I’m about a third of the way into Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, about a grieving Chicago boy spending his summer on his grandparents’ farm who discovers the Black and African folktales his grandmother has raised him on actually exist in a parallel universe and that he, as the latest in a line of powerful storytellers, may be needed to save both worlds. So far I’m really enjoying it and recommend it to anyone, like me, who is woefully versed in this folk tradition or whose tenuous knowledge comes largely from a certain Disney film.

I continue to be an unmotivated knitter. I finished the leg of my second Smock Madness, which means I have about eight hours of knitting left before this becomes a wearable pair of socks. And yet…

Normally, I’d be considering a couple new projects right about now, in advance of the Summer Olympics and the Tour de France, but it feels like I should trudge through some of these older projects and get them crossed off. Sadly, that’s also the story of my work life, which may be contributing to my reluctance to pick up my knitting. Finishing anything at this point would probably go a long way toward making me feel more productive on all fronts, so hopefully I will power through.

Head to As Kat Knits to see projects and books from people who do not have this frustrating lack of ambition in their work.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us about the Top Ten Books I’ve Added to My TBR and Forgotten Why. I’ve added more than 3,100 titles to my list of books I’d like to read since I first joined Goodreads more than a dozen years ago. Obviously they sounded interesting at the time…

1. The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
2. Sororophobia: Differences Among Women in Literature and Culture by Helena Michie
3. How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons
4. Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
5. The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfield
6. Tallulah Falls by Christine Fletcher
7. The September Sisters by Jillian Cantor
8. Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
9. The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg
10. The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis

Have you read any of these books?

This week I started reading I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, about two teen girls, one white and one black, and how they try to get home after the football game they’re both at erupts in violence. I’d picked it up before the pandemic and it had lingered on my pile. It’s really good and one of those instances where alternating points of view work to enhance the reader’s understanding.

I also started listening to a romance novel, Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Tallia Hibbert, as a total change of pace after finishing up the Inspector Gamache mystery I was listening to.

I think I may do some re-reading as well. I have a lot of books about Black activism and storytelling from when I was in college, and it feels like time to literally dust off and dive back into Anna Deveare Smith, Angela Davis, and others’ works while I wait for newer books to become available.

What books are you finding helpful and educational in response to what’s going on in the world right now?

Summertime is coming, which means it’s a good time to get caught up on sharing the books I read earlier in the year. At the beginning of the month, I told you about two of the novels I read back in February. Here are the other three:

The Paper Magician, by Charlie Holmberg

Ceony has just graduated top in her class at Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, with a plan to work magic in metallurgy, the most illustrious of the human-manipulated types of magic. But she was informed at the last minute that due to a critical shortage of apprentices, she was being assigned to the least glamorous type of magic — paper. And since after you’ve been bonded to your “element,” you won’t be able to perform magic in any other field, Ceony is understandably sulky. She’d dreamt of ornate metalworks and was going to be stuck enchanting legal contracts for the rest of her life.

But her new master, Magician Emery Thane, surprises her. His cottage, seemingly run-down from the street, boasts an abundance of paper flowers in the garden. His butler is an articulated skeleton made of paper. And he introduces her to the power of origami and the written word — both of which can be imbued by their crafter with powerful magic, as well we readers know.

Several months into her apprenticeship, however, an evil practitioner of the dark magics appears at their dining room table, robbing Magician Thane of something remarkably precious and life-giving, and forcing Ceony to channel all the magic she has learned to stay the damage, pursue the villain, and confront the darkness in her master’s past — and whether she can embrace her future with her whole heart — before time runs out.

The book is the first in a series, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The story bogs down a bit and can be uneven at times as the author attempts to keep up with the twists and layers of story she’s telling, but I think it works in the end. I’ll definitely seek out the second in the series, and recommend it to those who enjoy a little romance mixed into their fantasy, but don’t mind it when their story veers down a dark path for a while.

Pages: 222. Library copy.

We Met in December, by Rosie Curtis

In this cute rom-com of a book, unrepentant romantic Jess has just landed a dream job at a London publisher and is moving into one of the bedrooms in the Notting Hill brownstone her best college friend just inherited. Also sharing their house are a glamorous lawyer, a chef, and Alex, a former lawyer turned nursing student, whom Jess crushes on madly at first sight. She tries to ignore her feelings — they’d all agreed to no relationships when they’d moved in, after all — only to find them hurt when she discovers another of their housemates sneaking out of Alex’s room one night.

But Alex is mostly a nice guy, and he and Jess become friends as he invites her to get to know her new hometown by going on walks together. He finds her a fun friend, but he’s got an ex-wife and a misbegotten fling to add complication to his life.

The story, which takes place over the course of a year and which bounces between Jess’ and Alex’s narratives, has a lot going on. Jess has a beloved grandma and a kooky, neglectful mom and two childhood BFFs — a footloose actress and a more uptight friend with a fiance and a life plan. It always gives the story a new path to explore, but it also definitely makes it a less taut tale. And while it may have two narrators, it decidedly remains Jess’ story first and foremost.

If you want a fluffy will-they, won’t they story in a great setting that could very well be made into an equally sweet made-for-tv Christmas movie in a year or two, this is definitely the book for you.

Pages: 390. Library copy.

Girl with Gun, by Amy Stewart

In the first of a series of historical fiction about one of America’s first female deputy sheriffs and her family, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp find themselves on the wrong end of a car-wagon crash with the weaselly manager of the local silk mill. This leads to a cascading series of events that include threats from gangsters, a stolen baby, an undercover assignment in New York, newspaper attention, a friendship with a reform-minded local sheriff, and a court case — all in pursuit of a $50 wagon repair. Through it all Constance Kopp keeps her head and strong sense of justice and mostly manages to keep curmudgeonly Norma and dramatic Fleurette safe. But these three sisters will never again be able to remain anonymous and hidden away on their New Jersey farm.

If you like stories of women who come into their own, who find an inner strength they didn’t know they had, and who end up kicking ass and taking names and the added bonus of knowing it’s based on a real person, this is the book for you. I’m eager to track down the second book in the series once libraries are open again, and I hope that Amazon continues to develop the series/movie they optioned from it.

Pages: 408 pages. Personal copy.

February Totals

Books finished: 5
Pages read: 1372

I’m feeling a little bored these days, as one rolls into another with little interruption. If my life were a body of water, it would be a cow pond. (This is fine. I will take a cow pond over the ocean during a tsunami any day.)

But I decided the way to spice things up was to finish a couple lingering projects. I started Chasing Vermeer over the winter at some point, back when we were still allowed to linger in cafes with other patrons. I hadn’t quite made it to the 50-page mark when I put it aside, probably for work travel, and it got buffeted to the edge of my attention span for a while. I decided to restart it tonight, in part because I could make up the read pages pretty quickly, and also because while I remembered the broad strokes of the set-up, I didn’t recall the details with the accuracy needed to solve a heist mystery. I’m enjoying this second take at the novel and expect to speed through it quickly.

The knitting is my lightning shawl, which I pull out every year, swearing this will be the time I finish it. But this time I mean it. When I last worked on it, I remember I’d reached a point where the transition between yarn scraps stood out too much. I’ll need to look at it more carefully in the morning to see whether I ripped it back and went with a different transition (which is what I think will have happened) or if I still need to pull out a few rows and carry on. But either way, there is probably a good amount of indoor time during this three-day weekend, and I have several audio books I’m working through, and I don’t think it’s out of the realm of the possible if I commit to knitting instead of napping that I could bind this project off before June rolls around.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting as we head into the traditional start to summer.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share our love of something bookish.

It doesn’t get more basically bookish than this:

The Top Ten Reasons I Love My Library:

1. This is where they keep all the books.
2. The D.C. Public Library hosts my weekly Twitter book club, #brownbagdc. They have other Twitter book chats, too, and added a few more while the library was shut down. They also added biweekly trivia nights.
3. I still have a dvd player, and they buy dvds so I can watch movies without having to pay for them.
4. They gave us three days’ warning before they shut down for the pandemic. This allowed residents to create a literary run on the bank, as it were, as the bookish folks did the equivalent of hoarding toilet paper. (There were more checkouts that weekend than during the entire month of February.)
5. They let me stream movies on Kanopy and stream and download music on Freegal.
6. They just eliminated late fees. (They already had a very liberal policy, but now fines are just gone.)
7. When the library shut down, DCPL went into their online system and reactivated accounts that had been turned off. Too many late fees? No longer a problem for nearly 4,000 accounts! Expired account? Welcome back, 87,000 neighbors! And if you’ve never had a card, they allowed you to open an account to borrow materials online for the duration of the shutdown.
8. The library will let you print materials for free (when they’re open). You can print things from their computers, or you can send things from your home machine/mobile device to the printer queue.
9. They have reciprocity with most of the other nearby library systems. This means I’ve been able to add accounts in neighboring Maryland and Virginia counties, upping my ability to borrow materials — and, in the case of the Montgomery County Public Library, giving me access to Acorn TV for free.
10. Pretty much every librarian and library staff member I’ve met at the two dozen branches I’ve visited have been super nice and helpful. The work they do is hard, as is any public-facing job. Urban libraries, in particular, though, operate as de facto daytime homeless shelters and the staff are as knowledgeable about social work resources as they are about what’s on the shelves — and they don’t get the recognition they deserve.
11. And a bonus — their buildings are beautiful and often win architectural awards. They’re nearing an end of a complete gut of the main branch, and I’m so excited to see what aspects they bring back (the MLK mural? the clock?) and what new things they introduce. (There’s a slide, people! I’m so hoping they let adults use it, too!)

What do you love about your library?