Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

Knitting.

I keep churning out the blue hats whilst my red Boxy sits forlornly on the dining room table. It is at the point where I need to study the pattern and think about it and measure (repeatedly) to determine if I am at the shoulders. The stage that requires pattern study and thinking always slows me down.

Reading.

Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice by Ada Deer. This author was referenced by Clyde Bellecourt, whose book I read last month. It is equally interesting; whereas Bellecourt was confrontational, Deer worked within the system — all the way to Washington! — to make big changes for Native peoples. Bellecourt was a man and recovering alcoholic; Deer is a woman trained as a social worker. What a contrast in styles! 4✭

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A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. The first book in the All Souls trilogy. Main character is an American historian doing graduate work in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. She specializes in medieval history and in particular, the study of alchemy. She is also a witch, although she doesn’t want to be and attempts to reject that part of herself. At the library she meets Matthew, a centuries-old vampire; love-hate ensues (spoiler: love wins). So far it sounds like the Twilight series, right? But this author is a highly educated history professor with degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. She currently teaches European history and the history of science at USC. More importantly, she is a good writer. Anyway, the witches, vampires, and daemons are in an uproar because of the main character’s abilities. Recommend if this sounds like your kind of thing, perhaps even if it is not your kind of thing. Based on the goodreads.com reviews, I predict that you will either love it or hate it. Count me in the latter category; the second book of the trilogy is waiting for me at the library 4✭

Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess. If you don’t read her blog, I encourage you to go read some of it. If you like her humor, this book is for you. Lawson suffered from various illnesses; mental — OCD, ADD, clinical depression, anxiethy — and physical — rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders. But she somehow finds the humor in all this. I read her two previous books (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy) and ordered this one from an almost-local bookstore (it is also a yarn shop). That was last spring; the bookstore contacted me to verify that yes, I really did want to buy it, and yes, I knew it was not scheduled to be released until April 2021. I enjoyed it so much that I went back and bought Lawson’s first two books. I only buy and keep books by authors who are special to me — Lawson, Ian McEwan, Paul Farmer. 4✭

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Only three books read since April 7? That is really lame. In my defense, the witch book was over 600 pages. And that is my only defense. That, and the knowledge that I may very well have read another book or three that I failed to record and no longer remember.

Watching.

The X Files. We have taken a hiatus on watching this series. Commercials are a *feature* of the $1.99/month Hulu subscription, but I am an expert at muting all such annoyances. Said hiatus is not because of any lack of interest, but because Hulu is making it extremely annoying. All was fine until halfway through season five, then the commercials stopped. And as soon as the screen said “Ad | 1 of 3” the app would freeze. My theory is that they didn’t (or couldn’t) sell the ad space, but neglected to update the streaming part. The only way to resume watching is to exit, restart the episode, then fast forward to just after the commercial break. We struggled through the rest of season five, hoping that season six would be better. But, n o joy. Right about then my pandemic brain remembered The Library! I requested season six plus the The X Files movie. They should arrive this week.

In the interim as we wait for The X Files DVDs to arrive we have returned to Sherlock. Now in the middle of season three. What a fun series! Not remotely plausible, but the characters and actors are endearing and the plot particulars unpredictable.