This short film, This Is Where We Live, celebrated the 25th anniversary of 4th Estate Publishers, an imprint of HarperCollins, when it first came out more than a decade ago. I meant to share it with you 18 months ago, but just discovered it in my drafts folder when I was looking for something else. I guess it’s good to go in there periodically, eh?

If you liked this, 4th Estate has several “making of” videos on their Vimeo channel.

I’m at a point where I’m trying to finish up some lingering projects, which would be easier if they were further along, if I had more energy to work on them, or if I devoted more time to crossing them off the list. Instead, I read a chapter or two at lunch, knit one color, and then put them away, seemingly surprised that they aren’t done yet.

So here we are, still less than 100 pages into We Met in December (which is also when I began reading) and not yet to the heel turn on sock #1.

A Fatal Grace has returned itself to the library, but I am on the holds list for the audiobook at 3 libraries, so am hopeful that it will revert to me, if not for this week’s trip, then likely before next week’s. I’ve downloaded Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test for this week, but the first chapter makes me wonder if I’d prefer to read it on paper. Time will tell.

Head over to As Kat Knits to catch up with people who make more steady progress toward their knitting and reading goals.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our ten most recent book hangovers — those books that we either absolutely could not put down, no matter the hour or consequence, or those that kept us so enthralled even after the final page was finished that we couldn’t move on to another book.

I had to go back almost a year and a half to get to ten, but I finally made it:

1. Kate Racculia’s Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is a tightly paced, slightly over-the-top story with quirky, lovable characters that wanted to keep living in my head even after the final page was turned, which seems appropriate given the storyline.
2. Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory was such a sweet holiday romance that it wanted to be finished on back-to-back days, so it was good I read it over Christmas break.
3. The same thing happened with Jasmine Guillory’s The Proposal, but in that case it was during baseball season instead of the holiday setting.
4. Caravel by Stephanie Garber was also a fast read, full of a layered plot and unreliable characters and questionable motives.
5. Check, Please! Book One: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu was an unusual read for me in that I don’t care at all about hockey, but I loved this book. And while I enjoy graphic novels, reading them gives me a little bit of a headache, so it’s rare for me to read them singly or for prolonged periods at a time. So it’s a real testament to Ukazu’s charming characters and New England elite liberal arts college setting that kept me absolutely glued to the pages.
6. Just as it’s rare for me to power through a graphic novel, it’s also unusual for me to progress quickly through an audiobook. But with The Lido by Libby Page, a novel about community activism and friendship and the power of journalism, I finished it in less than a week, which means I was spending a lot of my spare time listening, rather than just while I was washing the dishes at night.
7. Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce was another quick read, with a wartime setting and a BFF schism making everything more urgent.
8. Ghosts of Greenglass House by Kate Milford is the second in a series. Checking in with old friends in a familiar, well-loved setting made this a one-day read.
9. I did not love Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered when I read it, but it refuses to fully release me from its spell, pulling me back into its unsettling orbit even now on occasion.
10. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson was another fast read, rapidly investing me in its group of kids who go from forced support group to support network.

How about you? What recent book hangovers have you suffered from? ‘Fess up in the comments!

Last weekend involved endings, so hopefully the upcoming week will center around beginnings.

Here’s what I’m hoping that looks like:

The yarns (and pom pom) are for a colorwork hat that I’ve been planning to knit for a couple years now.

And the book, an Austenite British novel, rather than one set in a New Jersey bookshop, as I originally thought when I grabbed the title at a recent library book sale, seems fitting for a week set around love (particularly since on Sanditon, the two main characters finally realize they each like the other).

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what everyone else is working on.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share any topic we’d like related to “love” in honor of Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d share the 11 books I have rated with four or five stars in Goodreads with some form of the word in the title:

1. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
2. Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
4. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
7. My True Love Gave To Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins
8. Book Love by Debbie Tung
9. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone
10. Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
11. The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough

That’s out of 46 books with “love” in the title.

Interestingly, it’s a pretty balanced list: three books by guys, two nonfiction titles, one book of poetry, one collection of comics, one collection of short stories, two classics, and three books aimed at kids or young adults.

How about you? What “love” books have you loved?

I have absolutely nothing new to report on the knitting front. I still have to bind off my shawl. I would like to do that this week, so I can take it home with me to Connecticut and block it there in a place where there are doors to close against cats who like to lie on wool and pick up small things (like T pins) in their mouths. (To be fair, Corey has never actually picked up a T pin, but I imagine it’s only because I’ve never given him the opportunity.)

I’m also still carrying around the sock project in my bag that I started back before Christmas, thinking that it would certainly be done by the end of January. I did unravel a knot in the yarn last week, but that really seems like a low standard of success, unless you judge it based on the Senate, in which case I’ve won the week.

I was hoping to knit up my Valentine’s Day hat before next Friday, but at this point, that seems unlikely. But who knows…

I’ve had a better reading week. I didn’t take The Paper Magician with me to California because it was a library book, instead grabbing Cath Crowley’s Words in Deep Blue, part of my #tbtbSanta gift this year. It was a fantastic choice, demanding to keep being read long after I should have put it down and threatening to force me to buy a new book for the trip home. (It did not and I did not, which is good, because that was not in my budget and I don’t think I could have convinced work it was a mandatory travel expense, although…) But I did finish it on Saturday after I got back to D.C., and it was excellent, and actually worked together nicely with The Paper Magician, since it, too, highlights the magical power of words. (It’s a new year, so book reviews should resume shortly. They don’t usually fall off altogether until spring.)

I also started listening to A Fatal Grace over the weekend. I don’t love books that change points of view every chapter, and I clearly forgot about that from the first book, but Louise Penny has such affection for her characters that I think it will be fine. And who wouldn’t want to spend Christmas in Three Pines, particularly if you could guarantee you weren’t going to be the one being murdered? (It’s probably too much to ask that you aren’t amongst the suspects; I’m hoping your own conscience will keep you from being the murderer.)

I hope you’ve also had books you loved this week and that your craft projects are moving forward faster than mine… (Check As Kat Knits for people who are more productive than I — and who also don’t let their phone batteries die just as they need a blog photo.)