My Tour de France knitting continues apace. There has finally been some color shifting to salmon and a different hue of purple, which is exciting, and the shawl is now longer than my arm, which gives me hope it might someday be long enough to wear. I will need to pick up my pace, since we’re halfway through the Tour and I am not halfway through the knitting. I do have many hours of plane flight coming up next week, though, so it’s a possibility I’ll get caught up.

I’m reading and loving Julie Murphy’s Puddin’, the follow-up to her bestselling book (and soon-to-be feature film), Dumplin’, about two Texas girls who become friends. When I finish it, I’ll be heading back to Moxie, about a Texas girl who rallies other Texas girls to become feminists through her anonymous, Riot Grrrl-inspired zine. As I said to my book group today, apparently I’m all in for kick-ass Texas teen girl novels this summer.

I’ve been listening to a variety of things, but what’s stuck most is Murder Games, the book by James Patterson and Howard Roughan that inspired the tv show Instinct. I always find it interesting in tv shows/films that evolve from books what gratuitous things they choose to change. Here, for instance, one main character’s tv husband has a different name (Andy instead of Tracy) and aspiring career (bar owner instead of actor) and the other main character goes by the nickname (Lizzie) that she hates. The chapters are ridiculously short (which is probably partially what makes Patterson such a page-turner) and I remember from the tv pilot who the bad guy is going to be, even if that character has not yet been introduced in the book. (I suppose it’s a possibility that they changed that, too.) I am also listening to Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings, an #ownvoices memoir which was one of the free Audiobook Sync titles from this year. It’s fine so far, but nothing especially amazing.

You can visit As Kat Knits for additional book and knitting pairings.

I read six books back in March:

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle

Twelve year-old Meg Murry, awkward, self-doubting, and truculent, lives with her beautiful scientist mother, her unremarkable twin brothers, and her brilliant little brother Charles Wallace, who many people make unkind assumptions about. She does not live with her scientist father, because he has disappeared off the face of the earth. Quite literally, but Meg doesn’t yet know that. It takes the intervention of three otherworldly guides, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit, to elucidate the situation and then tesser Meg, Charles Wallace, and Meg’s schoolmate Calvin off into space for an impromptu rescue mission. But when Charles Wallace goes up against the Borg-like It and loses, it’s up to his big sister to figure out how to bring him home. (more…)

Here’s what I’ve knit so far on my Tour de France shawl. I opted for a different pattern than what I showed you last week. This is Around the Bend by Nim Teasdale.

The book is Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu. I’ve also been listening to Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki.

Visit As Kat Knits for more book/knitting combos.

As always, I’m behind on book reviews (although I have drafts of two more months of books in the works). I’m not going to give you the ten best titles of the first half of the year, which is this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic. But I will share the four books I’ve particularly enjoyed thus far, in case you’re looking for reading fodder:

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman, started out slowly for me and I thought about giving up due to Eleanor’s frustrating personality. I remember thinking that there had better be a good reason for her foibles … and there were. Eleanor is not, in fact, completely fine when the book begins, but by the end she is well on her way to it.

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, focuses on a Russian nobleman who escapes being executed or sent to the work camps because of a poem he published when he was young expressing sympathy for the plight of the worker and for the Bolshevik uprising. Instead he is sentenced to house arrest in one of Moscow’s finest hotels, but instead of continuing to occupy his luxurious suite, he is banished to the attic, à la The Little Princess. Instead of moping, though, he finds the best in the situation — and in every other ensuing slight and setback — which positions him well for some very surprising scenarios and relationships.

Obsidio, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, was an excellent conclusion to the Illuminae Files trilogy. Set in space in the future (I want to say the 28th century, but I might be misremembering), the book wraps up the story of teenaged hackers, pilots, drug dealers, and tacticians fighting against intergalactic corporate greed and militarized thugs, and the formerly murderous AI who is helping them (they hope). This installment added a nurse and a soldier to the mix, and as with the earlier two books involves both a pictorial element to the storytelling and a fair amount of kissing.

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann, relates a forgotten piece of American history — the systematic murder of members of the Osage tribe of Native Americans who, in the first few decades of the 20th century, were some of the richest people in the nation thanks to the discovery of oil on their reservation. While the contemporaneous investigation cemented the reputation of the FBI and did put those directly responsible behind bars, it neglected to realize the extent to which the paternalistic American government bore responsibility because of its refusal to recognize the autonomy of Native Americans, instead insisting that white people be given guardianship over them and their finances.

How about you? What have you read in the first half of the year that you loved and would recommend?

My reading has been all over the place this week. A chapter here, a poem there. A different book in each bag. Plus two audiobooks, both L.A. Theatre Works productions, Dr. Cerberus and The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial, as I wash dishes and do prep work in the kitchen.

What have you been reading?

The Tour de France knitalong begins Saturday morning and I don’t yet have a pattern picked out. I would like to make a shawl and I’d like to use a couple (or maybe three) of these shawl balls from Freia fine hand paints. They’re all in the Ombré Merino line: 430 yard-long, single ply balls. The colorways are (clockwise from top left) Hard Candy, Vamp, Aloha, and Melon.

I don’t yet have a pattern picked out. Here are a few I’m considering, but if you have any suggestions, please let me know: Frozen, Sea Shanty, Royal Mile, Parallelogram Scarf, Inara Wrap, and Sea Grass.

If it’s helpful, the shawl I wear the most is my Color Affection. I don’t love knitting feather and fan, so I’d rather not make a shawl that’s entirely comprised of that stitch, but I’m not against a section or two of it. I don’t know brioche, but it’s on my list of things to learn this year, so would be fine with a shawl that included that.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what other folks are reading and knitting.

The Relief Pitcher Throws A Sonnet
     ~E. Ethelbert Miller

You have to forget the last election.
The blown save.
What matters is now, not tomorrow, just now.
In every inning there is the possibility of something going wrong,
the way sunlight blinds or the way a ball skips towards
the wall or through and under a glove. You stand on the mound
of your imagination and imagine nothing except your own breath.
In your hands the roundness of the world.

How do you feel? Is this what you’ve always wanted?
It’s not about the score or getting out of the inning.
It’s about saving whatever needs to be saved. It can be nothing
more than one’s reputation or helping a child crave the memory
of magic and something to believe in. There is nothing more
human than baseball.

This is from Miller’s latest collection of poetry, If God Invented Baseball, which came out just as pitchers and catchers were reporting back in February. I’ve borrowed this copy from the library, but I will buy my own because it is a near perfect collection.