Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is “auto-buy authors.” I’m positive I don’t have ten (although I’ll note below which they are), but I certainly have ten whose works must immediately be put on hold at the library:

1. Jasper Fforde (must buy)
2. Rainbow Rowell (must buy)
3. Barbara Kingsolver
4. J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith
5. Sherry Thomas (I need to track down her backlist)
6. Brian Selznick (must buy his later works; still have to finish going through his backlist)
7. Toni Morrison
8. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (only applies to their works together, since I haven’t read either of their solo catalogues)
9. Becky Albertalli
10. Nicola Yoon

Erin Morganstern has only published The Night Circus, but if her sophomore effort, due out this fall, is anywhere near as good, I’ll be adding her to my must-buy list, too.

This is probably my favorite song that Rudi plays on the guitar. Short of recording him performing it, I thought I’d dig up a cover of it as a calm way to begin our Sunday mornings.

Here is Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana covering Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird.”

Yes, Corey is awake in this picture, although he’d been sleeping shortly before. No, he didn’t go after the yarn. Yes, he is a good kitten and I told him so.

I have made it through the first section of my Tour de France knitalong shawl, which I have nicknamed Forever in Bike Shorts.

There has been some tinking, when I screwed up the pattern stitch and couldn’t figure out how to fix a knit-1-below stitch I’d dropped down to repair. But it was relatively straightforward getting it back on the needles, although I definitely would prefer not to repeat that once there are several hundred stitches on my needles, rather than just several dozen. I should definitely not attempt to knit on this while sleeping.

I did not end up picking either of the yarns I showed you on Sunday, nor the next one I tried the following day. But then, while hunting for something else, I came across this baggie of yarn I had unraveled from a sock-in-progress that had been attacked by a moth several years back. It’s Neighborhood Fibers in Dupont Circle and works really well with the Iris. (It has some purple variegation over the pink, so even when the MadTosh bleeds — the strong smell of vinegar suggests it will — it shouldn’t be a problem.) I’m excited to get to the mosaic section, although I admit that the skein now being in 12 balls ranging from a few yards to 200-300 yards is probably not quite ideal. But I will make it work because I am going to love the hell out of this thing when it’s done.

Much of my knitting thus far has been done not to bike racing on tv, but to the audiobook of Christina Uss’ The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, a middle-grade novel I started listening to in May, then had it expire on me as I was about halfway through. Bicycle grew up in a Nearly Silent Monastery in D.C. and instead of getting on a bus to go to a Friendship Factory the way her guardian intended (because she had a poor record of making friends herself), she took herself off on a cross-country bike ride to meet her cycling hero in San Francisco.

When my hands aren’t occupied, I’m still reading Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors and Red, White, and Royal Blue. I’m about halfway through both. I need to finish the former by this weekend, because otherwise I’ll have to pay the library for returning it so late.

Want to see what other folks are reading and crafting? Head to As Kat Knits to check out her round-up!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to invent our own topic relating to book characters. I thought I’d share ten of my favorite found families of literature — the ones who are brought together by fortune or happenstance, rather than blood, à la Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Sherlock and Watson (in any of their iterations):

1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman: Shared location
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows: Shared location/interests
3. Night Circus by Erin Morganstern: Coworkers
4. The Illuminae Files trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: Shared nemesis
5. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: Classmates/Shared abilities
6. Check, Please!: #Hockey, Vol. 1 by Ngozi Ukaza: Teammates
7. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: Shared nemesis
8. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles: Shared location
9. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: Shared location
10. Geekerella by Ashley Poston: Coworkers

How about you? Have you enjoyed any books that center around found families?

I didn’t knit at all this week. Mostly, I didn’t even take it with me. But the Tour de France (and its associated knitalong) starts up on Saturday, so I have been doing a lot of mulling over of patterns. A new shawl may be in the works come this time next week! Or, you know, something else entirely.

I did, however, read. And because I read, I took books back to the library and brought home new ones, including Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue, which I started today in honor of the Fourth of July. It’s about the first female president’s son, who causes an international incident with an heir to the throne in a $75,000 scuffle at a Royal Wedding. I am entranced with both Alex and Henry and if I resurfaced for air after a kiss in the Rose Garden, well, let’s say it was just so I didn’t stay up all night reading straight through.

I’m also reading the Austen-inspired, Indian-American-centric Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev and listening to Daisy Jones & The Six, which read by a full cast (including some well-known voices) and which is the book equivalent of a Behind the Scenes special about a 1970s pop star and her band. It’s excellent help at distracting me while pitting a seemingly endless supply of cherries at the kitchen sink.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what people who’ve actually been crafting this week have been working on.

Twilight
   ~Elfrida De Renne Barrow

Circled
To completion,
Dove-winged, the day pauses,
Fluttering along the star-edges
Of night.