Monday marks the start of the weeklong reading event called Bout of Books. I’m signing up once again.

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 am Monday, August 19th, and runs through Sunday, August 25th, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, Twitter chats, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 26 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My goals for the event are simple:

1. Read at least 5 of the 7 days.
2. Take part in at least three of the non-reading events, such as Twitter chats, challenges, or commenting on someone else’s progress.
3. Blog here at least once more about my progress.

I admit that there’s been a lot going on around here behind the scenes recently, which hasn’t left me as focused as I’d like for knitting and reading. Half of my train travel this week was spent sleeping or drowsing and much of the other half mentally puttering, although I did pick up my knitting at each station we stopped at, offering passengers boarding the train the option of picking a seat next to me and my needles or next to someone else with less pointy occupations. (It worked to my advantage.)

I’m into the second set of mosaic knitting of the pattern, which puts me in the final third of the shawl. I love the color combination and the copper sparkle in the purple yarn (which never shows up in the photos I take) and the pattern itself. Were it not for my choosing to include a yarn that has both been munched on by moths and nicked by my ball winder’s gear (meaning I need to spit splice yarn back together with surprising frequency), I do believe I’d be done already. I recommend it to anyone who might want to work on a mosaic shawl, and I can see myself making a second one in the future (but with unnicked yarn next time).

I also thought I’d finish A Covert Affair, the second book in the Librarian and the Spy series), but I didn’t do that either. The first part of the book was set locally, but the characters are now off to India, so I’m hoping the change of scenery will interest me more. I started Hope Rides Again on the train (it seemed appropriate), but the opening chapters annoyed me. As I said to my book group today, probably what most annoys me is that real life Joe Biden continues to participate in the presidential bid, so I have very little sympathy for the fictional counterpart also engaged in that activity (as well as amateur sleuthing. But I’m also questioning some authorial choices, including having the fictional Joe reading a fictional version of the real first book in the series. It feels a little too on the nose and a little too self-congratulatory and a lot lazy, which is disappointing. I’m going to give it 50 pages, but there is a possibility it will go back to the library.

The audiobook du jour is Mackenzi Lee’s A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, which expired the last time I had it out before I had a chance to get very far into it. Our heroine is about to set forth for the Continent and a future in medicine and although I believe this means we will have to say farewell to Percy and Monty, I’m excited for Felicity’s prospects of getting to practice medicine again.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what other people are reading and crafting.

I’ve got to catch a train in a few hours and would like a little sleep before then, so instead of knitting and the books I’m reading, I’m sharing this banner the Latvian Embassy is currently displaying. They’ve also added a Little Free Library to their property.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl concerns cover redesigns, which mostly doesn’t interest me, unless it has to do with the Harry Potter series, in which case then I mostly just want to own them all, but will not because I do not possess Belle and the Beast’s library.

So instead today I thought I’d share ten of the books I’m reading off and on again because that’s how I roll right now:

1. There There by Tommy Orange: I don’t love short story collections or connected novels, but this book has been getting rave reviews, so I’m working on it.
2. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: I left the First Son and His Royal Highness in the midst of enjoying their relationship, but I know things are about to get hard for them, so I’ve resisted picking it back up again because I just want to skip to the happy ending.
3. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: This is the book I’m reading most right now and I’ll likely finish the last section tomorrow because I’m down to three or so chapters left. Then I just have to wait for them to write another book. This pair writes my favorite alternating POV stories and I cannot believe no one has made a movie/tv series of The Illuminae Files yet.
4. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: I got this audiobook out on cd, which means it’s currently living on my laptop. I have 16 hours of train rides coming in the next week, though, so there’s every possibility I could put a good dent in finishing it.
5. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance: I put this aside for deadline reading and just need to get back to it. There’s probably less than two hours of reading left before it’s done.
6. The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich: My audiobook copy will likely expire tomorrow before I finish listening to it, although I’m going to go put another dent in what remains while I wash today’s dishes. I’ve got holds on it at all three libraries I belong to, though, so hope to get another copy before too long.
7. Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart: I only like to take books that belong to me to the pool and I recently picked this up at my local Little Free Library. I’m 50 pages in so far, which is probably about half of what I made it through when I started it four years ago.
8. Calamity at the Continental Club by Colleen J. Shogun: I made it two chapters into this locally set mystery this weekend, but I’m not sure I’ll make it another two. I’m giving it one more chapter before I make a final call about proceeding or not.
9. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan: This companion novel to The Bookshop on the Corner expired before I had a chance to finish listening to it and I want to know what happens before our characters get to their happy endings. (Unlike Red, White, and Royal Blue, they have not yet reached a stage where everyone seems happy, so I am motivated to return to them sooner.)
10. Early Riser by Jasper Fforde: This is another novel that just needs me to sit down with it for ninety minutes to finish it off. Seriously, I just need to get it done.

How about you? Are you a one-book-at-a-time kind of person? Or do you have masses of books going at once strewn about your home?

My Tour de France shawl was not finished by the time the cyclists circled the Arc de Triomphe the final time, but progress does continue noticeably. It would be faster if I didn’t have to keep doing spit splices of my pink yarn. Some of the breaks were due to moth damage from a project I was working on several years ago, but I’m now also finding problems on the interior of the center pull ball, which makes me think I got it caught in the yarn winder gear, which happens periodically. It’s been probably eight years since I wound it, so I don’t have a ton of recollection about the specifics of winding it up. Either way, I’m one more repeat of the pink pattern stitch section to go before I return to more mosaic work. Keep your needles crossed for long sections of unbroken yarn.

I started Aurora Uprising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff this week. The pair wrote The Illuminae Files trilogy, my favorite y.a. space opera series in a while, and this marks the start of a new series for them. They are good at characters and pacing and plot and impending doom, and really all you’d like for a book set in space in the future. I look forward to finishing it over the weekend while Rudi’s away biking. (I also still need to finish There There, which I’ve made progress on, and Red, White, and Royal Blue, which I haven’t picked up in a couple weeks, since they’re both overdue to the library.)

As I knit, I’m listening to The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich, who replaces Lee Goldberg as coauthor for the latest installment of the Fox and O’Hare heist series. The change is not to the betterment of the series, which is disappointing. The series is not great literature in the first place (although it is a lot of fun and a quick listen), and to the younger Evanovich’s credit the word “panties” has not appeared in the first two thirds of the book, which definitely beats all the previous novels in the series.

Want to see more of what people are crafting and reading? Head to As Kat Knits for the roundup!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie week, where host Jana of That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to make up our own bookish topic.

I recently finished one book that starts in Washington, D.C., and another that includes D.C. among several settings, which made me think about other books set in the area. Rather than give you a list of books set here that I’d recommend (although I’d be happy to do so if you leave a note in the comments), I thought I’d share ten books set locally that I’d like to read:

1. Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson* (ya)
2. Rebound by Kwame Alexander (mg)
3. Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi* (ya)
4. The Van Gogh Deception by Deron Hicks (mg)
5. Calamity at the Continental Club by Colleen Shogan (adult)
6. All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones (adult)
7. All-American Girl by Meg Cabot (ya)
8. Training School for Negro Girls by Camille Acker (adult)
9. Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala (ya)
10. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (adult)

*I own a copy and have no excuse why I haven’t read it yet.

Have you read any of these books?