Unraveled Wednesday: 3/1/23

I'm happy to join Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with some actual unraveling. 

I set the Sophie shawl down quickly and some of the i-cord stitches on the edge slipped off the needle. For some reason, I couldn't get them back on the needle without an ugly interruption in the i-cord. After much frustration, I did what I should have done all along - I ripped it out, wound the yarn into a loose bundle, soaked it to get rid of the ramen from all the previous knitting, and hung it by the furnace to dry.

While it was drying, I wound one of the other skeins and started the shawl again. 

I'm going to keep increasing for a while, but Amazon is delivering a kitchen yarn scale tomorrow so I can accurately determine when I've used half of my yarn and can start decreasing. 

I finished two books this week, and they were both surprises. I eagerly started I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai shortly after I got the hold notice. I hoped for good things because I loved The Great Believers by the same author.  About 50 pages in, it became clear that these are very different books. Questions was a combination of literary fiction, mystery, thriller, coming of age, dark academia, a story about podcasts, feminism, #metoo, a courtroom novel, a critique of true crime, or some combination of genres. I don't expect authors to keep writing the same book as they have previously, but by writing this odd combination, I think Rebecca Makkai has diluted all of them and written a novel that is far less than the sum of its parts. 

One thing I liked about the book was how the author addressed memories. Too often in murder mysteries and crime shows, people seem to have total recall of what happened years ago, with little or no confusion and exquisite detail. The memories that Makkai has written in this book are much more nebulous and recalled with some confusion and gray areas. It seems that we might all be unreliable narrators when it comes to relying on memory, but I don't know that that works well in a novel. By the end, the reader has a fairly good idea of who murdered Thalia, but there are no Columbo or Hercule Poirot moments.

I wish this was a better book for me, mainly because I know Makkai can write a better book. Two and a half stars rounded up. 

While that was a slightly surprising disappointment, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed The Revenant. Justin told me a couple of weeks ago that The Revenant was probably the best movie he's ever seen, and encouraged me to watch it. I was skeptical and thought that it might be too gory for me but decided to try it. While I waited for Amazon to deliver my DVD, I got the audiobook from the library. I was impressed by Michael Punke's writing, on the edge of my seat with anticipation to find out what happened next in this epic tale, and grateful for heat, food, modern medicine, and all the comforts of our modern-day life. Punke tells the fictionalized story of real-life trapper Hugh Glass, his mauling by a grizzly bear, and how he survived and traveled hundreds of miles after being abandoned by the men that had agreed to stay and give him a decent burial after he died. It's a novel about revenge, the American frontier, hardship, brutality, and perseverance, but it's much more of a study of human nature.

I enjoyed reading about a time that I knew little about, Anstadt rifles, trapping, Native Americans, and exploration in this adventure novel. The author's notes at the end provide a more complete historical perspective. I did end up watching the movie, and while it differed from the book (they always do), it was very good in its own right, and not gory as I feared. The settings and musical score make it a beautiful movie in many ways.

What are you making and reading this week?