I did not get any reading done today, although I did listen to Nic Stone talk about her novel, Shuri, which I’m really looking forward to reading, as part of the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which will be broadcast on YouTube over the next four weekends.

Today’s Bout of Book challenge invites us to consider any goals we set for ourselves at the outset of the readathon, and if we didn’t to think about a mini one for today.

I had not set any challenges, so I don’t have to figure out how to live up to past me’s expectations. Present me thinks that I can probably finish one of my current reads before I head to bed tomorrow night. I’m down to the last quarter of The Cruelest Month, for instance, and have several print books that could be crossed off with a little focus. Seems challenging, but reasonable, don’t you think?

[Editor’s note, Sunday night: Success!]

The leg of my second Smock Madness is nearly done. It suffered a bit earlier in the week from my tiredness when I blithely knit along in what I thought was the right smocking pattern until I looked at it and thought, that doesn’t look right. Luckily it was only a half dozen rows, plus some tinking a little while later when I forgot to wrap some stitches. But I have a listening work call at the end of the day tomorrow, at which point I expect to be ready for moving on to the heel. Exciting, right?

I finished the print book I was reading last week, so am now cycling back to another book I started at the beginning of the pandemic, when I didn’t have the fortitude to read, A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn. I’m also listening to a mystery, The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny, but it’s a contemporary, so it feels okay to dive into a second, since it’s set at the turn of the last century. Plus, the Veronica Speedwell novels are part mystery, part romance, and part adventure tale, so it’s really not the same as a straight-up police procedural, no matter how literary it is.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading progress from around the world!

In his middle age, Corey has become a lap cat. Specifically my lap cat. (To be fair, Rudi’s lap is much leaner than mine.)

He will escort Rudi to bed but then come back out to the couch and bed down.

He prefers it when I am reclining more, so he can stretch out the length of my torso, but he’ll take what he can get. but he’s definitely grumpy if I curl up on my side.

He prefers to snooze on the couch, but he’s not above an evening nap snuggled on the bed curled up in the crook of my knees under a blanket or dozing off on my lap during a work video call in the rocking chair.

He doesn’t mind if I read or am on the computer, although he draws the line at two computers, which makes the work I need to finish before going to sleep a little challenging.

In Bout of Books news, earlier, I listened to some more of Yes, No, Maybe So while doing some chores. I don’t know if I’ll finish it this week, but it may happen if this is the only night where I’m working in the wee smalls.

Today’s challenge asks:

Which book(s) would you like to see made into a movie (or TV show)?

Ooh! Here are a half dozen off the top of my head:

Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series should definitely be adapted as a costume drama by the BBC. They’d need to a fundraiser, though, just to cover the dessert budget line. Also, I’m going to be super critical about casting in this film.

Jasper Fforde has said that he will not adapt his Thursday Next series for the screen, because it will never live up to what’s on the page. I know the BBC (or maybe ITV) adapted the first book of The Last Dragonslayer, though. I’d love to see that — and if it’s good to have them do the rest of the series.

Michael Scott’s The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series would make a fun series with its international settings and its cast of literary characters.

Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus was optioned, but I’m guessing it fell through. It would make an amazing movie, but should mostly be filmed in black and white, with only specific circus-themed scenes in color.

Brian Selznick’s two other prose-illustration tomes have been made into well-received films, so I definitely hope someone is working on one for The Marvels.

Finally (just because I need to finish that work and go to bed) speaking of Marvel, they keep pushing back their Ms. Marvel film adaptation. With so many of this summer’s films moving to a 2021 release and no work being done anywhere on new shoots, I can only assume this is going to push its release back even further. I mean, they did eventually film me a Black Widow movie before Scarlett Johansson totally aged out of the role, so here’s hoping…

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share The Last 10 Books I Abandoned.

This is a problematic category for me, because sometimes I put a book down for years and then come back to it, pick it back up where the bookmark is (or start over again — it depends on how much story I remember), and plow through to the end. And other times a book lingers on my currently reading list before I reorganize and dump it back into the to be read category. I mean, I have a list of more than 4000 books I’ve either read or mean to read on Goodreads and only 12 are listed on my “couldn’t finish it” list. And often, if a book doesn’t catch my fancy, I just don’t ever note that I started it. So… I cannot tell you what the ten books I last abandoned are.

So, how about I look through the 44 books I have marked on Goodreads as “currently reading” and tell you ten that are no longer in the house with me?

1. American Street by Ibi Zoboi — I am something ridiculous like 5 chapters from the end of this YA novel. And I can’t bring myself to keep listening. I keep thinking I’d just pull it off the shelf at the library and read the final pages in print, but so far I haven’t found myself at a branch where it’s in stock.
2. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders — This is no longer on my currently reading list, but I kept getting bored by the award-winning, full cast audiobook. I’ve heard from some others who also usually like audiobooks that they recommend trying it in print. Maybe.
3. Little Fires by Celeste Ng — Another book where it got stressful and I decided I didn’t feel like contuing on into the stress. Not sure if it’s a for now or a for always decision.
4. The Body Papers by Grace Talusan — Written by the sibling of someone I was at college with, this memoir talked about having survived incest. I know it’s am important topic, but I just couldn’t bring myself to keep reading. When someone else put a hold on it, I let it go.
5. Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me and You by Lin-Manuel Miranda — I got bored. If I’d owned it, I would have completed it eventually. But when a hold came up, I took it back unfinished
6. Insomnia by Marina Benjamin — The writing detailed living through insomnia. So, I decided, why do it twice?
7. There, There by Tommy Orange — I tried. I kept plodding ahead. I even read the ending, which I absolutely never do, in the hopes that it would allay the feeling of dread. But it did not. I had similar feelings to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I abandoned decades ago, which I did not think boded well.
8. Creative Quest by Amir “Questlove” Thompson — In the end, while it was more interesting than I expected it to be, particularly in audiobook form, it was still a self-help book and I didn’t want to waste my reading time listening to it when there was fiction to be consumed.
9. Girl Squads by Sam Maggs — This was a cute nonfiction look at specific women’s friendships. In the end, it was a little too cute and felt very young, despite focusing on super interesting women. Again, if I’d owned it, it’s quite possible I would have dipped into it periodically and would have finished it.
10. Glad Tidings by Debbie Macomber — This is cheating a little bit, because technically it’s still in the house. But one of these days I’ll remember to take it to the local Little Free Library. I suffered through the first of two Christmas-themed novellas (it got better, but then it got stupid again at the end) and then I remembered I had freedom of choice not to read past the first irritating, sexist chapter of the second novella.

What have we learned here? Stressful moments in books will cause me to put them down and I may not want to pick them up again. Nonfiction, particularly episodic nonfiction, often bores me. Audiobooks are way easier for me to let go than print. And if you piss me off, I’m probably going to punish you by shutting the cover on you.

How about you? What books have you let go recently?

Day Two of Bout of Books 28 invites us to play the “If this, then that” game, wherein I suggest books you might enjoy reading based on certain criteria.

I am currently listening to Louise Penny’s The Cruelest Month and Yes, No, Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed. (The Penny is what I was listening to today.) I thought I’d give you a recommendation for each:

The Inspector Gamache novels are set in the Quebec village of Three Pines, a Canadian Cabot Cove, if you will. If you like mysteries with a very distinctive setting, then you may also enjoy M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series (Death of …) set in the Scottish highlands. Beaton’s books are cozier than Penny’s and it doesn’t particularly matter in what order you read them. But the sense of place is very strong. (As it is in her other series, Agatha Raisin.)

Yes, No, Maybe So is told in alternating points of view. I often like books in spite of this stylistic approach, not because of it. However, if you like books told by two main characters, you may also like Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare, a charmingly fluffy book about two Londoners who share a one-bedroom apartment (one of them gets it during the day, the other at night) that actually takes on some decidedly non-fluffy issues in a sensitive and not mawkish way.

Once again, I’m signing up for the Bout of Books. This is their 28th version, and I’ve taken part in about half of them.

Today’s challenge is to introduce yourself in exactly six words. Here are the ones that seem most pertinent these days:

Surprised books aren’t enough right now.

Might that be how you introduce yourself, as well, as many of us enter week 8+ of social distancing?

But wait! What is Bout of Books you ask? And how can you join us?

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, May 11, and runs through Sunday, May 17, in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are daily challenges, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For Bout of Books 28 information and updates, visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Sign up at the above link by the end of the day Tuesday.

I’m up finally halfway through the leg of my Smock Madness sock. I definitely feel like I could be through the heel this weekend, unless I’m actually so productive that I come away with a clean apartment instead of half a sock. Seems unlikely…

I’m about halfway through The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman and am finally mostly enjoying it. I’m about a quarter of the way through listening to Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed’s Yes, No, Maybe So, which seems especially enjoyable right now since portions of our living space has been turned into a satellite campaign office for the candidate Rudi is working for. And tonight Rudi and I started listening to the Stephen Fry rendition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on Audible. It’s free to listen to for the next while, and Fry’s Hermione is far less annoying than Jim Dale’s. Rudi listened to several hours, but I napped through it intermittently, so I’ve been relistening since he went to bed. I think I can get caught up tomorrow night.

Want to see what other people are reading and crafting? Head to As Kat Knits for the roundup.