I ripped the toe out one more time on the first sock of my Posies, still had the same problem with a loose stitch and decided it was time to move on. I’ll tack down that stitch with some extra thread, but essentially the first sock is complete. On to sock #2!

While I took Spinning Silver with me to Delaware, I read Dear Rachel Maddow instead, being utterly captivated by the first few pages. Depending on the forecast, either that or The Summer Before the War goes into my work bag. We’ve had several dousing rains recently, and I don’t want a library work to get sodden.

I finished I’ll See You in the Cosmos on audiobook over the weekend and am looking forward to starting Tess of the Road, a fantasy novel featuring dragons. (Rachel Hartman is the author of Seraphina, which I loved.) The novel was a recommendation from my friend Amani and so I’m eager to read it so I can discuss it with her via email or text.

Check out As Kat Knits for more reading/crafting combo posts.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Top Ten Books to Pull You Out of a Reading Slump. Mine is a mix of books, authors, series, and genres:

1. The Harry Potter series, particularly the first three (old friends)
2. Jasper Fforde (funny)
3. James Thurber (short and funny)
4. Little Women (old friends)
5. Paddington series (sometimes a reading slump is illness-related, and these are my go-to sick-day reads)
6. Pride and Prejudice (old friends)
7. Anne of Green Gables (old friends)
8. A Year in Provence (funny)
9. comic collections (sometimes you just need pictures with your words; plus they’re short)
10. cozies (they read fast and they rarely require a lot out of you)

How about you? What do you turn to when your current reads just aren’t cutting it for whatever reason?

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, August 20, and runs through Sunday, August 26, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 23 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team.

My goals for the week are to:

• Take part in at least two challenges and at least one of the Twitter chats.
• Visit at least one other Bout of Books participant’s blog a day.
• Read a little each day.
• Post some reviews.

Day 1 Challenge: Introduce Yourself #insixwords

How about: Reading all day. Reading all night.

Rudi suggests I go with “Books make me do weird things.”

I started reading Spinning Silver this week. It’s a reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, set in Russia and featuring a young Jewish money lender, Miryem; her hired girl, Wanda; and deadly, otherworldly beings, who set her the impossible task of turning silver into gold. I loved author Naomi Novik’s earlier novel, Uprooted, and am finding the start to this novel has the same feeling as the beginning of that one. I’m hoping for good things.

On my phone I’m listening to a middle grade contemporary novel, See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng, and Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon for White America by local professor and minister Michael Eric Dyson. The latter is shaped as a church service and deals with being Black in contemporary America and what white people repeatedly fail to understand about that experience and need to learn.

The former is about a rocket-crazy young boy and his dog, Carl Sagan, who are recording sounds of the world on a Golden iPod in preparation for launching it into space to travel on the heels of Voyager’s Golden Record, put together by human astronomer Carl Sagan in 1977. In the process, he’ll learn what it means and takes to pursue the truth, both personal and universal.

I am still working on my shawl (I had a two-hour conference call to knit through today), but progress is slow and the color changes are slower and I’m impatient for it to be done. So of course, I put it down and picked up my Posey socks. As I was picking up a stitch that had dropped off the edge of the needle while stored in the bag, I noticed some loose stitches earlier in the toe. Since the toe is not one of those places where you can just let that go, I ripped back most of the way to where I’d started the grey yarn and will finish the toe in the morning. Self-striping sock yarn changes colors much more quickly than two gradient shawl balls, so I hope that keeps me moving forward much more quickly.

Should I finish my Posey socks, I’ll have to look at my other sock UFOs from Sock Madness to see which pair is furthest along and/or will take the least effort to finish. This year’s pair, Fee Dragée, may be a contender, since that’s halfway done. Or Slip Stripe Spiral, the pair I went out on two years ago, is already into the leg of the second sock, although I think I messed it up someplace and it’s waiting for me to figure out how to fix it. Or Rainbow Pipes, which was a Sock Madness pair from 4(!) years ago, which are complete except for i-cord that needs to be created for the cuffs and buttons that have to be (found and) sewn on. My oldest unfinished pair of socks is from nine years ago and is color work. One sock is completely done, but I’m betting my tension will be different than it was nearly a decade ago and that a needle adjustment will be necessary.

If you’d like to see what other folks are knitting and reading, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.

July was a good reading month, but not a good month for checking books off my book bingo card. The latest additions are in red.

I’m working through several books that qualify as we speak, so hopefully I’ll finish the month strong and with at least one bingo. But if not, we’ll chalk it up to my contrary nature and still consider a summer’s worth of reading a success.

I took my shawl with me to knit during the concert last night, but after volleyball tonight I dug out the two pairs of socks I’d like to finish this month and carried the Into the Wild Wood pair with me to the coffeehouse for some late evening outdoor time. (Because, you know, a volleyball game in the park isn’t enough…)

After my adventure with Joe Biden and Barack Obama, I’m back hanging out with plucky orphan Audacity Jones in 1910 D.C. She’s about to embark upon the mission she was brought here for, but it’s not what she’s been told. Luckily, she has a local boy and his grandfather and her stowaway cat to help her out of any scrapes…

I’m still listening to Murder Games. We’ve finally met Julian, whom I was worried would turn out to be a concoction of the tv show. He has lost his beard for Hollywood, and I’m not convinced certain characters on paper are going to hook up like they have on the small screen, but we’ll see… Either way, it’s been entertaining and I’d listen to another one.

You can see more reading/crafting combos at As Kat Knits.