Joining Kat and friends. Go see what the others are up to.

Knitting.

This is the blue hat to replace the one that stretched to potato sack size. The blue hat I donated last summer that had 1″ stripes was my and others’ favorite of the blue hats. I planned to duplicate the style in this hat, but somehow there was too much contrast with 1″ stripes. The color changes in the previous striped hat were much more subtle. So I frogged and made this. Each stripe is 3 rows, about 3/4″, tall. Much better.

<Slight digression> I was lying in bed reading one evening last week when my cell phone rang. That in itself was disconcerting, since cell reception in our house is sketchy at best. Texts, yes, but voice? Nope. However, this was a call on the [Facebook] Messenger app, so technically it was not a phone call at all, but rather an internet video call. It was my brother and SIL calling from Canada. We talked about the hats and COVID and everything else under the sun. I haven’t seen either of them for years, although we do message each other. Sound and image were crystal clear — isn’t technology amazing? </digression>

Reading.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I loved this book. I didn’t think I would because 1, the setting was in sunny Southern California; B, among beautiful, tanned, fit, happy people; and iii, the cover seemed to emphasize those things. They are all true, but the four main characters were so fully drawn that I cared, plus SURPRISE! every one of those beautiful, tanned, fit, and happy people had very human problems. I quite liked Daisy Jones and the Six by the same author, so I thought that maybe this one would be good. And it was. Side note: it was especially good to read this during the run up to a northern winter. Sun, surf, warm water? It was pleasant to imagine being there. 4✭

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Harry Starke by Blair Howard; book 1 of the Harry Starke series.Turns out I read this back in June, when it was a Kindle freeby. Read it anyway.Better than average detective novel. 3.5✭

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Two For The Money by Blaire Howard; book 2 of the Harry Starke series. Turns out I read this one back in June, too. No wonder the plot seemed familiar. I will begin to re-read this one as soon as I finish A Familiar Sight.

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A Familiar Sight by Brianna Labuskes; book 1 in the Dr. Gretchen White series. White is a psychologist, criminologist, and consultant to the Boston police force. She also happens to be a sociopath. Although this book got high ratings on Goodreads — 4.12 out of 5 — I am baffled to understand why. Yes, the thesis is intriguing, a sociopath helping the police, but the writer ignores one of the primary rules of writing fiction: show, do not tell. In the first third of the book, well over half of the text is explaining the thought process of the character who is speaking. I got really tired of that. I would forget exactly what had just happened because it was buried under several paragraphs of backstory and explanation of the character’s thought process. I am somewhere in the middle of the book, hoping that it gets better, since pretty soon the author will [hopefully] assume that we, the reader, know enough not to require the annoying explanatory paragraphs. 2✭

Listening.

I gave up on The Warmth of Other Sons because it was soooo long, and I have 168 hours of unlistened-to-audiobooks in my Audible library. Obama’s book was 20+ hours, and it got me behind. Warmth was making me despair of ever catching up. So I queued up Clara Parke’s book…

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Vanishing Fleece by Clara Parkes. This is a fun book, especially for wool lovers. I started it last week two weeks ago while waiting in my car for woman I was giving a ride to. I look forward to more woolly listening. 5✭

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Note: here is the NYT article that talks about the black ballerina I included in Saturday’s links post. If you cannot see it, try this where I shared the story on FB.