Having done book, yarn, and knitting swaps before, the Ninja Book Swap is one of my favorites. Last Friday, I came home to a box from my partner:

Olive sent me presents, each with notations about why she made the selection.

I am now the proud owner of Frederik Backman’s My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, which was on my swap wish list, and Ashley Weaver’s Murder at the Brightwell, the first in what Olive says is her favorite cozy mystery series. I’m so excited to start reading them both!

Olive also sent me chocolates from Sarris Candies, a Pennsylvania chocolatier. (I love presents from near where my swapper is, and chocolate presents are always awesome!) She also included Manipulator, a hair gel from Bed Head by TIGI, since I was saying here that I’d recently cut my hair and was looking for some new products to try with my short ‘do. Since I discovered that The Body Shop had gotten rid of the hair stuff I’d relied on the last time my hair was short, it’s been wonderful to get to try something new!

Thank you, Olive, for such a wonderful parcel of fun! And thank you to the Ninja Book Swap organizers for all the behind-the-scenes work!

As you can see, Little Pumpkins did not get finished in time for Halloween. Luckily, winter squash are pretty hardy and pumpkin pie is a staple of Thanksgiving, as well, so I feel like it’s acceptable to still be working on them. Particularly since fall has really only recently arrived in the mid-Atlantic.

My reading is a little bit here, a little bit there. Here we have a sample of historical fiction mysteries (The Secret History of the Pink Carnation mostly takes place just after the French Revolution and A Most Extraordinary Pursuit is set in 1906) and YA/middle-grade contemporaries set in New York City (Clayton Byrd Goes Underground is on the shortlist for the kids’ prize of the National Book Award and Miles Morales is the Spiderman adaptation I’ve been looking forward to reading for ages) that I’m working on. I’ve also just downloaded The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which seemed like a good fit for #NonfictionNovember and to knit while reading (and doing dishes) since Leverage just left Netflix. I’ve got nearly 20 books out from the library right now, which is starting to feel a little overwhelming, so hopefully I can push through some of the shorter ones and get them back this weekend.

This post is part of Kat’s Unraveled Wednesdays and the first post of NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, for which a link-up party is being hosted by Blissful Lemon. (This means I’ll be posting daily for November, so feel free to check in more often.)

One of the overarching themes of this year’s readathon is to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding. As such, the organizers have issued this challenge:

Submit one book recommendation published in each year of the Readathon (2007-2017).

All were five-star reads, unless otherwise noted:

2007: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

2008: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2009: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (4 stars, although I think I should bump it up to 5 in retrospect)

2010: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson (4 stars)

2011: The Night Circus by Emily Morganstern

2012: Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

2013: Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

2014: The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

2015: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

2016: The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

2017: Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper

Do you have any favorite books from that time period?

Today I’m taking part in the 10th anniversary of Dewey’s Readathon. I’ll be spending a nice portion of my day reading, but it’s not going to be all 24 hours. For instance, I neglected to set my pre-8 a.m. alarm, so am only just getting started now.

First, though a few housekeeping items:

Opening meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Washington, D.C.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Probably Jason Reynold’s Miles Morales. But I’ve also begun You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins, which I’m enjoying. And I’m at an exciting spot in The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willis. Oh, and there’s Leah Bardugo’s Wonder Woman novel, Warbringer, yet to start…

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

At some point early this afternoon, my partner Rudi will come home from work and I’ll break with reading to bike up to one of our local libraries, check out their book sale and new Michelle Obama photo exhibit, and then investigate a new cafe in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I like to read (obviously), knit, listen to music, and play with my two cats, Jeremiah and Corey, both of whom are hanging around waiting for me to give them breakfast. I like YA and middle-grade novels, less depressing literature, cozy mysteries, memoirs, and some fantasy.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I think this is my fourth readathon, and mostly I’m not going to stress about it, because it’s supposed to be fun. If at any point it stops being fun, I’ll dial it back.

Off to start reading…

Our WiFi is down so this will be a quick post.

As you can see, I’m on the cuff of Little Pumpkin sock #2. Rudi will be working a bunch the next few days, so I expect to get another good chunk done by the weekend. I finished the audiobook of Daniel José Older’s Shadowshaper tonight & highly recommend it if you’re looking for an urban contemporary ghost story for this season.

Up next is another book set in the immigrant communities of NYC: You Bring the Distant Near, which I started last weekend. So far, so good.

Check in on other Unravelings at Kat’s blog.

While away last weekend, I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done, being too busy visiting to curl up with my books. But I’m back home now, which means wrapping up a bunch of things in progress. I just finished listening to The Scam as I was knitting the last of my heel decreases, the latest of the romantic Fox and O’Hare heist series that is ridiculously bad, but still enjoyable. That leaves me with Teraji P. Henson’s memoir checked back out on audio, which came back around again finally, unless I opt to start Shadowshaper before the end of Latino Heritage Month.

The other books I have going are Be Careful What You Witch For, a mass market mystery novel that fits in my bag (and thus only gets read when I’m out); The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a historical fiction mystery/romance which I’m about a third of the way through; and Patina, the second book in the Track series by Jason Reynolds, about four middle-schoolers who join an elite track team.

I’m eager to begin The Fifth Season, the first of a highly regarded fantasy series; Warbringer (about Wonder Woman); and Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales/Spiderman novel. I have several other books out from the library that don’t fall into the supernatural category, but these three are the ones most exciting me at the moment.

As mentioned above, I’m past the heel on the first Little Pumpkins sock, and since I moved the cable around so the pumpkin runs down the front of my foot, I only have to cable every 8 rows. I anticipate finishing the foot this weekend and then quickly moving on to sock #2. After all, one wants to finish before Halloween! I also have picked my Andrea’s Shawl back up after a year of it solely missing a border. I’m about halfway through picking up the stitches for that, and then it’s less than a dozen rows of knitting. I’m looking forward to it being done by the time the cool weather reappears on the East coast.

If you’d like to see what others are knitting and reading, head over to Kat’s Unraveled Wednesday post.