The craziness of the Christmas build-up and my commitment to blogging the Virtual Advent Tour last month (can you believe December was only last month?) led to an oversight on my part. While I acknowledged it on Twitter, I neglected to blog about The Broke and the Bookish Secret Santa and the wonderful package that came from Hannah on the Isle of Wight in Great Britain:

Hannah sent me two great books, some beautiful cards featuring photos she took of the area near her home, some tea, foxy socks (I love fun socks!), and two heads of locally grown garlic, which have made my living room (where they sat during the holiday season) smell divine.

All of which leads us to today:

I started Winter Holiday over the long blizzard weekend, since that seemed appropriate. It’s the fourth book in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series and includes fabulous maps as the end-papers. Because it’s an old copy, it also includes these hilarious blurbs from reviews in the day that include things like comments about how ridiculous it is to expect an author to illustrate his own work. [In looking up the dates for Ransome’s books, I discovered there’s a film adaptation of the first book due out later this year. So exciting! Interestingly and perhaps alarmingly, it will include a new character played by the guy who plays Moriarty in Sherlock.] And earlier today I began Murder Most Unladylike, the first book in a recent middle-grade mystery series set in a girls’ boarding school in 1934. I’m enjoying both of them thus far. I love that the books both have 1930s England as their setting.

The knitting is that stupid lightning shawl that will never be done, except that I’m making it my goal to complete it in the next two-and-a-half weeks for my birthday. Because I want to use it during the cold months and I’m tired of it being on the needles, rather than wearable.

January has been, as it usually is for me, a good reading month, with lots of recommendations coming off people’s year-end best-of lists and the children’s and young adult award winners from the ALA Midwinter meeting. Rita Williams-Garcia’s latest book was recently lauded, and I decided that before I got to that one I ought to read her two previous historical novels featuring the Gaither sisters. One Crazy Summer is the first one, and so far I’m enjoying the story of three young girls from New York visiting Oakland in 1968 to get to know their estranged mother. I’m also back to listening to Anne of Green Gables, as well, and just tonight finished the puffed sleeves chapter. It was good to get the text of the book back in my head, since the film version differs slightly (although they did get the excruciating comedy of Matthew’s foray into shopping just right).

I’m up to the heel flap on this sock, although I did get a little carried away with the stockinette while we were watching the basketball game last week, so I wonder if I’ll run out of yarn on the foot. I suppose I can always rip back if it ends absurdly early (odd-colored toes really oughtn’t to start at the arch, after all), although I do object on principle to undoing perfectly good work when it’s just for vanity’s sake. But the socks are for Rudi and I object more to people mocking his socks. It’s one thing if they were mine and I could defend my thriftiness in person, but I wouldn’t want people feeling bad for Rudi that he was stuck with some crazy, unfashionable knitter who forced him to wear ugly handmade clothes. Pure vanity on my part, I suppose, but I guess there are worse faults to have.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish is Top Ten 2015 Releases We Meant to Get to but Didn’t:

1. Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me: I must have taken the most talked about book of the year out of the library at least five times. You’d think I’d have managed to finish it, but no. This year.
2. Brian Selznick’s The Marvels appeared on my to-read list for last week’s #TBRTakedown, but I didn’t get to it because I didn’t want to rush through it. It’s on my list for this weekend, though, since my dad picked it up, too.
3. Kitchens of the Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal, appeared on several lists of books that leave you with a smile at their end. That’s what I’m reading right now.
4. Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda appeared on a bunch of best-of lists (winning the Morris Award for best debut for teens) and also was cited as life-affirming. Also, Oreo-affirming, so I have a bag set aside to eat while reading. It’s written by a Wesleyan alum, so I have an especial interest.
5. Challenger Deep, by Neal Shusterman, won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
6. Steve Sheinkin’s 2013 book, The Port Chicago 50, outraged me and was the book I talked about to everyone I encountered while reading it, including people who don’t seem to like books. His latest, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, promises to be equally outrageous and has been named both a Cybils finalist in non-fiction and the winner of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. DCPL was a little slow to buy this one, but they’ve got it in stock now.
7. Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby, won the Printz Award yesterday and is a finalist for the Cybils in the YA speculative fiction category.
8. Carry On, Rainbow Rowell’s latest. I didn’t buy it in case someone wanted to give it to me for Christmas. All those someones probably expected I’d already read/bought it, so now it’s fair game for use with the credits I amassed at my local bookshops doing my Christmas shopping.
9. A Conn alum, Tracy O’Neill was listed as one of last year’s 5 under 35 winners by the National Book Foundation. Her novel, The Hopeful, came out last year.
10. Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Echo was named a Newbery Honor Book yesterday.

Those are just a few of the books I missed out on last year. I have another ten out from the library that I’m hoping to tackle in the upcoming weeks.

How about you? What books from 2015 did you just not get around to? Or that you’ve only just heard about from some of the best-of lists or award lists?

That there is a shoe for a newborn, a gift for friends expecting a wee girl in the next few weeks. Also there is my current read, the 600+-page tome, Illuminae. It’s my fiery book for #TBRTakedown. It turns out that the book I decided to finish on Monday, Come Hell or Highball, is the first in a planned series, so Illuminae is off the hook for counting in that category. I’m also slowly taking in Honest Engine as my poetry read.

I’m about 270 pages in for the week. Slower than I’d hoped, but I’ve been tired the last few days.

In addition to counting for all these reading challenges, this post is also part of Ginny’s Yarning Along roundup.

This coming week includes two semi-annual reading challenges I plan to take part in: #TBRTakedown, hosted by Shannon of Leaning Lights, and Bout of Books.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 4th and runs through Sunday, January 10th 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 15 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Bout of Books has daily blog challenges, so you’ll probably see more about that in the upcoming days.

While #TBRTakedown’s priorities also lie with just generally reading, you can also opt to take part in the challenges:

1. Book from your most recent book haul.
2. Book on your TBR Shelf over a year (or longest).
3. Book outside your comfort zone! (Genre, content, etc).
4. First book in a series.
5. Complete a series/Read a sequel in a series.
6. Read a FIRE color book (Fire colours such as shades of red, pink, purple, lilac, burgundy.) Lucky Colors for 2016.
7. Read a non-novel item: poem, verse, novella, short story, etc.

Here you can see some of the books I’m considering to fit the challenges. Illuminae is both red and the first book in a planned series. The Marvels arrived under the Christmas tree. Those are the two chunksters, but I expect them both to move quickly. Selznick books read fast, since they’re half illustrations, and Illuminae is filled with ephemera, I understand. I picked up the graphic novel The Adventures of Superhero Girl the August before last when I discovered the Union Station comic book shop, Fantom Comics, had relocated to my neighborhood. It’s by Faith Erin Hicks, who is collaborating on an upcoming comic book/graphic novel with Rainbow Rowell. I’m not sure if graphic novels cover that final item (novel is in the title, after all), so I’ve got a collection of poems, Honest Engine, from a local writer to fill that category. Forgiveness is a Harlequin romance book, decidedly outside my comfort zone, but part of a reading/knitting prize I won many years ago from the author. Winter Holiday is the part of the Arthur Ransome series, Swallows and Amazons, a charming British kidlit series from the early 20th century.

That said, after I took that picture, I put all those books away, with the intention of finishing the mystery novel I was reading earlier in the week. Next to the couch I also have three other novels, none of which I photographed (although at least two of them would fulfill categories). We’ll see how it goes.

What are you reading these days? Did you get any exciting/long desired books from Santa?

I admit that I’m a sucker for needing to try any new apple variety I come across, so it may not be a huge surprise that Apples of North America, a coffee table guide to nearly 200 of them, was an impulse grab at the library a few weeks ago. Plus, it’s National Non-Fiction November and it’s good to learn something new.

I’ve also added the audiobook of Anne of Green Gables to my routine this week.

The blob of knitting is the ribbing and first couple body rows of Foliage. It’s not mindless knitting yet, but I have hopes for it becoming less focus-requiring in the near future.

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.