I wrote last week that nothing had been capturing my fancy in either my knitting or my reading. I’m pleased to report this week is much more focused.

On the reading front, I’m listening to David Levithan read his latest novel, Two Boys Kissing. The book’s device of being narrated by the ghosts of America’s gay male AIDS victims in the form of a sort-of Greek chorus really works for me. Because of that, it feels like the first book I can recall that authentically feels like the novel of my generation. I’m only partway through the book, though, so it may be premature to say that. Either way, I will probably need to obtain a print copy at some point to read read. (For me, in my own head, listening to and reading a story are two different experiences.) Since I’m listening to the book through the Overdrive app on my phone, it’s not pictured here.

On the knitting front, I pulled out a bunch of skeins of yarn on Saturday and wound several of them, including these two skeins of stripey Christmas yarn. I think one will be fingerless mitts and the other socks, but it may turn out that both will become socks. A swatch (read: failed start to a project) showed I wanted US1 needles, rather than US1.5, so that’s what I’m knitting with for the red and green cuff. Self-striping yarn has been scientifically proven* to be the fastest thing you can knit, so I’m hopeful these will be done in short order. (That bottom heap of yarn in the bowl is my Éclair shawl, which is nearing the 2/3-completed mark.)

(Yarning along with Ginny.)

It’s been a full week, with festivals and visits from an old friend and cleaning, so the post where I was going to get a little caught up by telling you about the National Book Fest will have to wait (although at least now photos are off my phone).

In the meantime, I’ll join with Ginny and share what I’m reading and crafting:

Work continues on my shawl, but it’s now reaching the halfway mark, which makes it cumbersome to carry around with me. Plus, during the aforementioned festivals, it’s nice to have mindless knitting to work on and that means a stockinette sock. The yarn is Tangy Self-Striping Sock Yarn in Purple Rain from Twisted Limone Designs, and I love it.

On the reading front I’m all over the place. I’m listening to an audiobook while cleaning and, otherwise, I’ve got three titles on the go: Virals, which I was reading a month ago and then put down because it got more stressful than I wanted from my reading (but since the library would like it back, I’ve circled back to it); Flight Behavior by the wonderful Barbara Kingsolver (who is one of my favorite writers of all time); and Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked, a middle grade title by Jarrett J. Krosoczka about a rookie platypus police officer. I saw it at Politics & Prose when I was up for their last member sale, but passed it by at the time. Later that week, I was at the library and didn’t repeat the decision.

My mailbox has been filled with goodies recently and I wanted to share:

I recently was the winner of a set of books from YA Highway. I won the Regal Literary Prize Pack, which means I get to read five books, only one of which was on my radar:

• Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard
• A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone
• The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist
• Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
• Starglass by Phoebe North

I’d better pick up the pace of my reading!

I also was a winner in a Sock Knitters Anonymous contest on Ravelry for completing languishing projects during August. For finishing my Sockdolagers, I got to pick a knit sack from Peg’s Procrastinations. Peg had lots of fun fabrics to choose from, but ultimately I decided on this green bag, which has been getting lots of use recently (as you can probably tell since it appeared on the blog last week, too). It’s currently holding a sock I cast on over the weekend at the National Book Festival, where I didn’t want to be hindered with a large project. This knit sack is ingeniously designed so that the caribiner on the drawstring can attach to a ring on the inside of the bag, allowing it to stay open while draped over your wrist or attached to a belt loop for knitting on the go or while standing at the back of a tent listening to an author talk.

Thanks to Peg (and the organizers of the August Sockdown on Ravelry) and to YA Highway. I really like my prizes!

With the weather starting to crisp up, I have put socks on hold in lieu of larger, warmer work-in-progress. You may remember this shawl from the Tour de France knit-along, when I last worked on it.

I’m nearly done with panel #2 (of six or seven). What you see peeking over the book is all remains of that section — one zig and one zag. While I had a hard time at the beginning of the second panel with cleanly picking up the stitches at the edge of the first panel to tie them together, it’s gotten easier with time. That part’s still not mindless, but it’s the only part that isn’t. It makes for good tv/line knitting.

The book is Jasper Fforde’s latest, The Song of the Quarkbeast, recently released in the U.S. It’s the second title in his Chronicles of Kazam series. I started it at the beach on Sunday and it’s quite enjoyable so far. (I did consider putting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the picture instead, since it’s my bag book right now and since Harry’s scar ties in well with the Lightning Shawl, but the Fforde book was on the table, so its handiness merited a starring role in today’s blog post.)

(Yarning along with Ginny)

The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday meme asks this week for the top ten books on our to-be-read list this fall. Since I didn’t do a great job of reading the books on my summer list, you’ll see some familiar titles:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl (I loved Eleanor & Park earlier this year and the folks up at the local bookstore inform me they thought this was even better.)
2. Elizabeth Wein’s Rose under Fire (Ditto for Wein’s latest. Her last book, Code Name Verity, which I read for the Cybils, made me bawl. Had I realized that this title wasn’t due out until this late in the month, I wouldn’t have included it on my summer list.)
3. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (I picked this up this spring and I started it on a plane flight, but it didn’t fit into the headspace I had available at the time.)
4. A.S. King’s Ask the Passengers (This made its way off my to-read list and onto my request-from-the-library list when author Eliot Schrefer raved about it on Twitter.)
5. Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling (There were still over 100 people on the hold list at the library the last time I checked, but I’m hopeful that means it should become available later this fall. Mum had good things to say about J.K. Rowling’s foray into detective writing.)
6. Gayle Forman’s Just One Year (The sequel to Just One Day is high on my list of anticipated fall releases.)
7. Bill Bryson’s At Home (This has been on my TBR list so long that I have it a pre-publication ARC of it.)
8. Jacqueline Winspear’s Messenger of Truth (Fall is a good time for reading mysteries and the Maisie Dobbs series is a favorite.)
9. Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey (I’m thinking November seems like a good month for reading a Bronte, particularly since my copy is included in a complete tome of all their novels — good for reading in one place, rather than on the go.)
10. Homer’s The Odyssey (I bought a pretty copy of it several years back and I’d like to finally dig it out.)

What’s on your list of books to read this fall?

Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos

From the jacket: “Being grounded has never been so deadly! Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt portrays an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is ‘grounded for life’ by his feuding parents. But plenty of adventure is coming Jack’s way once his mother loans him out to help a feisty old neighbor with an unusual activity involving the newly dead and the long departed … a motorcycle gang and a man on a trike … as well as twisted promises and possibly murder.”

My take: This middle-grade book was a quick, but enjoyable summer read that I polished off on in a single evening en route to Salt Lake City (accompanied by two cds of music my dad put together highlighting the hits of 1962, the year the book takes place). While the fictionalized Jack Gantos is figuring out who he is and what he wants to over the course of the book, author Jack Gantos is schooling us in the history of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, a town commissioned by the federal government as part of the New Deal. The town consisted of 250 homesteads (sold to families based on an application system) intended to offer subsistence farming to miners who’d been laid off during the Depression. The first lady insisted that each house be outfitted with electricity, interior plumbing, and even laundry facilities, making her the patron saint of the village and inspiring its name.

But 30 years later, when the story is set, Norvelt is hurting. Jobs are scarce. Homes stand abandoned and residents have died off or fled in search of work.

At the outset of the summer Jack Gantos turns 12, he “borrows” the unloaded Japanese rifle his father brought home from the war, pretends to take aim at the enemies on the screen of the drive-in across the valley, and pulls the trigger. When the gun fires, both Jack and his mother are shocked and Jack finds himself grounded for the summer. His only parole? Helping his elderly neighbor, Miss Voelker, whose hands are so arthritic that she needs to soak them in a hot paraffin bath to get any use out of them.

Miss Voelker has retired as town nurse, but remains Norvelt’s medical examiner and obituary writer, jobs she was tasked with by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself at town’s founding. Her recollection for local lore is unparalleled and her ability to tie local lives to world history (in those obituaries) impressive, if somewhat … elastic.

No longer able to type the obituaries herself, she first enlists Jack, who suffers from chronic nosebleeds and timidity, to do them for her, then later asks him to chauffeur her around town to the homes of the recently departed, who seem to be dropping with alarming frequency this year.

Jack, though hesitant, is glad to escape home whenever he can, as his parents seem perpetually angry at each other and at him and at the stresses of living in a down-on-its-luck town that’s fading away (literally: the houses are being towed elsewhere). His best friend, Bunny, daughter of the town mortician, is annoyed with his inability to do things with her (including playing on their already several-players-short baseball team). Summertime when you’re a kid lasts forever after all.

Dead End in Norvelt won the Newbery Medal and the Scott O’Dell Award in 2012, which surprised me, because at first the book seems awfully light for such prestigious honors. But upon reflection, its narrator’s casual style and humor mask exactly how much history is packed between its covers, making it an excellent hook for getting kids interested in American history without making it obvious; rest assured they (and you) will be entertained and effortlessly educated by this book.

Pages: 384 (including appendices)