I’ll admit I haven’t been doing a ton of knitting or reading recently. Sock Madness has stalled for me at 17 rows of knitting in a week, which makes finishing a pair in a second wholly unlikely. Tonight’s contribution to the endeavor was finding a cable needle.

I’m having a little more success reading in print. I have a book that I’m making progress through, albeit it slowly. I like the characters and the plot, but I’m loathe to see unhappiness come their way, which is surely has to for a short while in order to advance the plot. That I know the ending will be happy is probably what keeps me plodding along.

What’s had the most resonance lately is the audiobook of Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead, a gumshoe novel featuring two female PIs in 1945 New York City, one of whom has MS and the other who is a bi former-circus employee. I don’t know if I’d be speeding through it quite so much if I were reading it in print; the reader does a good job honoring the this-side-of-parody approach Spotswood takes, which makes it a fun listen.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books with our favorite tropes. I thought I’d share ten books featuring adopted or found families:

1. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
6. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
7. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
8. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
9. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
10. The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Do you have any books you read featuring adopted or found families?

My phone ran out of juice, so rather than wait for it to charge a bit and getting a photo, I’m just going to give you a narrative update on the reading and knitting around here.

Sock Madness, the annual sock knitting competition commenced today. I have two weeks to knit a particular pair of socks, which this year includes two colors and cables. I’m not feeling super optimistic about my chances of finishing them, but I plan to give it the old college try. I have two skeins of yarn I’m feeling … okay … about combining, and I’ve knit the first row.

On the reading front, I’m reading Evie Dunmore’s A Rogue of One’s Own in print and listening to Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead. I’m enjoying both, but because of the mental energy I’m spending on other parts of my life right now, it’s all just going more slowly than I’d like.

Head over to As Kat Knits for this week’s Unraveled roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books I Enjoyed, but Have Never Mentioned On My Blog. I don’t know for certain that I’ve never mentioned them, but here are a baker’s dozen books I rated* as “excellent” or “very good” in 2001, according to my reading journal that year:

1. Night Flying by Rita Murphy: “The story of a unique young woman’s coming of age in a Vermont matriarchy … Debut novel — must read her next!”
2. High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver: “Wow! What a goldmine! WOW!”
3. The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley: “The story of Torina, a princess who must flee with only her life, and Landen, an enslaved prince turned bandit. Torina is master of her own fate — no princess in need of rescue, she!”
4. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: “I really enjoyed this collection, although I wasn’t sure I would. I found the characters human and the struggles — although centered on the Indian-American experience — universal.”
5. The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden
6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: “Must read 2nd part soon!”
7. World of Pies by Karen Stolz: “Sweet, but not sickly”
8. Come to Me by Amy Bloom: “Would re-read”
9. Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss: “Semi-autobiographical tale of a woman growing up in the South in the 1960s”
10. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede: “Particularly appreciated the sarcastic tone of the princess in her dealings with dumb princes. Also liked the pokes she took at the traditional fairy tale stereotypes.”
11. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster: “If the ending was predictable by her freshman summer, the book was still enjoyable and her appreciation for educated, modern women quite refreshing. I also enjoyed the short bio about Webster in the epilogue. Might be interesting to read more about her.”
12. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: “Very interesting story of the author’s attempts to find out how women survived after leaving welfare following the welfare reform bills of the late 1990s.”
13. Shiva’s Fire by Suzanne Fisher Staples: “The modern story of a poor Indian girl who, through fortune and innate talent, brings financial security to her family and happiness to herself. [Now I want] to see bharata natyam performed.”

There are a few books in here, like Roald Dahl’s The BFG, where I’ve given no rating, and I cannot see why. I suppose I wanted to sit with it a bit longer before committing.

* I rated books as excellent, very good, quite good, fair, and okay.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl is Dynamic Duos. Here are ten of my favorite pairings:

1. Anne and Diana from Anne of Green Gables
2. Fred and George from Harry Potter
3. Jo and Laurie from Little Women
4. Idgie and Ruth from Fried Green Tomatoes
5. Silas and Bod from The Graveyard Book
6. Thursday and Pickwick from The Eyre Affair
7. Ove and Cat Annoyance from A Man Called Ove
8. Agnieszka and Kasia in Uprooted
9. Cecelia and Kate in Sorcery & Cecelia
10. Hugo and Isabelle from The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Who are some of your favorite literary pairs?

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a formal readalong, but this seemed like a good time for one. Marg of The Intrepid Reader is hosting a Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

I’m going to sign up at the Victorian Reader level, committing to read 5 books of historical fiction. That seems reasonable, given my current output of reads the past two years has been at an all-time low.

I’ve got Sherry Thomas’ Miss Moriarty, I Presume? sitting on the coffee table and a Victorian romance on hold at the library in Virginia, which seems to be a good starting place. I’m looking forward to reading along.