No pictures of knitting or books today. I was going to spend the time after volleyball knitting on my shawl (which has remained two rows and the bind-off away from completion for weeks now!), but instead I napped. I did cast on for a new pair of socks with the Halloween yarn I bought this weekend. And I’m attending a local candidate’s forum tomorrow evening, so I’ll be knitting on something while I’m there.

The reading front has been similarly barren. I’ve got The Library Book going in the evenings, Murder in the Locked Library if I leave my desk for lunch, and I just resumed listening to The Bookshop on the Shore tonight.

Visit As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks what we plan on reading for the autumnal season:

1. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks
2. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
3. Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea
4. The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas:
5. Sherry Thomas’ The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan
6. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
7. Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
8. Bruja Born by Zoraida Córdova
9. Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars
10. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

How about you? What are you hoping to read now that it’s fall?

I did a little shopping today.

The yarn was a splurge when I decided that since the bank has closed earlier than I’d expected it to (and I couldn’t get a roll of quarters to do laundry), I could stop by the yarn shop across the street. They’d recently gotten in a nice assortment of self-striping Havirland Pax Sock. The colorway is The Final Girls (all the Halloween-themed colors seemed to be named after horror films).

The books and cd are all second-hand via the used book sale from my local branch’s Friends of the Library. As a bonus, some of the books were free because I joined the Friends. Most of them I wouldn’t necessarily have bought if they’d been new, but I’ve been on the holds list for The Wedding Date and would have borrowed Christmas Bells toward the holiday. And if I don’t like them, I can donate them back to the library and some other schmuck can buy them next time.

Happy Saturday to me!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to consider the snacks we like to consume while reading.

Mine include:

1. Peanut butter or plain M&Ms
2. Oreos
3. Ritz with peanut butter or cream cheese (the latter I spread with a knife, while the former tends to be just dipped in the jar)
4. Granola (eaten out of the bag)
5. Blueberries
6. Apples
7. Tortilla chips
8. Chocolate chips
9. Triscuits
10. Honey Bunches of Oats (usually eaten out of the box)

How about you? Do you tend to munch on anything particular while reading?

It was a lovely afternoon yesterday and so Rudi and I spent the latter portion of it outside, hanging out at the popsicle shop. I’m at the final couple rows of my shawl, so I was able to knit and read at the same time.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books on our TBR lists/piles we’re avoiding reading and why:

I finished Early Riser last week, six months after starting it, so that is NOT a book I’m avoiding. However, there are plenty more:

1. There There by Tommy Orange: I started it. It’s about mass shootings. It was too much. Yes, I feel guilty, so I haven’t returned it yet. But I will.
2. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks: It’s about fall and I want to wait until the season kicks in.
3. Hope Rides Again by Andrew Shaffer: Biden is running for president now and his real-life presence in my life disallows my feeling nostalgia for him. That got in the way of my caring enough to keep reading so I could determine if the author was trying too hard and had turned a fun romp into a pulp potboiler. I did return this one to the library.
4. The Body Papers by Grace Talusan: Written by the sister of someone I went to college with, I felt like I should read this memoir, but it’s about incest and again, I just didn’t feel up to it. I feel horrible about it and will likely give it another go.
5. My Twenty-Five Years in Provence by Peter Mayle: He’s dead and there will be no more books by my favorite Provençal transplant.
6. Daughter of the Siren Queen by Tricia Levenseller: I just finished another book about the daughter of a pirate king and it felt too soon to read another.
7. The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson: There’s a war coming at the end of the book.
8. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Karen read it and suggested the recent adaptation is too close to the text to read it so soon after watching the series.
9. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes: I know how it ends.
10. Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling: I love everything of hers I’ve read, but I’ve heard this books is a downer. I don’t want to not love it.

How about you? Are there books you want to read, but just not right now?