Early last month, on a snowy Saturday morning, Rudi and I awoke early and hustled the eight blocks to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the re-opening of the renovated West End Branch Library.

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After ripping back the heel over the weekend, I haven’t touched my socks in a couple days. Instead, I’ve gone back to the Boomerang Cowl. I finished up one ball of yarn and need to wind up the second skein to finish the project up. It doesn’t look like much on the needles, so I’m hopeful blocking makes it pretty.

Since I didn’t finish the overdue Turtles All the Way Down last weekend, I really need to wrap it up this week. I’m still listening to Pirate King’s Daughter, but that expires in less than a week and I have three other books out on audio to follow it, so obviously I need to get a move on. I like the reader for it, though; she gives the main character, Alosa, a lot of spunk.

That’s it for me. Head over to Kat for links to more posts on books and knitting.

I am once again taking part in Bout of Books. It’s the 21st round, and I’d guess I’ve participated in about a third of them.

What is Bout of Books?

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a weeklong read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 8th, and runs through Sunday, January 14th, 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 21 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Day 1 asked us for a six word intro:

Here goes:

Reading my way toward happiness daily.

Day 2 invites us to share 2018 reading goals:

Next week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic also asks about bookish resolutions, so I’ll just keep these simple:

1. Continue to read books by diverse authors representing different backgrounds.
2. Read more books that I already own.
3. Choose more nonfiction, more poetry, and more classics.

Reading Progress: I finished The Unbreakable Code by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman shortly after midnight on Sunday and listened to several chapters of The Pirate King’s Daughter by Tricia Levenseller. I’m carrying Turtles All the Way Down by John Green in my bag, but haven’t picked it up yet this week. I did start Jill Orr’s The Good Byline earlier this evening, but have already found two grammatical errors in the first two chapters, so am not feeling enthusiastic about its chances of surviving a third.

The Broke and the Bookish is shuttering its doors and while Top Ten Tuesday will continue on, this is its final iteration in its original home. While last week, we looked forward, this week, we’re looking back:

This week we’re talking about the books we’d planned on reading in 2017 but never got to for one reason or another. But it’s a new year and we’ve still got all the days to read them!

Several of these I started, but haven’t finished yet:

1. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders: I kept dozing off while listening to the audiobook. I came back around on the holds list and have it out again, so hopefully it’ll soon be in the read column.
2. Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales: I bought it. I started it. I read two other Reynolds books. It’s on my to-do list.
3. Leigh Bardugo’s Warbringer: I bought it at the same time as Miles Morales and haven’t even cracked the spine yet.
4. Susan Dennard’s Truthwitch: I don’t know why I have such a hard time getting to this one.
5. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins: I started this way back last winter and put it down for some reason. I loved the other books in this series, so I have no idea what kept me from continuing. Probably bad head space where I hated happiness that day…
6. Saints and Misfits by S. K. Ali: Another one I started and haven’t wound my way back to. The library would like their copy back at the end of the month, though, so it had better climb back up the TBR pile.
7. A Tyranny of Petticoats by Jessica Spotswood: I often run out of steam with short story collections, regardless of how much I’m enjoying them. Since it’s been a while, I should be able to finish this up the next time I come across it.
8. Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere: I’m on the wait list at the library.
9. Ghosts of Greenglass House by Kate Milford: The library’s copies have been listed as ordered for months, but haven’t yet come in.
10. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz: I’ve been waiting for the audiobook for a while. I’m hoping it’s as good as everyone says, because I gave it to Mum for Christmas based on all of your raves!

How about you? Which books did you mean to read last year, but didn’t get around to?

For my first Unraveling post of 2018, I have new things to share:

I cast this new pair of socks on the evening of Jan. 1. The yarn is Lollipop Yarn Quintessential in Purrfection, the yarn I bought in memory of Posey. I broke open some new needles I’d had lying around, too. They’re Knitters Pride Nova cubics Platina, a set of square dpns, and so far I’m enjoying knitting with them. I’ll need to go down a needle size for the foot, but for the leg, the 2.5mm needles are working.

I had mentioned a few weeks ago that Maia Chance’s Teetotaled was on my list of books I wanted to read this winter. Yesterday, Bridget mentioned she’d read the first book in the Discreet Retrieval Agency, which put the series (about a widowed society woman from 1920s Long Island who, when she finds her scoundrel of a husband has left her penniless after his death, turns, with her Swedish-born former cook, to detecting) in the front of my mind when I headed to the library after work. Lo! There was the second book in the series on the shelf, and I’ve already plowed through a third of it tonight while knitting. Such a delightful, addictive read.

I am also reading Turtles All the Way Down and The Unbreakable Code and have started listening to The Pirate King’s Daughter. Lincoln in the Bardo‘s audiobook has come back up for borrowing, so I’ll give that one more shot in the next few days.

You can visit Kat for more posts on yarn and books.

The penultimate Top Ten Tuesday as hosted by The Broke and the Bookish asks about the top ten new-to-me authors read in 2017.

I was hoping to share my top ten books of the year today, but it’s not ready, but know there’s going to be some overlap here. These are in no particular order, except as how they occurred to me:

1. Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give)
2. Kory Stamper (Word by Word), although I have read entries in the dictionary before, so she only counts if we specify that I knowingly read her work.
3. Nic Stone (Dear Martin)
4. Heidi Heilig (The Girl from Everywhere)
5. Mohsin Hamid (Exit West)
6. Jeannine Atkins (Finding Wonder)
7. Sherry Thomas (A Study in Scarlet Women)
8. Kelly Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon)
9. Robin Benway (Far from the Tree)
10. Mackenzi Lee (The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue)

I was going to include Roxane Gay on this list, but then I decided that although I hadn’t previously read any of her books, I had read articles she’d written, so she wasn’t really new to me.

How about you? Any new-to-you authors you enjoyed last year?