This is just a quick post because, frankly, I’m starting to realize exactly what a mess I’ve left my knitting in in order to advance in Sock Madness. I have until midnight on Monday night to finish, but I’m not yet to the heel on sock #1. And apparently the heel is a challenge. And it’s toe-up, which means getting it off the needles is more time-consuming than toe down.

So, here’s my plan:

Tonight: Go to bed after I’ve finished my tea. Getting enough sleep to not fall asleep while knitting is crucial to the rest of the plan.
Tomorrow (Thursday): Get through the heel on sock #1.
Friday: Knit the entire leg of sock #1.

Saturday: Knit the foot and heel of sock #2.
Sunday: Knit the leg of sock #2.

This leaves Monday after work for overflow when that schedule proves unrealistic. It doesn’t sound bad right now, but I did want to do some things other than work and knit for the next few days, and I can’t afford to eat every meal out between now and then!

(That photo could look less awkward; there’s a ball of yarn in the toe (as well as my own toes) from where I moved through the skein to get to a more contrasty section.)

Anyway, I’m still listening to Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn while I knit, and I’ve been sneaking in the short chapters of The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, one of the novellas my library picked for its Rush Hour Reads series, in microbursts on my commutes. I am enjoying and recommend both.

I read nine books last month, so in the interest of getting through them all, I’m going to divide them into two posts. Tonight, I’ll give you the first four:

Honest Engine: Poems, by Kyle Dargan

Poetry is the one type of book that I’m regularly tempted to buy even if I know nothing about the book or the author. If the blurb or cover are appealing, I’ll pick it up, and if I like a poem in it, there’s every chance it’ll come home with me. Poetry, being more immediate than prose, has a way of bypassing all that getting-to-know-you crap that prose needs to engage in and beelines to your soul. It’s like it skips the small talk and jumps straight to either sucker punching you in the gut or stroking your hair (in a totally not creepy kind of way). So, when, last summer, I was browsing the new releases table at Politics and Prose, and I came across a cleverly designed cover and a blurb that suggested the poems inside would examine “the mechanics of the heart and mind as they are weathered by loss,” I was hooked, still recovering, as I was, from my grandmother’s death.

I’ve already recommended this accessible collection from a D.C. resident once before, and I’ll underscore that again now. Dargan’s poetry runs the gamut from the State of the Union to sleep deprivation to a dozen or so poems about loved ones gone from this earth, with a surprising amount of science fiction fandom thrown in for good measure.

Published: 2015.
Pages: 96.

One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia

The Garcia sisters — 11-year-old Delphine, 9-year-old Vonetta, and 7-year-old Fern — have traveled from Brooklyn to Oakland to visit their mother who left them when Fern was a baby. Set in 1968, the story focuses on the girls striving to navigate the unknown waters of life with a woman who rejected them and of an unknown city, where the Black Panthers, who run the recreation center where the girls spend their days, are gaining power and recognition. Just as they discover that the Black Panthers are more complicated than White TV and their Southern grandmother has led them to believe, so, too, do they find that their mother, a poet, and her reasons for leaving are equally complex. The girls may never get to the beach or to Disneyland, but they will definitely feel like they’ve seen a lot by the time they head back home.

The third book in the Garcia girls’ story just won an award this winter, which reminded me that I hadn’t yet read the first novel, also a prize-winner. Destined to be a classic, this middle-grade novel is an enjoyable read about a girl whose world is going to change over the course of one summer, but just maybe not in the ways she’s expecting it to. Combine that solid story with the book’s parallels to our modern day at a time when police violence toward Black citizens across the nation is regularly making headlines and when protests against that violence feel the need to echo the plea and refrain that Black Lives Matter, and you have an important book for us to read, particularly with our kids. The distance afforded by the fifty years between its setting and today allow a safe lens for exploring some of the roots of the movement while simultaneously underscoring why it’s frustrating that so many of these conversations (and the events that prompt them) still happen today.

Published: 2012.
Pages: 218. Library copy.

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore, by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, with illustrations by R. Gregory Christie

I don’t review every picture book I read, but if I read them at home for myself (as opposed to reading them in the bookstore with an eye toward gifting them to small children), I count them. I requested this non-fiction book from the library without realizing it was a picture book, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. Nelson tells the story of her great-uncle, who opened a Black-centric bookstore in Harlem in the 1930s, from the perspective of his son who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. Lewis loved the sense of community the store brought to the neighborhood, the vehicle it provided residents for protesting injustices, and the celebrities, such as Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X, who visited the shop. Christie’s illustrations help bring the store and the period of time to life.

While this is a picture book, I would not recommend it for youngest readers, because the climax of the story focuses on the day Malcolm X is killed, at an event Lewis’ dad is attending and will be upsetting to particularly small kids. It is a great way, though, to share a piece of history with older elementary and middle school readers in an accessible way that may inspire them to further investigation into the topic and which will certainly help them appreciate the power of the written word.

Published: 2015.
Pages: 32. Library copy.

Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, by Laurie Ann Thompson, with illustrations by Sean Qualls

I requested this picture book with Rudi in mind, because bicycles. But after he’d finished it, I couldn’t help but read it myself before returning it to the library. Yeboah was born disabled in Ghana, where disabilities are considered a curse and where the disabled are expected to become beggars. His mother and his grandmother, though, don’t just see a bad leg, but a curious and bright child. They make sure he goes to school and instill in him a sense of industry and ambition, which lead him to playing soccer with his schoolmates and, eventually, to learning to ride a bike. Later, in 2001, as an adult, he will ride 400 miles across Ghana to raise awareness of what disabled people are capable of, if only people will give them a chance to show it. He used that fame to raise funds to further that cause and to build schools across his country.

This nonfiction picture book is appropriate for even the youngest readers and offers lots of opportunity for discussions about disability, poverty, and international differences.

Published: 2015.
Pages: 40. Library copy.

March has arrived and with it comes Sock Madness, the annual foray I make into competitive knitting. The pattern dropped Monday evening (it was March already in Australia), but I sort of hemmed and hawed and put off starting until tonight. But now, Rudi has gone to bed (and with him Posey and Jeremiah) and I’m able to play the video showing the cast-on (a variation on one I already knew, but I didn’t realize that until I’d seen it) with only Corey to distract me. This particular sock calls for two contrasting sock yarns, so I’m hoping this pair of Ty-Dy Socks skeins will suffice.

(Also pictured are a cup of Darjeeling tea and the last of the cookies from my birthday.)

As usual, I have several books going at once. I’ve just begun the two pictured here — Connect the Stars by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague and V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. I’m only a chapter into each, so I can’t offer an opinion of any significance yet, except to say I’m going to keep reading! I’m also just a chapter into Carola Dunn’s A Death at Wentwater Court, the first Daisy Dalrymple mystery, on my phone, since while I can read a paper book and knit at the same time, it’s definitely a slower process and is not conducive to advancing to the next round.

Other books that I’m still finishing up are Anne of Green Gables on audio and Barry Svrluga’s baseball book, The Grind.

Joining Ginny for the Yarn Along.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is an open-ended theme of Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d offer up the ten books currently in my possession I’d like to read in which love (supposedly) plays a role:

1. The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan: A fictional account of a commoner who falls in love with the heir to the British throne.
2. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: The company’s IT guy has to police everyone’s usage of the company email. What he reads makes him fall in love.
3. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda: Simon’s fallen in love with a boy on the internet, but his romance is put at risk by the school bully.
4. The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockborough: The figures of Love and Death routinely pick two people and play with their lives to see which one of them will win. Heretofore, it’s been Death. Does Love have a shot this time?
5. Love Letters by Katie Fforde: A former bookshop owner takes over running a literary festival and must convince a reclusive writer to take part.
6. Connect the Stars by Maria de los Santos and David Teague: Two kids meet at summer wilderness camp. Not sure if this is fall in romantic love or fall in best friend love. Either will work.
7. Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens: Because, honestly, what’s more passionate than the love between middle school BFFs?
8. Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope: A modern retelling of the Jane Austen novel.
9. Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between by Jennifer E. Smith: The night before they leave for college, a high school couple has to figure out whether or not to break up.
10. Young Avengers, Vol. 1: Style > Substance by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie: The next generation of superheroes has to figure out how to work as a team.

How about you? Will your reading be taking a thematic approach this week? Have you read any of the books on my list? Would you recommend bumping it up my list?

Shall we begin as we mean to go on? My plan is to post about the previous month’s reads on the first Saturday of the next month. Here, then, are the seven books I finished during January: (more…)

The craziness of the Christmas build-up and my commitment to blogging the Virtual Advent Tour last month (can you believe December was only last month?) led to an oversight on my part. While I acknowledged it on Twitter, I neglected to blog about The Broke and the Bookish Secret Santa and the wonderful package that came from Hannah on the Isle of Wight in Great Britain:

Hannah sent me two great books, some beautiful cards featuring photos she took of the area near her home, some tea, foxy socks (I love fun socks!), and two heads of locally grown garlic, which have made my living room (where they sat during the holiday season) smell divine.

All of which leads us to today:

I started Winter Holiday over the long blizzard weekend, since that seemed appropriate. It’s the fourth book in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series and includes fabulous maps as the end-papers. Because it’s an old copy, it also includes these hilarious blurbs from reviews in the day that include things like comments about how ridiculous it is to expect an author to illustrate his own work. [In looking up the dates for Ransome’s books, I discovered there’s a film adaptation of the first book due out later this year. So exciting! Interestingly and perhaps alarmingly, it will include a new character played by the guy who plays Moriarty in Sherlock.] And earlier today I began Murder Most Unladylike, the first book in a recent middle-grade mystery series set in a girls’ boarding school in 1934. I’m enjoying both of them thus far. I love that the books both have 1930s England as their setting.

The knitting is that stupid lightning shawl that will never be done, except that I’m making it my goal to complete it in the next two-and-a-half weeks for my birthday. Because I want to use it during the cold months and I’m tired of it being on the needles, rather than wearable.