Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

Knitting.

As I re-started this sweater I realized that Boxy is virtually the same shape as a sweater I already have and that I like a great deal. That sweater is the gray one underneath, above. That makes it really easy to see if the fit is right. Looks like it is time to split for the armholes.

I am loving the process on this sweater. It is practically mindless. Round and round I go in stockinette, perfect TV knitting. And it seems that my progress is not really as much of a endless crawl as I expected. When I picked up the UFO, it was about 6″ tall; now it is at least 14″. Probably won’t get to wear it this winter, but next winter for sure.

I finished a couple more hats for the blue hat project. The one on the left is Berocco Vintage worsted with helical stripes using the leftovers from previous blue hats. The one on the right is double-stranded fingering weight solid blue and some self-striping Schoppel-Wolle Das Paar, both from the stash (which is not shrinking as fast as I wish).

Reading.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. This book, by the same author as Station Eleven, is every bit as good, although it is a bit hard to follow, given that it jumps around in time. 3★

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The Searcher by Tana French. French has the dubious honor of being one of my favorite authors, which means I read everything she writes. Her last book but one, The Witch Tree, was not up to her standard, but The Searcher definitely is. The rest of her previous books are police procedurals set in Dublin; the protagonist in The Searcher is a retired American police detective who buys a house and land in rural Ireland and becomes entangled a local disappearance. 3.5★

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Fair Warning by Moichael Connelly. (#3 in the Jack McEvoy series) Good suspense reading. McEvoy is a crime reporter, formerly of the Denver newspaper but now in LA. 3.5★
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Deep into the Dark by P.J.Tracy.

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When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal. It was awhile since I read this, and I don’t remember much about it, other than it was OK. 3★

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Child 6150: A Plea For Help That Went Unanswered; Now A Free Man After 50 Years of Incarceration by Danny Lee Amos. The author lives in my village; he did an author event at our library a couple years ago. I bought his book then, but it sat on my shelf ever since. When I ran out of library books I picked it up. It really tells why the US needs prison and justice reform. The subtitle tells all. 4★

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Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. Brosh is the author/blogger of Hyperbole and a Half. If you have never read any of her stuff, go to the link. 3.5★

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Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Purely by happenstance, I read this book that is Kym’s, Carole’s, and Bonny’s selection for their online bookclub. Or maybe I requested it from the library when they announced it on their blogs. Here is my Goodreads review:

The writing was atmospheric and induced claustrophobia that felt to me was what the characters were feeling. The ending/non-ending felt right to me, although of course I would have liked to find out exactly what was happening. One nit to pick: I found it highly unlikely that anywhere on Long Island would have no cell service; I live in n.w. Wisconsin, where lack of cell service is not uncommon. 

4★

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The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson (#2 in the Truly Devious series) I read the first book in this series; here is my review of that one; the same is true of this one:

I chose this book because I used to follow her on Twitter, and her posts were witty and entertaining. Turns out this is a YA book, which I generally find to be overly simplified, but I read it anyway. And I was not disappointed. The emotions and traumas of teenagers are part of the story, but are depicted without sensationalism. The murder is not cleaned up for tender readers. My only disappointment came at the last page, when I discovered that this book is the first in a series — a surefire way to sell more books. But this one was good enough that I will keep going with the series. Good escapism. 4★