I find when I get a huge backlog of books to talk about that it becomes very daunting to get caught up. So I’m going to try to set aside Saturday to post about what I’ve finished during the week in an attempt to stay on top of my reviews. Hopefully, that’ll mean that even if I miss a week I’ll only have a couple books to post about.

That said, of course, this week I finished three books, having finally found my reading mojo once more:

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill
In this middle-grade fantasy novel, on the edge of a bog a solitary, downtrodden town filled with downtrodden people offer up an annual tribute of the youngest baby to the local witch in exchange for her not destroying them all. Or, at least, that’s the story the town government tells everyone. In reality, they do it as a way to control the population, leaving the baby to be eaten by wild animals. Except, of course, there is a witch, Xan, who isn’t evil at all, but compassionate, picking up what she believes is an abandoned baby every year and taking it to a home elsewhere in the land where it will be loved.

But one year, the mother of the youngest baby, an amber-skinned girl with a moon-shaped birthmark on her forehead, refuses to willingly give up her baby. Guards forcibly separate the two, and take the woman off to prison, where she goes “mad.” And that same year, the witch accidentally feeds the baby magical moonlight instead of nourishing, but benign starlight, imbuing the child with witchy powers of her own. Aware a magical child will have special needs, Xan decides to bring the baby, whom she names Luna, home and raise her as her grandchild. But all does not go according to anyone’s plan.

The story also features a poet swamp monster named Glerk, a very small dragon with a very big heart, a convent of assassin nuns, and a boy from the town who regrets the part he played in Luna’s removal from her mother’s care and, years later, takes action to right this wrong from his past.

Highly recommended for lovers of fantasy novels, particularly those who enjoy a tinge of politics in their stories. (Also, it’s been optioned to become an animated film, so if that’s your bailiwick, read this now to be prepared.)

Pages: 388. Library copy.

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas, by Stephanie Barron
As I mentioned the other day, this was my audiobook for December. This historical fiction, the 12th in a series of mysteries featuring the British author as an amateur detective, takes place in 1814, with Jane having recently finished Mansfield Park and now at work on Emma. Jane, her mother, and her sister all travel to her childhood home to spend the holidays with her minister brother (clearly the author believes him to the model for every boorish clergy member Jane has ever written) and his family. A friend invites the entire Austen clan to spend several nights at her estate, and during their tenure there, a man is found dead. But worry not: Jane is on the case.

Set in the Hampshire countryside, the story features a game of charades that goes awry, a doll with a better wardrobe than you probably have, and a 12th Night masquerade, as well as spies, flirting, and intrigue relating to the War of 1812 and the French Revolution.

I listened to this book, which I think made the slow sections of the story less noticeable, because I’ve definitely gotten bogged down in details in a couple of the earlier books in the series. Also, because of the biographical elements of the story and its historical setting, there are way more details than normal in most cozies. So, while I recommend the book, particularly for those looking for a holiday-themed mystery or for Austen lovers, I recognize it will not be a hit for everyone.

Pages: 336. Library audiobook copy, via Overdrive.

A Seaside Christmas, by Sherryl Woods
So, this book. It’s the one I mocked the other day, unsure of whether I’d be able to get past the opening chapter, which induced a lot of eye-rolling. Apparently I was in a particularly impatient mood earlier in the week, because this is certainly no worse than several of the holiday films I streamed on Netflix this year (and better than a couple I’ve seen in the past).

Jenny, a top-notch Nashville songwriter, has returned home to Chesapeake Shores, Maryland, after many years away to contribute songs to her aunt’s holiday theater production. While she’s home, her aunt hopes she’ll mend the ties with her mother, with whom she’s been distant since her remarriage and the birth of Jenny’s half-brother. She’s also hoping to finish getting over her ex, Caleb, who broke her heart a couple years earlier during a bout with heavy drinking, but that’s going to be more challenging than expected, because Caleb, now as reformed as the Winter Warlock in Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, has followed her there, with the intention of winning her back.

Oh, and did I mention that the entire town is pretty-much populated by its single founding clan, the O’Briens (to which both her aunt and her step-father belong)?

This is definitely a light and frothy (and very white, middle class) romance, but it’s not terrible. It’s a perfectly fine way to pass the time, particularly at the holidays, even if I don’t think I’ll be reading any of the other 12 books in the series, most of which seems to follow equally predictable story lines if their Goodreads descriptions are any indication.

Pages: 280. Library copy.

I haven’t been very good about getting around to other folks’ blogs to be social and cheer on their reading progress, so I’ll work on that tomorrow.

Day 2 Progress: I finished a second book! Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron was my audiobook during December. I finished the last couple hours while washing dishes and knitting (not at the same time) during the first few days of the year. I hadn’t read this series in a while, and jumped way ahead for the seasonal book. But while the series is tied to Jane Austen’s life and career, it is mostly episodic, so one story doesn’t necessarily build into the next. I seem to remember having an earlier book in the series unfinished somewhere in the Burrow, so I’ll have to track down its whereabouts.

Day 3 Progress: I’m reading Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star, which was my first book of the year. I also read the first chapter of Sherryl Woods’ A Seaside Christmas, which I suspect may be as far as I feel like going into it right now. I’d picked it up as an impulse grab off the library’s Christmas display, in part because it was set on the Maryland shore, but it may be too cheesy for the mental state I’m in right now. (It seems to be the equivalent of a bad Netflix Christmas chick flick.) I may give it the rest of the second chapter to see if I care enough about the main characters to keep going, but otherwise it’ll head back to the library later this week, since I can’t waste eye-rolling on fluffy novels this month.

I love when my knitting matches my reading. I cast these on back in October, when I was coordinating my yarn with a different book cover.

I’m down to the final two rows in Mum’s Christmas shawl, but it seems unfair to show that to you now. There was an error in the antepenultimate row of the pattern, which meant I ripped back 337 stitches unnecessarily. So fun, but at least I realized it was the pattern, rather than me, before ripping back a second time.

Last month I took part in the bookish holiday Secret Santa event that The Broke and the Bookish, #TBTBSanta, runs every year.

Gina of Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers was my awesome Secret Santa. As you can see, she was remarkably generous, offering me gifts to open 12 days in a row. I do love surprises:

Paddington arrived with 12 numbered parcels. While I was oohing and aahing and hunting for package #1, Paddington raided the cupboards, since he was feeling a little peckish from his journey.

Once he was feeling like his normal, growly self, he gave me a hand with opening the presents.

The packages contained all sorts of goodies, from cute Japanese stationery …

… to adorable stickers, which Paddington thought we should immediately use on the Christmas cards.

There were a lot of books! Paddington loves a good story and is spending much of his time getting caught up on some fun books:

Eventually he started inviting others in the household to join him for story time:

(I could totally have edited out the vacuum cleaner, but a) real life and b) then you’d have missed Corey lying there on the floor, waiting to hear what’s going to happen next.)

Thank you so much, Gina! This was a wonderful package and I had such a fun time opening every single gift. I can’t wait to start reading! Now I just have to choose which book to begin with!

(And thank you to Jamie at The Broke and the Bookish, who organizes this international gift exchange each year. It really is a blast!)

Once again, I’ve signed up to participate in the Bout of Books readathon. If you also love books, you can still sign up through 11:59 p.m. CST today! What is Bout of Books, you ask?

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 2nd, and runs through Sunday, January 8th, 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 18 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My goals for this readathon are nearly always the same: I’d like to read every day. I’d like to finish a couple books or a couple hundred pages. And I’d like to participate online in some way each day, either by posting an update here, by participating in the online challenges, by commenting on others’s progress, or by sharing updates via Twitter.

Day 1 Progress: Success! I finished Kelly Link’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon early this evening. The length of time it took me to finish the book does not remotely reflect the quality of this magical middle-grade novel about the consequences of a witch accidentally feeding a baby moonlight (rather than nourishing, but benign starlight) during a rescue mission.

I also took part in the #BoutofBooks Twitter chat, which are always fun, if fast-paced. One of the questions reiterated the day’s challenge, which was to describe yourself in six words. I opted for “Quadragenarious knitting reader. Pissed off liberal.”

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish asks about the Top Ten Books We’re Looking Forward to for the First Half of 2017:

(Natalie Lloyd and Jasper Fforde both purportedly have books being published in 2017, so obviously if their novels come out, they’ll jump high up on my list. Pending that…)

1. Becky Albertalli’s The Upside of Unrequited
2. Deanna Raybourn’s A Perilous Undertaking (2nd in the Veronica Speedwell series)
3. Adam Silvera’s History Is All You Left Me
4. Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
5. Jennifer Chambliss Bertman’s The Unbreakable Code (follow-up to Book Scavenger)
6. Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
7. Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women
8. Ashley Poston’s Geekerella
9. Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay
10. Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief (prequel to Code Name Verity)

How about you? Any upcoming titles you’re particularly looking forward to?

There’s less than a month until Christmas, which means all the current projects are gifts I can’t show you. I can, however, show you my latest finished project, my Christmas mitts!

I cast these on three years ago to be a pair of socks when I realized that the other stripy Christmas yarn I had, which has white stripes as well as red and green, would not hide the grime of holding onto Metro escalators nearly as well as this pair. So I switched things up and these became a pair of improvised fingerless mitts, and the other yarn became socks.

Last Christmas I bound off the first one with a sewn picot bind-off similar to the cast on I’d used, but I wasn’t happy with it. This year, I ripped that back and experimented with a different picot bind-off. Then I ripped it back again to get a unified color bind-off. And once more to add in some seed stitch in that final stripe to try to control the rolling. (It wasn’t successful.) I will give it the season to see if I can live with it, and if I can’t, I’ll try to come up with a new solution next year. I also bound off the thumb at least three times, trying to find a non-ridiculous solution to that with a picot, but eventually conceded it was beyond my ken and just did a garter bind-off.

I also had to duplicate stitch over the thumb join on the second mitt when I rejoined the yarn in red, rather than the green of the first one and didn’t notice until after I’d sewn in all the ends. I can see I’ve done it, but I don’t think the casual observer would notice.

The yarn is Beyond Basic Knits Stripey Superwash Sock in an undisclosed colorway. She seems to have shuttered her shop since I bought this yarn at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival back in 2009. I probably only used half the skein, so there could be more Christmassy knits in my future, particularly since there was yarn leftover from the socks, too.

There was not a ton of time for reading last week, so I didn’t finish either book I was working on, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi and The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. I did start three new books this week, though, to add to the collection: Jay Asher’s new Christmas YA novel, What Light, about a girl growing up on a Christmas tree farm; Dear Data, a nonfiction art book of weekly postcards exchanged between two visual data compilers, Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec; and Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron. I’m listening to that last one, part of a historical fiction mystery series starring author Jane Austen as the sleuth. I started that series years ago, but got sidetracked from it. I recommended it as a seasonal read to someone from my Twitter book club last year and she enjoyed it, so I decided to give it a go myself out of sequence this Christmas.

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.