I’m a day late for Ginny’s Wednesday Yarn-Along, but I’m posting here and now anyway. Better to publish a few hours behind everyone else than just in my head, which is where an awful lot of writing happens these days (book reviews, for example).

You can see there this year’s fall/Halloween socks, made in Knitterly Things’ Candy Corn colorway. It’s the traditional picot-edged 64-stitch stockinette sock that I favor for fast, public, self-striping knitting. That’s sock #1, which I started at the beginning of the month and then got ripped out and restarted over the weekend. I have probably another inch or so of legging before I start the heel. I had a long, boring work meeting yesterday, and some reading time the other night, which made for a lot of fast progress. Here’s hoping to being done by the end of the month!

On the reading front, I’ve been listening to final Harry Potter novel in my audio re-read of the series. It has to be returned today (and Overdrive is excellent at making sure I don’t keep books past their borrowing time), so I’ve paused just before our favorite trio head out to the Ministry of Magic. It seemed like the only safe place to leave them until it becomes available to borrow again.

I am still plodding through Unrivaled, which I keep reading out of loyalty to the subject matter (the rivalry between the UConn and Tennessee women’s basketball teams) rather than to the book itself. The author was a journalist who covered UConn’s women’s beat and it feels like much of the book is pasted together from contemporaneous media interviews/stories, rather than analysis or interviews with former players, fans, etc. I’m up to 2000 and the era of UConn basketball I loved best (the teams that included Sue, Svet, Shea, and Diana), though, so that’s something.

Ana of California is a book I feel a lot of you might enjoy, although admittedly I’m only a quarter of the way into it. It’s a modern retelling of Anne of Green Gables, focused on Ana, a mouthy 15-year-old Latina foster kid from Los Angeles who loves reading, drawing, and music and who’s run out of options in the system. She’s got one final shot, a month-long trial placement working on an organic farm upstate run by a pair of middle-aged siblings. But she’s not the boy the brother was expecting to help him run the farm and his crew of workers, so will it work out or will Ana be forced into juvie until she’s of age? You’ve read the original, you know what happens, and you totally won’t care because this version stands on its own, relying more on Neil Young lyrics than Tennyson quotations than in L.M. Montgomery’s classic.

Bout of Books 14 wrapped up Sunday night, and I consider my participation a great success. I read every day last week, finishing three books in various states of progress and read a couple chapters in a fourth.

Because everything was already partway through when the week began, I don’t have a complete tally of pages read, but I’d guess somewhere in the 600+ arena would be about right.

• I read two chapters of Unrivaled, about the UConn-Tennessee rivalry in women’s basketball.
• I raced through Circus Mirandus, a charming middle-grade novel about a boy whose seriously ill grandfather needs a miracle promised long ago by a magical circus performer.
• I completed Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh’s illustrated/graphic memoir/essay collection.
• And I finally, after having it out of the library for seven months (thanks, DCPL’s generous new renewal program), finished the final few chapters of Signed, Sealed, Delivered, a look at the merits of letter-writing.

Out of the pages, I participated in both Twitter chats and a blogging challenge and enjoyed considering my answers to several others I didn’t write early enough.

I didn’t quite get two bookish posts in last week, but one progress post and a wrap-up post is better than the last Bout I took part in.

I look forward to participating again in January and hope you’ll consider doing so, too.

Day 1 Progress:

I resumed reading Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. I read 80 pages, but it’s a graphic memoir, so that’s less impressive than it sounds.

I also participated in the first Bout of Books Twitter chat. It was a lot of fun, and I was better this time at interacting with others, rather than just answering the questions, during the chat than I usually am. I’m supposed to be working a shift at the garden Saturday morning, when the next chat is, so that may be it for me in a “formal” Twitter capacity.

Today’s Bout of Books challenge is a Book Scavenger Hunt, hosted by The Book Monsters:

1. A Book that begins with “B” (for Bout of Books!)

2. A book you’re planning to read/currently reading for Bout of Books

3. Blue Book(s)

4. Books from your favorite genre!

Middle-Grade Fiction, aka Kid Lit

5. A book on your TBR shelf, or your full TBR shelves

The Shakespeare at the top is technically Rudi’s (and I’ve read all four). I’ve read Fangirl and My Father’s Dragon. The rest are all TBR.

It’s Bout of Books time again. I participated in January and May (with much reading and mixed blogging success) and am looking forward to reading and playing along again this week.

What’s Bout of Books you ask?

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, August 17th, and runs through Sunday, August 23rd, 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 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My goals for this week remain consistent with my previous attempts at participation:

• To read every day;
• To finish two books OR to read 400 pages; and
• To blog about books at least twice next week. (The posts do not need to be long, and all topical posts do not have to relate to my current reading.)

Also, I’d also like to participate in at least three of the challenges/chats. They’re fun and build community, and since I haven’t been writing as much about books the past couple years, it would be good to get it in where I can.

It’s not to late for you to join: sign-ups run through midnight tonight EDT.

I have a few finished knits from last month to show you, but that will be later this week. In the meantime, August is the annual Sockdown in Ravelry’s Sock Knitters Anonymous group, wherein we all work on clearing off our needles by finishing lingering sock projects. I have two I’d like to finish, with two more as a stretch goal. This is the second of Rudi’s pair of 2×2 ribbed mummy socks. I’ve got about an inch more of leg before I start the heel flap.

On the reading front, a weekend away meant that my audiobook, Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please, expired before I was able to finish the last few chapters. As the weekend was otherwise delightful, I have no regrets and have re-requested it from the library. I hope it’ll be back before the end of the month, since I’d like to count it in my library summer reading totals.

I took Dietland up to Connecticut with me, but didn’t get much read. I did spend a lovely hour or two in the park this evening reading it, though. And I picked up Circus Mirandus at the library today after a dentist appointment when I didn’t have a book to read on the train trip back across town. I am optimistic about both of them, although in decidedly different ways.

Last winter, having not done a book or yarn swap in a while, I signed up for the Ninja Book Swap. I agreed to send books to a stranger off their wishlist, as well as some gifts from local shops that related to their interest. I sent mine off in early March and it was received a few days later. Knowing this was an international swap, I was prepared to wait a bit for my package to arrive, so I did. And then I waited some more. I emailed the organizer, who assured me the package was en route, but from someplace with unreliable mail service. I waited some more.

I admit that around May 1 or so I sort of gave up expecting a package. Things get lost on occasion. I grew up in a post office family: I know they happen even with the very best intentions. But letting go of expectations is way easier than letting go of hopes, so every time I got the mail, I’d peer into the area of our building where packages await their owners, wondering if I’d see one covered in foreign stamps and looking as if it had arrived by camel and in spite of pirate attacks.

Then, one night in mid-June, I arrived home from work late one evening to discover an unexpected package waiting on my chair: four and half months after being mailed my bookish surprises had arrived!

My partner turned out to be Megz, who lives in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, which looks beautiful. She sent me a lovely package that contained postcards and tourist information about her area, a tin of candy-coated, chocolate covered gummy candies in a fun lion container (with googly eyes!), and a box of rooibus tea, an herbal drink native to South Africa.

She also sent me two books I’ve been wanting to read: Mansfield Park is the only Jane Austen completed novel I haven’t read (I also haven’t read her unfinished novellas), although I’ve seen film adaptations, and Sense & Sensibility, by Joanna Trollope, is part of the recent series of books where modern authors reinterpret, reimagine, and contemporize Austen’s works. I’m really excited to read both novels.

Yesterday’s Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish asks participants to list the last ten books they acquired.

The two books from Megz were the most recent physical books that came to my house to live.

AudioFile is doing their annual summer reading giveaway via AudioSync, where they pair a contemporary YA title with a classic work. I’m not religious about downloading the books, but I liked the two offered this week, so I now have The Explorer’s Club by Nell Benjamin (David Krumholtz does one of the voices!) and Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days on my phone.

Otherwise, my top ten is rounded out by books that came home with me for a visit from the library last week:

• Unusual Chickens for the Extraordinary Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones (which I read over the weekend and loved)
• The Great Good Summer by Elizabeth Scanlon
• One-Hour Cheese by Claudia Lucero
• Prudence by Gail Carriger
• The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
• Rose Water & Orange Blossoms: Fresh and Classic Recipes from My Lebanese Kitchen by Maureen Abood

Three middle-grade, one YA, and two cookbooks.