This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share one-word reviews of the last ten books we read. I’m going to mix it up slightly and give you the one word I currently most associate with each of the last ten I’ve started (feel free to ask in the comments if you want more detail):

1. Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim: Adjectives (in progress)
2. Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura: Deities (in progress)
3. The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg: Spin-off
4. Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny: Waiting (in progress)
5. Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson: Celebrities
6. The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin: Tearful
7. Shelf Respect by Annie Austen: Bibliophilia
8. A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske: Magic
9. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki: Doomed
10. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto: Family (in progress)

How about you? What is the word you’d most associate with a book you’re reading or recently finished?

Look! Different knitting and different reading!

The knitting is Mum’s (2021) Christmas gift, Campfire Cozy, which I picked up again toward the end of last week. I have eight more rows of the textured stitches to get through and then it becomes mindless tv knitting. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to hand the shawl over sometime before Christmas 2022.

I put Fools in Love back into the rotation because it’s overdue to the library and I forgot to put it in my bag last week when I went to Virginia. I took that as a sign I was meant to finish this collection of YA romance short stories after all. I also started Saint Young Men, a collection of comics translated from Japanese about religious figures Jesus and Buddha rooming together as young men during a gap year in Tokyo in the early aughts. It’s less sacrilegious than it sounds, but also maybe less funny than I’d hoped it would be. I’ve also started a new audiobook, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim. I’m not yet sure if I’ll keep going with it. It probably depends on how many more times she describes food with multiple adjectives.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to pick an item or design element and find 10 books featuring it on the cover. It will surprise no one that I’ve picked covers that include books and/or reading:

Covers are:
Row 1: A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore, Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl & Melissa de la Cruz, and The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser

Row 2: Shelf Respect by Annie Austen, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston, and Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Row 3: Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson, The Wild Book by Juan Villoro, and The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser (in this instance, the cover was better than the book)

I’ve read six, am listening to the audiobook off and on of another, and have three on my TBR list.

How about you? Do any memorable covers featuring books or reading spring to mind?

I’m happy to report that the title for this post refers not to a hot mess in my crafting, but to the way I’m leveraging my leisure time right now.

I’d hoped to show you a finished sock, but I kept dozing off while knitting and watching tv, which seemed more an indicator that I should put my head on a pillow than that I should continue with pre-planned blog fodder. But I’m about four rows away from the toe decreases, so it shan’t be long now.

I finished one book last week, abandoned a second, put a dent in two others, and resumed a fifth, which seems like a pretty good way to pass seven days. These are the two I’m currently working on in print and I continue to enjoy listening to Cassandra Peterson’s memoir.

You can visit As Kat Knits to see what others are crafting and reading.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Ready Girl asks us to share ten bookish items we’d love to own. I thought I’d share ten bookish knitting patterns I’d love to make:

1. Wonderland Socks
2. Hundred Acre Woods socks
3. Alice in Wonderland mittens
4. Snow Queen socks
5. Christmas with the Marches shawl
6. Rivendell socks
7. Brighton mitts
8. Nancy Drew sweater
9. Anne’s Sweater
10. Anne Elliot’s Fichu shawl

For my crafty friends, are there literary-inspired items you’d like to make?

I’m pleased with how my socks are looking and anticipate wrapping them up this weekend. I’m already anticipating returning to my mom’s languishing Christmas shawl, as well as a couple projects that’ve been sitting for several years. Plus, there will be a new pair of socks to cast on for. Exciting!

I went across the river to return a book to the Arlington library and came back with four that I randomly pulled from the stacks. (Ahhh… unfettered browsing…) The one I decided to start with was Leonard Goldberg’s The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes, which features the adult offspring of all the major players of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective series, as well as Dr. John Watson, now an elderly man. I’m delighted to report that I’m enjoying it thoroughly and that there are several more books in the series.

In the ears, I’m continuing to listen to Cassandra Petersen’s Cruelly Yours, Elvira, which is a lot of fun to listen to. She is a colorful storyteller and and an enthusiastic reader, which is all you can ask for in a memoir read by its author.

I don’t know what I’ll be reading next, but I’m looking forward to figuring out the paper answer sometime tomorrow.

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