Joining Kat and friends on Unraveled Wednesday.

Knitting.

Well, as you can see, it is not quite done yet. I am doing the i-cord bind off, which takes roughly a century or two because one must knit three stitches to bind off one. After that are the shoulder seams, sewing on a couple buttons, and making and attaching the i-cord frog I have in mind. So it will be done sometime in 2023...

Reading.

In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton. This one had been on my bookshelf for years. I think I probably picked it up at a library book sale after hearing Smokey tell me the ship’s story. The USS Indianapolis was the ship that delivered the atomic bombs to the Pacific island from which they would be flown to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After making that delivery the ship headed to the Philippines, but on the way it was torpedoed and sunk. Roughly a thousand sailors made it off the ship, but, due to a series of communication glitches, no one knew the ship was sunk and that the men were floating in the Philippine Sea. Of the 890 who survived the sinking, only about 300 survived exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks. 3★

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. This one has been on my bookshelf for years. Someone gave it to me, saying that I really needed to read it. I think I left in on my bookshelf, unread, because I assumed the book in the title was the Bible, and I had no interest in that subject. But when I ran out of library books, I picked it up. Nope, it was about a 15th century Jewish book and the various people who possessed it over the centuries. 3.5★

Still no new library books, so I next chose another one from my bookshelf: Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese. I think a friend loaned me this book several years ago, (There is a lesson in that; do not loan me a book unless you are okay with not getting it back for years.) This one is totally different from my usual fare. It is the story of a Native teenager, abandoned nearly at birth by his father and whose mother died in childbirth, being reunited with his father. Father is a long-time drunk whose liver is failing fast, and he has chosen to ask this son to take him on a ride into the wilderness so the he can be buried there. The story, the language, and the descriptions are wonderful. 4★

I am reading my way through Ann Cleves’ Vera Stanhope series. Telling Tales is #2 in the series and was an enjoyable read. Hidden Depths, #3, was not quite as good; whenever a book has a group of similar characters that play similar roles in the story, I always have a hard time keeping them straight. Silent Voices, #4 in the series, was better. However, in all the Stanhope books I have read so far, Cleves pins the murder on a character without having given the reader any real clues as to the perpetrator. I found that a bit annoying, but overall I still enjoy the stories and will continue the series.

At this rate I might actually read all the books on my bookshelf that I have bought over the years.