Saturday was a particularly productive evening for sock knitting, so I now have half a pair of socks.

I am still reading Recipe for Persuasion, but since catchers and pitchers have officially reported for duty in Florida and Arizona, I thought it was time to turn my attention toward a spring training novel, The Cactus League by Emily Nemens. I’m looking forward to starting it this week.

Head over to As Kat Knits for a reading/crafting roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, yellow, and green. Honestly, I don’t love cover challenges and thought about sitting this one out. But it seemed like more work at the outset to finish my top ten reads of 2020 post, so I started pulling together library books, figuring that of the 20+ books I have out, surely half must fall into this category. Nope. And by then I was committed, so the rest of the books are from my personal TBR collection that didn’t require dismantling shelves in order to extricate. (Yes, I do realize that makes it less likely I’ll read those books. Your point?)

Anyway, in the end I found 10:

They are:

Top row: Fast Cakes by Mary Berry, Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams, Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli, Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz, and Everyday Cookies by Dorie Greenspan
Bottom row: The Runaway Princess by Johan Troïnowski, Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, Selected Fables/Fables Choisis by Jean de La Fontaine, The Intrigue at Highbury by Carrie Bebris, and The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

Have you read any of these?

I’ve been lazy this past week. (To be fair, I suppose there was also a lot of work, cake baking, and a visit with an old friend. But still… ) Please see last week’s post for the most recent knitting and reading works-in-progress. I’m a little further along in both, but really not enough to bother boring you with a photo.

I have a four-day weekend coming up, though, so I do anticipate having new progress to show you next week.

I broke in my new cookbook, Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi, by baking an oatmeal chocolate chip cake tonight.

The cake is tasty, although all the chocolate chips sank to the bottom of the pan. I know how to resolve that with fruit (dredge it in flour), but I don’t know if there’s a similar fix for chocolate. Rudi and I ate nearly half the pan tonight, which the author does warn is a distinct possibility for all the cakes she includes.

While the concept caught my eye, it is the unfussiness of the recipes that made me buy the cookbook on impulse. Each recipe includes what you need to do if you’re using a different type of pan (loaf or sheet), an alternate flavor, and a way to gussy it up (flavored whipped creams, mostly), and most of the recipes are prepped in a single bowl.

I had Rudi pick the inaugural recipe, but since my birthday is coming up this weekend, I think I’ll reserve the next pick. There’s one with pink frosting that’s calling out my name.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to come up with our own topic about Valentine’s Day or love. I’ve opted to go with the top ten books I’ve read with “Love” in the title:

1. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss: A teenager and a senior citizen bond over a book the girl’s mother is translating.
2. Love Is a Mix-Tape by Rob Sheffield: A memoir of Sheffield’s late wife and his grief in losing her, as told through music. Heartbreaking, but even more so because it’s so relatable.
3. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern: A boy and a girl grow up and grow apart and grow back together again, always brought back together by the power of the letters they send each other.
4. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech: A boy begrudgingly writes a series of poems for a class assignment — and turns it into both a conversation with his teacher and an ode to a beloved pet.
5. My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories, edited by Stephanie Perkins: This collection of romantic holiday-themed short stories written by the hottest YA authors of the time is varied and charming.
6. Book Love by Debbie Tung: A highly relatable collection of comics about being a bibliophile.
7. The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough: Historical fiction about a young woman who wants to fly planes, a wealthy young man with a bright future, and the supernatural characters of Love and Death, whose games have caused all the star-crossed lovers throughout time. The final chapter of this book has been my mind a lot recently.
8. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone: A biography of Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband, William, and the role they played in the advent of cryptology and modern spycraft in the first half of the 20th century.
9. P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han: Really, the whole series of Lara Jean Covey Song novels, about what happens when diaristic love letters you meant to remain private end up in the hands of your crushes.
10. Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch: After her mother dies, a teen learns her mother has asked a strange man who lives in Italy (in a cemetery) to be her guardian. She comes to understand that choice by reading the journal her mother kept during her own teen odyssey to Italy decades earlier.

How about you? Are there Love books you’ve loved?

An old friend and I took a long walk last night and by the time I came home, I was so chilly and tired that my cocoa, the last chapter of my book, and the comfort of the couch did me in.

But in the interest of sharing something, here’s some of the rabbit hole I fell down today — covers of Beatles songs by artists I like:

Pomplamoose: “Something”

Brandi Carlisle: “All You Need Is Love”

Lake Street Dive: “Don’t Let Me Down”

Do you have a favorite Beatles’ cover?