Today I’m taking part in the 10th anniversary of Dewey’s Readathon. I’ll be spending a nice portion of my day reading, but it’s not going to be all 24 hours. For instance, I neglected to set my pre-8 a.m. alarm, so am only just getting started now.

First, though a few housekeeping items:

Opening meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Washington, D.C.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Probably Jason Reynold’s Miles Morales. But I’ve also begun You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins, which I’m enjoying. And I’m at an exciting spot in The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willis. Oh, and there’s Leah Bardugo’s Wonder Woman novel, Warbringer, yet to start…

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

At some point early this afternoon, my partner Rudi will come home from work and I’ll break with reading to bike up to one of our local libraries, check out their book sale and new Michelle Obama photo exhibit, and then investigate a new cafe in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I like to read (obviously), knit, listen to music, and play with my two cats, Jeremiah and Corey, both of whom are hanging around waiting for me to give them breakfast. I like YA and middle-grade novels, less depressing literature, cozy mysteries, memoirs, and some fantasy.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I think this is my fourth readathon, and mostly I’m not going to stress about it, because it’s supposed to be fun. If at any point it stops being fun, I’ll dial it back.

Off to start reading…

Our WiFi is down so this will be a quick post.

As you can see, I’m on the cuff of Little Pumpkin sock #2. Rudi will be working a bunch the next few days, so I expect to get another good chunk done by the weekend. I finished the audiobook of Daniel José Older’s Shadowshaper tonight & highly recommend it if you’re looking for an urban contemporary ghost story for this season.

Up next is another book set in the immigrant communities of NYC: You Bring the Distant Near, which I started last weekend. So far, so good.

Check in on other Unravelings at Kat’s blog.

While away last weekend, I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done, being too busy visiting to curl up with my books. But I’m back home now, which means wrapping up a bunch of things in progress. I just finished listening to The Scam as I was knitting the last of my heel decreases, the latest of the romantic Fox and O’Hare heist series that is ridiculously bad, but still enjoyable. That leaves me with Teraji P. Henson’s memoir checked back out on audio, which came back around again finally, unless I opt to start Shadowshaper before the end of Latino Heritage Month.

The other books I have going are Be Careful What You Witch For, a mass market mystery novel that fits in my bag (and thus only gets read when I’m out); The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a historical fiction mystery/romance which I’m about a third of the way through; and Patina, the second book in the Track series by Jason Reynolds, about four middle-schoolers who join an elite track team.

I’m eager to begin The Fifth Season, the first of a highly regarded fantasy series; Warbringer (about Wonder Woman); and Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales/Spiderman novel. I have several other books out from the library that don’t fall into the supernatural category, but these three are the ones most exciting me at the moment.

As mentioned above, I’m past the heel on the first Little Pumpkins sock, and since I moved the cable around so the pumpkin runs down the front of my foot, I only have to cable every 8 rows. I anticipate finishing the foot this weekend and then quickly moving on to sock #2. After all, one wants to finish before Halloween! I also have picked my Andrea’s Shawl back up after a year of it solely missing a border. I’m about halfway through picking up the stitches for that, and then it’s less than a dozen rows of knitting. I’m looking forward to it being done by the time the cool weather reappears on the East coast.

If you’d like to see what others are knitting and reading, head over to Kat’s Unraveled Wednesday post.

This week, there’s more of the same in my reading and knitting, but further along in both. Still reading The Mothers by Brit Bennett, but nearing the two-thirds point where everyone in the story is doing stupid stuff, but you care about them remarkably. It Becomes You is a poetry collection by Dobby Gibson, a fellow alum from Connecticut College. I’m only a few poems in, but so far am enjoying it.

On audio, I continue to listen to Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which has an excellent cast (and will likely do remarkably well at the Audie Awards this year). Because I tend to listen to audio books late at night, though, I find myself drifting off and needing to go back and find where I was, which is hard. I must experiment with the bookmarking option in Overdrive and see if that cuts down on the time spent trying to relocate myself.

Little Pumpkins continue apace. I need one more repeat on the leg, or as it currently appears, umbrella cozy, and then will move onto the heel. I need to decide if I should reorient the pattern to have a single column of pumpkins parade down the center of my foot, as some others have done, or knit it as written, with the wide column of centered knits separating two columns of pumpkins. We’ll see. I’ll go back into the finished projects on Ravelry and see which I prefer. Either way, I’m really liking this combination of yarn and pattern, which I’d paired in my head years ago, and am eager to have the socks on my feet. I’m not positive that the yarn won’t bleed (since I seem to occasionally end up with dark patches on my fingers) and I won’t eventually have brown socks, but I’ll enjoy the “pumpkins and sky” colorway for as long as they last.

Unraveling along with Kat.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish invites us to share ten of the books we’re excited about reading this autumn.

I’ll be honest. I just looked at some of the books coming out this fall and added a huge number to my TBR list in Goodreads. And mostly those are just by authors I’ve already read and enjoyed. It doesn’t even begin to look at books that are already out. So, while it’s hopeless to imagine which books I’ll actually read over the next 13 weeks, let’s give it a shot:

1. Dear Martin by Nic Stone tops my list, but this contemporary Y.A., which examines violent police interactions against black teen boys through the lens of Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings, is due out in mid-October.
2. Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo is in my possession. This title combines the mythology of Diana of the Amazons with Helen of Troy.
3. Miles Morales, by Jason Reynolds: An alternative Spiderman story. This has been on my radar for so long that when the latest wall crawler movie came out, I was confused about why he was white.
4. I was really looking forward to S.K. Ali’s Saints and Misfits when it first came out, but it hasn’t managed to jump from my coffee table to my bag, and I don’t know why. But I’d like to give it back to the library read, so I’ll give it a shot.
5. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterley: My coworker lent me her copy of the book back at the start of the year and I should give it back before the end of it.
6. I really enjoyed Amy Salig (A.S.) King’s talk on Me and Marvin Gardens, her new middle-grade book, at the National Book Festival a few weeks back and now have a copy out from the library.
7. People in my book group really raved about The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden and keep comparing it to Uprooted, which I loved, so now I have the audiobook copy out.
8. I have tried to read Magic in Manhattan by Sarah Mlynowski the past two (maybe more?) autumns and I’ve failed to get past the first few chapters. My BFF, Karen, tells me it’s an adorable series, so hopefully this fall will be the charm.
9. The 13 1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers is translated from the German and features the adventure of a seafaring blue bear and his family of mini pirates.
10. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older looks at Caribbean-American ghosts who live in paintings, music, and literature in this seasonally appropriate book I downloaded via the YA Sync program this summer.

How about you? What are you hoping to get to this fall?

Look! Knitting! And reading! (Okay, so the books aren’t all that surprising, but, active yarny projects might be!)

The socks are, on the left, Slip Stripe Spiral, my Sock Madness exit round socks from 2016. The first one is all done, and the second is up to the heel. On the right are a new pair of socks I started on Saturday. They’re the Little Pumpkins pattern, which I’ve been wanting to knit since 2008, according to my Ravelry queue. No time like the present, in which they also qualify for a Sock Knitters Anonymous cable challenge! I’m also hoping to spend a little time this weekend working the edging on the shawl I knit last summer. The cool air has me eager to break it out!

On the print book front, we have the first volume (of three) of The Runaways, which Rainbow Rowell is writing a sequel to; The Mothers, which I only began today and so don’t yet have a firm opinion of; and, still, The Tyranny of Petticoats. Oh, and The Hot Bread Kitchen cookbook. Coming up, I’ve got a mystery for the RIP Challenge, and I may work on finishing my Book Bingo card, or I may not worry about it. It’s hard to say.

In the ears, I’m working on The Scam, which is the fourth book in the Fox and O’Hare heist series, and Will Schwalbe’s Books for Living, in which he talks about some of the books that matter to him and the life lessons he’s taken away from them. He has a broad taste in books, ranging from self-help books, mysteries, and kid lit to philosophy, classics, and cookbooks. Since both books expire this weekend, I’ll next be turning to one of the three audiobooks that came off the hold list this week (isn’t that always the way?): Lincoln in the Bardo (which is the audiobook I’ve been looking forward to most this year), Sherman Alexie’s memoir, and Purple Hibiscus, which I’m worried will be too intense in audiobook format.

How about you? Have you been reading anything you recommend? Are you working on any crafty projects, now that we’re into the fall months (only 109 days until Christmas…)?

Unraveling along with As Kat Knits.