Someday I’ll be done with this shawl. We’re now into shawl weather, so it makes it more likely, but I’m coming up on another two color rib section and that’s my least favorite part of this knitting project. Which way will the seesaw tilt?

I did finish The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling, so I am not in stasis in all aspects of my life, which is good. It was a cute witch-themed romance, which asked absolutely nothing of me except to keep turning the pages. I don’t want all my reads to be like that (and the romances I’ve liked best the past couple years have mixed in weightier issues with the lovey-dovey stuff), but there are some weeks when that’s just what you need.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader girl invites us to consider titles that we’d share with those who claim not to love reading.

I decided I’d break my list up into three audiences:

1. Kids:
   1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: Honestly, any of Selznick’s three historical fiction chunksters would work, but I have an especial fondness for this one set in a Paris train station and focused on early film and automatons. The way he alternates narrative and visual storytelling is unlike any other author I’ve encountered, making turning the pages compelling. Plus it will give kids who don’t think they like reading the satisfaction and confidence of having finished — and loved — a 500-page book.
   2. Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover: A verse novel about two basketball loving twin brothers where the rhythm of the narrative follows that of playing the game. If you’ve got a hoops-loving kid, I think this would be a great choice.
   3. Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker: In this graphic historical novel, Prince Sebastian and Frances, a dressmaker, share a secret, that he has a secret identity as cutting-edge fashion icon Lady Crystallia, leaving him little time for the girls his parents keep trying to pair him up with. Graphic novels are a great way to get kids who don’t love reading picking up printed material. If your kid has exhausted superheroes or collected comic books and wants to move on, this would still offer someone in a costume and figuring out how to live an authentic life when the world may not yet be ready for your truth.

   Young adults:

   4. Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down: This verse novel takes place during a single minute-long elevator ride and deals with gun violence, family, loyalty, and vengeance, with an open ending that will leave teens talking about what happens next.
   5. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book: This follows the story of a boy raised in a cemetery by the ghosts of the people interred there and what that means when a threat from the living world tracks him down there.
   6. Illumninae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: This is another chunkster, but this time aimed at teens, rather than tweens, and set in space. Its epistolary style (told through emails, video logs, and other reports) makes for frequent stopping points and multiple points of view, plus there’s a killer AI who also gets to share its perspective.
   7. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin: This story of fighting racism in the military during WWII is outrageous. The fact that we don’t know their story and that no one has been unable to reverse the outcome is a tragedy.

   Adults:

   8. Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy: I feel like sports fans are an untapped market for nonfiction. Baseball fans, in particular, tend to be a wonky bunch, who love to focus on stats and minutia. This is a story from early baseball (1908, rather than our most recent ’08) told in great narrative fiction style.
   9. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence: This is a laugh-out-loud story about a couple who goes on an amazing vacation and decides they’d love to relocate there permanently. When they buy a ramshackle house in need of many repairs, they must quickly adjust to repairpeople with different life approaches, what red tape means when you’re working with a second language, and how their primary residence becomes the vacation destination for everyone they’ve ever met. If you’ve got a DIY fixer-upper project of your own, this is the read for you.
   10. Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White: Any book that has me laughing aloud on a cross-country plane flight is probably a good one to share. And this one, about family in Georgia, is no exception.

   How about you? Any book you think would be great to share the written word with someone who may think they may not share your passion for reading?

   Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on top ten tuesday: books for non-readers.
   
   

No, the shawl isn’t done. But, honestly, I’m a little tired of showing you three rows here and three rows there, and so I’m showing you the potential second sock I might make next.

The book is a modernized comic/graphic novel interpretation of Nancy Drew by Kelly Thompson, Jenn St-Onge, Triona Farrell, and Ariana Maher. I enjoyed the first issue/chapter and am looking forward to polishing it off quickly. Oh, and it also features the Hardy boys.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see this week’s reading and crafting roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share a Halloween-themed list. I thought I’d share ten bookish characters who might be fun to dress up as, since you’ve still got most of a week to put together your costumes:

1. Phryne Fisher: 1920s society girl/detective from Kerry Fisher’s mystery series
2. Pippi Longstocking: Swedish wild child and red-haired bad-ass from Astrid Lindgren’s children’s books

3. Anne Shirley: Speaking of red-haired children, puffed sleeves are in fashion in this year and I can’t help but think of her every time I go to a clothing store.
4. Dobby the House Elf: Fashion yourself some long ears and pair them with a bathsheet or two and mismatched socks. (The Harry Potter universe is a goldmine of Halloween ideas.)
5. Max from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are: Add a tail to a union suit-style of pajamas and top the look off with a crown.
6. Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crocket Johnson: Speaking of onesie-pj’s, pair this with an oversized violet coloring implement, and it won’t take someone long to guess. I’d probably replace the crayon with sidewalk chalk myself.
7. Nancy Drew: Pair a sweater-set and skirt with a magnifying glass, and you’re all set. (Actually, if you can get your hands on a magnifying glass, you can probably get several years’ costumes out of the way: Sherlock Holmes (combine with a trench coat), Harriet the Spy (combine with a notebook), and Miss Jane Marple (combine with a shirt-waist dress and knitting project) immediately spring to mind.
8. Arthur Dent from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Put on your bathrobe, grab a towel, and add a notebook on which you emblazon, in your most comforting font, “Don’t Panic!” Bonus points for carrying a cup of tea or getting the number “42” somewhere into your costume.
9. The Cat in the Hat: Make a red and white striped stovepipe hat out of construction paper, tie a jaunty red bow around your neck and fashion yourself some cat ears and a tail.
10. Princess Magnolia from Shannon and Dean Hale’s The Princess in Black series: Combine a black top and leggings or a skirt, a black mask and cape, and a crown, and you’re ready to go. Bonus points for transforming your unicorn, Frimplepants, into your trusty steed, Blacky, by giving him a black mask, too.

Got any other bookish Halloween ideas?

I’d really hoped to have a finished shawl to show you this week. I’d planned to finish the final mosaic section on the plane and then to get through the dreaded two-color ribbing while I was out here. I even brought a ball of sock yarn so I’d be able to cast on a project for the flight home. But none of that ended up materializing and I am still 12 rows from the end of the mosaic. It’s fine. I’ll get to it. It’s just that I’m really ready to be knitting something else after all these months.

Where I did have success with the shawl this week was in not having to rip back when the needle separated from the cable and a third of my active stitches found themselves flopping around freely. Luckily, Rudi found a needle the right size amongst his mom’s stuff, so I didn’t have to buy one (although we still went to the local yarn shop anyway). I admit that getting the final stitch of the rolled edging back on the needle gave me a couple minutes’ pause, but eventually I figured out what I needed to do. (You can see the needle-less end curled up next to the new needle once all the stitches were back on one cable or the other.)

As for reading, I’ve been making steady progress through Ally Carter’s Heist Society, a #GiftmasInJuly present, and enjoying it quite a bit. It’s about a teen girl who’s walked away from a family legacy of crime, only to be dragged back in when her father’s life is threatened by an evil art collector who’s been robbed. (Mum, remind me to pack it to share with you at Thanksgiving.)

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are crafting and reading this week.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our favorite online resources for book lovers:

1. Goodreads (I know they’re now owned by Amazon and that there are other sites that do the same thing of helping you organize what you’ve read and what you want to read. But until the former fact gets too obnoxious, I’m not likely to seek out the latter.)
2. Book Riot (Lots of good articles about book-related topics)
3. Out of Print (Lots of bookish clothing options)
4. Etsy (Again, you can find lots of bookish tchotchkes here.)
5. Book Series in Order (Because a lot of times, it matters, plotwise)
6. Does the Dog Die? (Do books with certain tropes stress you out? Do you ever get to a point in a novel where you’re worried that X is going to happen — and you’d rather not keep reading if it does? If that’s the case, this is the site for you.)
7. Library Extension (Install this extension on your web browser and it will automatically tell you if your library (or libraries) has a book that’s mentioned on a page.)
8. Overdrive (Access to lots of audiobooks and e-books with your library card.
9. largehearted boy (If you love books and music, this is a great site for you. The guy who runs it invites authors to share playlists for their books, provides daily links on the two topics, and, between November and January, exhaustively links to best-of lists.)
10. IndieBound (Want to find a local bookstore to where you live or where you’ll be visiting? Then this is the site for you!)

And while it’s pretty likely she’s already on your radar if you’ve arrived here from her link-up, I’d be remiss not to include That Artsy Reader Girl on my list, for the best weekly book meme, her continuation of #TBTBSanta and her #GiftmasinJuly exchanges, and her daily review of books.

Do you have any favorite bookish sites you’d like to share? Add them in the comments!