ideas, but they're very reflective of the time and aren't used gratuitously. The heart and soul of the novel is its strong female characters -- Meg, Birdie, and Charlie -- who aren't afraid to work hard and make sacrifices to help those they love. They are smart, funny, and fierce, and I really enjoyed spending time with all of them. I gave the book 4 stars.

I'd heard a lot of buzz around The Great Wherever and put it on notify in Libby ahead of its publication. I got really lucky because I happened to be looking at my phone when I got the notification it was available and ended up being the first person in line to get it, and my hold came up just before we left on our trip, so I was able to read it in its entirety over the course of the weekend. It follows Aubrey, a woman in her early 30s who is struggling. She thought her boyfriend was about to propose, but instead he broke up with her. She has multiple jobs that she doesn't like in order to pay her rent but still comes up short. Her mother died when she was just a child and her father only recently passed away. When nothing seems to be going right, she gets an email from family she doesn't know and discovers that she is part owner of a homestead in Tennessee and that she and the others have to contemplate an offer to purchase the property. She flies to meet them and soon learns the full history of the place: how her great-grandfather was one of the first Black homeowners in the area, building the house with his own hands; how the family's history was tied up with that of the wealthy white family who started the town; and how the family had held on to the land all these years in the face of many attempts by others to buy it. Throughout it all, ghosts of members of the family watch over their descendants, occasionally seen by one relative or another and sometimes even managing to avert an action that might prove disastrous. Though Aubrey is the focus, the story is much bigger than her and is a beautifully written illustration of a family that has its struggles and its triumphs. I could not put it down and gave it 5 stars.

And now for something completely different! Glorious Exploits is set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War. After a recent battle, a group of Athenian prisoners is being held in a quarry, and two friends, Lampo and Gelon, decide to pass the time by staging a performance of Medea in which the prisoners are the actors -- because while they may hate Athenians, they still love their drama. As they work with the prisoners, they start to see their humanity, and they realize that by getting others to come see the play, perhaps they can do the same. It's a bit wacky, a bit funny, and a bit sad, and it's made a bit weirder by the fact that the author is Irish and the dialogue sounds more at home in modern-day Dublin than ancient Syracuse. Ultimately it's a creative way to show that art is a way to bring people together and help them recognize their similarities in spite of their differences. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 30/2026

Happy Fri -- er, Wednesday! It's the end of my workweek but only the middle of the week in general, and today as per usual I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers.

I'm still working on that sparkly purple charity hat and on my current spin, but today I'm planning on casting on a new project, a Sophie-ish scarf using this recent skein of handspun:

I figure I have knit enough shawls in my day that I can wing it without needing a pattern, though we'll see if I'm actually successful. I have a work meeting (online) right after lunch today that I have to attend but not really pay close attention to, so I'll be casting on then.

Because of a big project that got dropped in my lap late last week, my reading slowed a bit and I only have three finished reads to share this week (two of which were started at the beginning of the month). But they are all nonfiction, which is rather unusual for me!

In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that some of the policy decisions that were made decades ago and that may have been well intentioned at the time have led to major problems today: a shortage of affordable housing, worker shortages in certain industries, climate change, a problematic environment in which to conduct research. There's a lot of interesting content here, but a lot of it went in one ear and out the other (so maybe this wasn't the best book to read on audio and I would have retained more had I read with my eyes). It was a relatively short listen, despite having to slow down my usual speed (Ezra Klein can be a fast talker!), and I did feel I learned a few things, but when I finished I didn't feel like I had a solid grip on the content. I gave it 3 stars.

I have been wanting to read more of Toni Morrison's work (I have read only two of her novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, as well as her short story Recitatif and a collection of her essays and speeches), and some other readers I respect recommended that I read On Morrison before I do. Written by Harvard professor and novelist Namwali Serpell, this book is like taking a graduate seminar on Toni Morrison and her writing. It covers all of her novels and some of the other writings, examining their content, context, and creation. It's a comprehensive work and clearly written by someone who admires Morrison very much, but a lot of it was way over my head, especially when it got into the weeds about the mechanics of writing and literary devices. I think I got the most out of the chapters about the books I have read, and I can see myself going back to reread chapters as I read other novels and can make more sense of the discussion. I gave it 3 stars.

I previously read and enjoyed Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing and his podcast, and I had been wanting to read his new book, so I was delighted when my parents passed along a hard copy. London Falling investigates the death of a London teenager, Zac Brettler, under mysterious circumstances made even more mysterious when Zac's parents discovered that he'd been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch and possibly gotten involved with some very shady characters. Like everything PRK does, this book is meticulously researched well beyond the inciting incident of Zac's death, even to the point of taking you down rabbit holes you didn't even know about to expect (did you know, for instance, that there was once a very large and prosperous Indian community in Uganda?). There are no clear answers and no real resolution, but it's a fascinating read nonetheless. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm now officially past the halfway mark on a very long new release on audio and have just started a digital ARC on another nonfiction work.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 29/2026

It's Wednesday, so it must be time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers! This week's update finds me in an unusual spot: I have only one active knitting WIP. I have been spinning in the evenings when I'm upstairs, so the only knitting I've been doing regularly has been during the afternoons while Ruthie naps (and while I read or do work). That knitting, by necessity, has to be fairly simple, so it's generally socks or a hat. And a hat is what I've been working on this week.

It's been a while since I measured anything in Ruthies, and I think this particular system is well suited to this hat. The yarn I'm using is a light fingering weight, at 490 yards per 100 g. As if that's not enough, my skein was a bit heavy at 103 g, so I have a bit more than 500 yards. This is going to be for charity, so I figure I might as well use up as much of it as I can; worst case is that whoever ends up with it can fold the brim a couple of times. My parents were kind enough to drive me to and from the dinner Monday night (they were also attending), and the round trip took probably an hour and 45 minutes thanks to traffic, so I've gotten a fair amount done this week. I'm hoping I'll be able to finish in the next few days.

I've also done a fair amount of reading this week, but I'm busy enough that I don't have time to do full reviews and I apologize for that. I've finished five books since last Wednesday:

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (digital from library): A tradwife online influencer wakes up in 1855 and has to figure out how she got there and how to get back to the life she knows. A wild ride with a highly unlikeable main character that is nevertheless a page turner. 3 stars
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (audio from the library): A riveting true story of a rash of murders of members of the Osage nation and the investigation by the burgeoning FBI that revealed a pattern of efforts by white men to get the oil money of the Osage. 4 stars
• The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews (digital from library): A thriller set in the world of fine art. Clare was ABD on an art history PhD when she married into a wealthy family and has become unfulfilled with her new life. She has an affair with an art dealer, and when he is murdered, it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to frame her for his death. Outrageous but fun, especially if you know art. 4 stars
• Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz (audio from library): The third in the Susan Ryeland series finds her back in London working with a tumultuous author hired to write a continuation of the Atticus Pund series. She discovers that his book is actually a thinly veiled account of his own family, and once again she finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. Well performed (by actors) but too long. 3 stars
• Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julie Langbein (digital from library): Jean, in her mid-40s, can't seem to move on from an affair she had with a professor while a college student studying abroad in France. So she turns to Monica Lewinsky, as one would pray to a saint for intercession, for help as she revisits that summer. Funny, irreverent, and empowering and totally original. 4 stars

I'm still slowly making my way through London Falling before bed and, now that a flurry of three library holds in a row coming in has subsided, will be getting back to On Morrison.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 28/2026

Happy Wednesday morning from the heat dome! We're supposed to have a heat index upward of 100ºF today, so I will be spending as much time as possible inside, where I can knit in comfort. Today I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers with a big update on my crafting and my reading.

Over the weekend and the past couple of days, we've been dealing with a Comcast outage (fingers crossed that it's fixed now), but the lack of internet on Monday night meant I was able to focus on my spinning and finished up the second bobbin of singles.

As I got this post ready on Tuesday evening, I will have already started plying when you read this, and I'm hopeful I can get that done and the resulting yarn skeined up in time to share it with you on Friday.

I've been continuing to work on my socks while I read and work, and I'm onto the foot of the second sock:

And my current charity hat has grown a bit since you last saw it, and I'm delighted that the yarn has decided to stripe, even though it's sock yarn and I'm working at a bigger circumference:

Because I'm a little pressed for time, I'm going to keep my book reviews brief this week.

Little One by Olivia Muenter

Digital library loan

3 stars

Told in dual timelines, a woman who grew up in what might be considered a cult and has tried to escape from her past is forced to confront it when a reporter finds her and starts asking questions. It was a page-turner that moved at a good speed, but I was distracted by a number of grammatical errors and thought the ending was totally unrealistic.

Slow Horses (Slough House #1) by Mick Herron

Audiobook library loan

4 stars

Slough House is where the screwups from Britain's MI5 get sent. This first book in the series is pretty much exactly the plot of the first season of the Apple TV show of the same name, which I'd already seen, so there weren't really any surprises, but it was still an entertaining listen.

The Palace on the Higher Hill by Karim Kattan, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Paperback

2 stars

A Palestinian man living elsewhere returns to his family's home in the West Bank, where he is welcomed by ghosts and the memories of his childhood. I had a really hard time understanding what was going on in this book and probably wouldn't have finished it were it not part of my postal paperback club.

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks

Audiobook library loan

4 stars

A British sheep farmer travels to a remote island off the coast of Norway to learn about the life of Anna, a woman who has devoted much of her life to bringing back the Eider ducks whose feathers used to provide a living to earlier generations. Beautiful and respectful.

I'm currently reading a buzzy book, a recent narrative nonfiction release, and a work of literary criticism.

What are you making and reading?

Unraveled, Week 27/2026

It has been a relaxing couple of days away, even if there hasn't been much of an opportunity to sleep in; when there are two small children who have no sense of volume control in the house, it's hard to keep sleeping once they're up. But there no sense of rush and nowhere to be, nor is there any puppy needing walks or attention. We've had some rain every day since we got here and high temperatures in the mid-70s F, so it's been a very welcome reprieve. We'll head home tomorrow, and as nice as it's been to be away, I am looking forward to being back in my own bed, where the air conditioning works better.

As it's Wednesday, it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I brought my socks in progress on the trip but also wound some yarn for some new charity hats. I cast on the first on Monday evening, using some yarn I picked up off the freebie table at the first SSK I attended back in 2017.

This skein from a now-out-of-business company called Yarn Carnival. It's a light fingering weight -- 490 yards per 100 g skein! So this should be a good-sized hat when it's done.

I also brought a spindle project with me and have spent some time each day working on this second turtle (I finished one last summer when I started this project while Molly and I were at SSK).

Though last week was busy with work and Ruthie's illness, I took advantage of the long holiday weekend to do a little more reading and finished up three books before we left for our trip.

There's a reason there's always a pretty long wait for the books in the Thursday Murder Club series at the library: They are always a fun read. The Last Devil to Die, the fourth installment, brings a murder that appears to be connected to a shipment of heroin -- and a victim known to the members of the club. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is having to come to terms with her husband's worsening dementia, and their police friends are trying to solve the case even after they've been kicked off it. As per usual, it's all slightly ridiculous, but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment. I gave this one 4 stars.

I really enjoyed Nikki May's This Motherless Land when I read it last year, so I thought I'd give her debut novel, Wahala, a try. This book focused on female friendship centers three Anglo-Nigerian women: Ronke, a dentist who keeps making poor choices in the men she dates but is hoping her current boyfriend is The One; Boo, who has an adorable young daughter and loving French husband but who feels frustrated with her life; and Simi, who left medical school to pursue a career in fashion and is married to a businessman who is out of the country for long periods of time and isn't sure she wants the baby he insists they should be trying for. They have all been there for each other for years, but the friendships are thrown into upheaval with the arrival of Isobel, who seeks to worm herself into the lives of all three. I enjoyed most of this book and its exploration of the search for life meaning and identity all of the three main characters seemed to grapple with, but it took a turn near the end that seemed rather far-fetched to me. I gave it 3 stars.

I had been savoring Land by reading it in bed at night, a handful of pages at a time, but I decided that I didn't want to shlep a hardback book with me on vacation, so I brought it downstairs to read during Ruthie's nap time. I know many of you have already read this book, are reading it, or are planning to read it, so I will spare you any summary of the plot. I thought that this book beautifully showcased what an amazing writer Maggie O'Farrell is, but I found the story to be sad and even a little unsatisfying in the way things ended. I felt that there were several threads left dangling and too much heartbreak for one family, though in that respect I'm sure it wasn't too uncommon in Ireland at the time. Overall, I did like it quite a lot, though I can't say it was my favorite O'Farrell. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 26/2026

Thank you all for your support and sympathy on Monday's post. I'm still feeling a little anxious about the amount of yarn and fiber that's contained in the closet in that room, but at least it can be contained in the closet, and I'm feeling better now that I have a plan for it. Stay tuned for more on that in the months ahead.

Today, however, it's time for a crafting and reading update, so I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers.

Finished (but not yet blocked) are these socks for my sister-in-law:

I came up with the pattern for these, though I'm not sure whether it's different enough from existing designs to merit writing it up. The idea was an offset chevron that's mirrored in the socks, so they're symmetrical rather than identical. I used sportweight for these and thankfully had enough for both socks thanks to keeping the legs to only 5 inches and the fact that this sister-in-law has the shortest feet of anyone in the family I knit socks for (at least of the adults). Because the yarn was on the heavier side for socks, I went up to a US 1/2.25 mm needle and knit at a gauge of 8 stitches per inch. I'm now knitting another pair -- I still haven't decided if they'll be for me or for someone else -- using a rather light fingering weight and a US 0/2.0 mm needle, so they'll look similar but have a smaller gauge and a higher stitch count.

The Baby Surprise Jacket, after not getting much attention for a while, is now much closer to bind-off than cast-on, though it's still very much in the "what the heck is this thing?" stage:

I've now reached the point where you knit only on the 90 stitches at the center for a while (if you've knit one of these, you know what I'm talking about). Once that's done, I pick up on the sides of that panel and resume knitting across the whole thing for about 12 more rows, I think. Rather than buttonholes, I think I'm going to make some I-cord loops, kind of like what I did when I made Molly's BSJ.

In spite of work getting pretty busy in the past week, I've also managed to do a lot of reading (thank you, audiobooks and a day off!).

One really nice perk of being a member of NetGalley is that sometimes instead of requesting a book to read and review, the publishers come to you and ask you to read and review a book for them. That was the case for me with The Light Years, the first book in Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles. These books were published back in the '90s but are being reissued starting this December, and I was delighted to be introduced to them now. The Cazalets are a well-to-do British family whose three generations gather every summer at their country estate. In The Light Years, we spend the summers of 1937 and 1938 with them. The matriarch and patriarch of the clan are getting on in years and are being looked after by their unmarried daughter, Rachel. Two of their three sons, Hugh and Edward, are working in the family business after serving in WWI. Their youngest son, Rupert, is struggling to make a living as a painter and has recently remarried after his first wife died, and his new wife is struggling to fit in with the rest of the clan. The various grandchildren have their own quibbles and concerns. And supporting all of them is a slew of servants. While all the usual conflicts and arguments of families are taking place, so is the rise of Hitler in Germany and the specter of another war. If you're the sort of person who enjoyed Downtown Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs, and other similar period pieces, you will love this book. Be forewarned that there are some people who behave badly (adultery, child molestation) and very real concerns beyond the prospect of war (poverty, young children who have lost a parent, children who are fearful of bullying and abuse at boarding school), but overall it's a delightful insider's view of a complicated and complex family. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Modern Library for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published December 1, 2026.

I really enjoyed Laurie Frankel's most recent book, so I thought I'd try out something from her backlist. This Is How It Always Is (2017) tells the story of an extraordinary family. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when their fifth, Claude, comes along, but when Claude is still a small child, he tells his parents that he wants to be a girl when he grows up. How this family accepts their youngest child, even in a world where society has such strong gender stereotypes and expectations, is truly beautiful. I couldn't identify with this specific situation, but I certainly did feel a kinship with parents who want nothing more than for their child to be happy and true to themself. I loved that traditional gender roles were reversed in this family (the mother is a doctor and the father works from home as a writer) and that all of the children had their own quirks and distinctive characteristics. And I loved that while this family was dealing with something that most families don't, they realized that all parenting is this way -- every day is different and can bring some new challenge, but you get through them as best you can and make the best decisions you can with the knowledge you have at the time. I gave it 5 stars.

When two friends whose opinions you respect recommend a book to you, you listen. That's how I came to read Pandora's Jar, the audio version of which was read by the author. This work of nonfiction looks critically at how women are portrayed in Greek myth by looking at famous works of drama, literature, and art. She focuses on specific women whose names you will know -- Pandora, Medea, Medusa, etc. -- but whose stories, even in our times, are often misunderstood and whose reputations are thus tarnished. I've read works of fiction by Haynes before, but this book makes it clear that she's a scholar and that her knowledge of ancient Greece is vast. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to get a hard copy of it because so much of it went by so quickly in audio. If you are a fan of Greek myths, I'd recommend reading this one. I gave it 5 stars.

Daniel Mason's North Woods was my favorite book of 2023, so I couldn't wait to read his new book when I heard it was coming out and was lucky enough to get an ARC. Country People follows a family of four as they travel from California to Vermont for a year. Kate, the mother, is a renowned scholar of Milton who has been invited to hold a visiting professorship at a college there. Her husband, Miles, has been working on his dissertation for more than a decade and can't seem to settle on the right topic, though lately he is interested in the stories of Russian peasants in Tolstoy and thinks that maybe he'll be able to do some research by meeting some real-life "country" people in Vermont. They bring along their son Wesley, who's obsessed with an online game with elaborate world-building, and daughter Olive, along with their pandemic dog Guiseppe, of a breed known for truffle hunting (read: he likes to dig). What they encounter in this small town are characters who seem utterly ridiculous and yet are so fully developed that you can't dismiss them, almost as if the family has wandered into one of the folktales Miles knows so well from his dissertation research. And then things get really whackadoodle when he stumbles into a society devoted to a man who claimed he wandered into a cave one day and discovered an entirely separate world inside the earth. The description of this book calls it "joyous, absurd, and life-affirming," and I'd wholeheartedly agree with it. I found it funny and touching and, yes, absurd, but the absurdity is part of what made it so enjoyable to me. I gave it 4.5 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 July 7, 2026.

Finally, I completed my tour of books by J. Ryan Stradal with Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. Like the earlier two, this is a family story set in the Midwest, this time in a small town in Minnesota at the center of which is (you guessed it!) a supper club. It's not something I was familiar with, but I could understand how a family business could be a boon or a burden to successive generations of a family. I'd say this was my least favorite of Stradal's books, though that's not to say I didn't like it; I just found this one harder to follow with the jumps back and forth in time and between characters, and I also didn't care for how some of the characters treated each other. But it kept me entertained for the two or so days it took me to listen to it, and I gave it 3.5 stars.

Now that I've cleared the queue of ARCs and audiobooks (I had two checked out at once!), I am reading the fourth installment of the Thursday Murder Club series and still slowly making my way through Land.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 25/2026

It's Wednesday, so I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers as per usual, but first I have a cautionary tale to share. This all happened on Sunday after I got Monday's post ready to go, and I was too tired afterward to go back and edit, hence my sharing today.

The Mister had requested chicken piccata for dinner on Father's Day, so I was pan-frying the chicken breasts on the stove. I'd made a bit of a mess on the counter getting the chicken breaded, so I had the baking sheet with parchment paper and paper towels (to absorb the extra oil) sitting next to the pan on the stove. Molly was in the kitchen with me, mixing up a batch of brownies for dessert. I think you can likely guess what happened next: The baking sheet got just a little too close to the burner that was lit, and the next thing I knew, there were flames. Thankfully, we have always had a small fire extinguisher in the kitchen for just this sort of emergency and it did the job well. But it also made quite a mess.

Needless to say, we did not have chicken for dinner. The Mister was very understanding (I told him I'd make the dinner on Friday) and we were able to go out to get dinner at a place in the neighborhood -- and the brownies were already in the oven, so we still had a good dessert! Cleanup took quite a while, but I'm fairly certain the kitchen and especially the stove haven't been so clean in a long time! And yes, we did immediately order a replacement fire extinguisher (and an extra) right away, though I'm hoping I'll never need it -- for the record, the one I used was in the kitchen in the townhouse where before we moved into this house back in 2008, and it was the only one I've ever had to use.

PSA done, let's talk knitting. Not a ton has gotten done in the last couple of days -- I feel like I barely sat down on Monday between my run, going to donate blood, and walking Ruthie -- but I've at least made forward progress, which is better than having to unravel or tink. I've nearly finished the first sock in this pair (just a handful of rounds left on the toe!):

Reading hasn't been as plentiful in the past week either, at least if you go by the number of books I've finished -- only two, and audiobooks at that. But the two books I'm reading with my eyes are on the longer side, and that pesky job thing keeps taking up prime reading hours.

The first book I finished this year was by Jess Walter, so I thought I'd try a title from his backlist. Beautiful Ruins came out back in 2012 and is one of those books where there are multiple storylines taking place at different times that seem entirely unrelated but somehow all come together. There's one in 1962 in Italy that takes place during the filming of Cleopatra. There's one in the '90s at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And there's one in "recent" past in Hollywood. It takes a while to get to the connection and bring all these strands together, but it's an enjoyable trip. I also enjoyed all the Italian (it's translated, but I understood a fair amount!) and the excellent narration. I gave it 4 stars.

I read a second title by an author I'd enjoyed earlier this year in Underland. After enjoying my journey into rivers with Robert Macfarlane, so I thought I'd take a trip underground with him. This work focuses on spaces inside the earth, both natural and human made, and explores all the reasons why humans have sought out those spaces -- to live in, to inter remains, to bury toxic materials, etc. -- as well as our fascination with what lies beneath our feet and our urge to explore it. It's highly possible the issue this time was me, but I had trouble staying focused and engaged with this one. I have a feeling I would have gotten more out of it had I read with my eyes. I gave it 3 stars.

I've got another long weekend coming up (I'm taking my last personal day on Friday), so I'm hoping I can get some good reading time in all three days. I want to finish at least one of those long books!

Unraveled, Week 24/2026

It's Wednesday today, but it's also kind of Friday for me, given that it's my last workday of the week. How nice to get to use it to talk about what I'm making and reading! As usual, I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I've got another hat off the needles, though it still needs a good bath to get the stitches to settle down.

This photo, taken in natural light, is a better representation of the color. I added an extra half inch of length to this one before starting the decreases, and I was worried I was going to play another round of yarn chicken because the ball was getting pretty skimpy toward the end. The finished hat weighed in at 88 g and the remaining yarn at 6 g, so once again I had a pretty underweight skein. Thankfully it was enough to finish, but I'm really starting to wonder if this was a regular problem and part of the reason why the yarn was discontinued! This was the last of it in my stash, though, so I won't have to worry about running short again.

I've just cast on a pair of socks for my sister-in-law (either for her birthday in September or Christmas), and I pulled my bin of fingering skeins out to see if I could get inspired about what to knit next.

It's been another productive week of reading, with five books finished.

Ann Patchett is one of my favorite writers, so naturally I preordered her newest, Whistler, from her bookstore, Parnassus Books. (I like to support my local indie bookstore whenever I can, but ordering from Parnassus means I get a signed copy on the day it comes out!) If you're already an Ann Patchett fan, then this book is already on your radar and I don't have to tell you what it's about, but I will tell you that I loved it. It's beautifully written but also easy to read. The relationships between the characters are the focus, and you can feel their emotions and want to hug them all. And if you know about Ann Patchett's own life story, then you'll see a lot of her in the book, too. This is one of those books that, although it contains sad moments, just makes you want to smile the whole time you're reading it. Highly recommend -- 5 stars!

I had bookmarked Uncultured on Hoopla when I read the description and saw it was compared to Educated and The Glass Castle. Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in a cult in which physical, emotional, and sexual abuse ran rampant and education of the world outside was severely restricted. She always knew that what was happening to her wasn't right and finally left the group as a teenager to go to high school and college in the United States. After college, she entered the military, only to discover that it had some eerie similarities to the life she left behind. This was a hard book to read in many instances, but I always find it inspirational to read about people, especially women, who are able to stand up for themselves and leave situations in which they are victims. I gave it 4 stars.

I adored A Ghost in the Throat, so when I learned via Katie's blog that the author has a work of fiction coming out later this year, I immediately requested it on NetGalley. Said the Dead is one of those books that's nearly impossible to categorize. Is it fiction? Is it memoir? History? Fantasy? All of the above? The person telling the story (at times described using the first person and at times called simply "the Reader") comes across a former mental hospital being redeveloped into condos. Exploring some of the grounds and buildings, she feels a strange connection, which leads her to seek out the archives of the institution. There she comes across the unusual history of Lucia Strangman, one of the first female doctors to work with the mentally ill, and becomes obsessed with her case notes. The Reader becomes so immersed in the stories of the women who Lucia treated -- so often committed to the hospital not because they were truly ill but because they were at the mercy of men in their life or because they didn't fit in with the society of the time or simply due to extreme poverty -- that she often neglects her own life and family. The narrative is interspersed with haunting images of Lucia, her family, and some of her patients, and throughout there is a mysterious commentary to one side that suggests that as the Reader is somehow watching the lives of these patients unfold, someone is watching her. There is a dreamlike quality to the book, and there's never a clear sense of what is real and what is fiction, but overall there's an immense respect for the many women whose names and lives were utterly forgotten in time. As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it again, certain there was so much I missed. I gave it 4.5 stars, rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 22, 2026.

One of the challenges I'm signed up for on the StoryGraph is winners of what is now the Women's Prize for Fiction, so I decided to see what was available without a wait on audio on Libby from that list late last year. The Tiger's Wife came out 15 years ago, but as I had a 1-year-old then, it wasn't on my radar. This is a weird one to describe. It's set in an unnamed country in the Balkans and frequently refers to "the war," though it's never completely clear which war. Natalia is a doctor, on a trip with a friend to deliver medicine and vaccines to an orphanage, when she learns that her beloved grandfather, also a doctor has died. Over the next several days, she remembers the stories he told her of his childhood, where a deaf woman was believed to have had a relationship with an escaped tiger and was referred to as the tiger's wife, and of his encounters with "the deathless man," who appears when people are close to death to help ease their transition. I thought the writing was good but the story was bizarre, and I wasn't entirely sure what the point of it was. The lack of specificity also got a little on my nerves. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, Molly had asked me to read The Memory Police, which she read for school toward the end of the year and wanted me to read so we could discuss it. This book was published in Japan in 1994 but was only translated into English in 2020. An unnamed narrator is a writer of novels who lives on a remote unnamed island where things are disappearing. When something disappears, so do the island residents' memory of that thing. But there are some people who still remember, and if they are discovered, the Memory Police take them away. When the writer discovers that her editor is one of those people, she decides to hide him in a secret room in her house, and he tries to help her recover her lost memories even as more and more things disappear. In the novel she is writing, a woman becomes romantically involved with her typing teacher, but one day she discovers that she no longer has a voice and has become his captive. The book gets really, really strange, but on a metaphorical level, it's an interesting illustration of how authoritarian governments can maintain control through fear and how easy it can be to acclimate to the loss of things that were once thought necessities. I gave it 3 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 23/2026

Happy Wednesday! It has been a steamy start to the week, and I've found that I've been less and less tolerant of heat and humidity, so I've just accepted that it's the time of year when I'm going to have to deal with being sweaty all the time. I've also pretty much given up on blow-drying my hair unless I really feel like I want to look nice -- wet bun for the win! This weather is probably why I've feel a little unexcited about knitting lately, but I did promise some more official FO shots of my recent finishes and it's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers as per usual.

First, the baby pants!

The pattern is Rocky from Tin Can Knits. I chose the smallest size (0-6 months), even though I usually make a larger size for baby knits, because this baby will be born in Sweden and will need some warm clothing right away. I knit these at the gauge called for in the pattern, 24 stitches over 4 inches, but the fabric seems a little too loose for my taste, so the next time I knit these -- and trust me, there will be a next time -- I will likely either use a smaller needle and one of the larger sizes or just use thicker yarn. As is always the case with TCK patterns, this one was a breeze to follow and didn't require any modification. I didn't even need to wind off any yarn to start the second leg because the first one was bound off in just the right spot!

Next up, that hat I wasn't sure about:

I hope you can excuse the crazy hair; I pulled out the bun to get the hat to fit as it should. The reason I wasn't so sure about the hat is that I'm not sure if the pointy-uppy part looks fun or just ridiculous. I'm sure it'll suit someone, though, and that's just as well because this is going to the charity pile. But I was experimenting with the crown decreases all the same to satisfy my curiosity for design purposes. Any thoughts are welcome!

I'm sticking with a more traditional look for the current hat on the needles (also for the charity pile), which is now onto the ribbing.

Reading! There's been more of it! Here are the books I've finished this week:

I love a retelling of a classic, and I especially love a retelling of a Jane Austen novel. Unmarriageable is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in early 21st-century Pakistan, and it's brilliantly done. Alys (the Elizabeth Bennet character) is even an English literature teacher who loves Jane Austen! What was really interesting about this book was that storylines didn't really have to be modernized all that much to make sense, and the author notes that when she first read Austen, she very much felt like the world of those novels were nearly identical to the Pakistani society she knew. The author reads the audiobook and does a good job with the voices and accents. I also really appreciated the names she came up with for the characters and the traits that made them so recognizable. I gave it 4.5 stars, rounded up.

I wanted something fairly light and whimsical next, so I went for A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, a relatively recent release (it came out last summer) that I've heard mentioned on podcasts several times. Sera was once a young witch with incredible powers, but she lost them and was exiled from the local guild after she cast a powerful spell to bring her beloved great aunt (and, inadvertently, the aunt's beloved late rooster) back to life. Fifteen years later, she's running the inn where they live and that's slightly magical in such a way that it appears to those who need it and thus has become home to people who don't seem to fit in anywhere. While it's partly a story about Sera trying to get her powers back, what I enjoyed the most about it was that it was a story about found family and people coming to love themselves. I gave it 4 stars.

In Unlikely Animals, Emma Starling, who once possessed the ability to heal people through touch, has returned to her childhood home in a small New Hampshire town. She was accepted to medical school but decided not to go, and when she learns that her father has a mysterious brain disease causing him to hallucinate animals and the ghost of a famous local naturalist, going home seems to be the best option. There she finds her mother hasn't fully forgiven her father for having an affair and her brother is struggling to get his life back on track after getting out of rehab for opioid addiction, and while her father is seeing animals and ghosts, he's also determined to find Emma's childhood best friend, who disappeared some months ago and is presumed to be dead of an overdose. This sounds like it would be incredibly depressing, but it's actually mostly funny and heartwarming. I think I enjoyed The Road to Tenderhearts a little more, but I gave this one 4 stars.

The Last Ranger sounded good to me when it was described in a recent podcast episode, and I've liked the Peter Heller books I've read before, so I thought I'd give it a try. It follows Ren, a park ranger in Yellowstone, as he investigates what looks to be poaching and then what appears to be an attack on his friend Hilly, a biologist who specializes in wolves. He also reflects on his childhood and the alcoholism of and abandonment by his mother. I thought the book was interesting, and it held my attention for the most part, but I struggled to follow the story and keep track of the characters at times. That may have been because I was listening rather than reading with my eyes, but regardless, this was not my favorite Heller. I gave it 3 stars.

I heard about How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder on a podcast (are you shocked?). For such a short novel -- only about 200 pages -- there is a lot going on here. The narrator and her sister are the product of an Indian mother and American father, and they live in Wyoming while their father is away working on oil rigs. They struggle with the usual issues of identity and being "other" in a very white small town, but when their mother's brother and his family come from India to live with them, that is the least of their worries. When their uncle begins to molest them, the sisters decide that they can't tell their mother and make her unhappy, so the best solution is to murder him by poisoning him with antifreeze. It's weird and different but also intriguing. I gave it 3 stars.

Now I'm trying to finish up the last 80 or so pages of Whistler, and I have several books waiting to start next. How about you -- what are you making and reading this week?