Books on Thursday

I read a couple of ARCs this week (and I'm catching up on a few other, too.) It's an embarrassment of riches, with the added benefit that these two were pretty good. In somewhat related news, Goodreads has finally instituted half (and even quarter) stars! I've wished for this for a long time, and it's nice when something good happens (however small it might be).

 

In Luna, Phoenix, Queen, Julie Orringer takes a complicated web of characters, relationships, secrets, betrayals, and losses and tells the story through a chorus of different voices. What I found especially impressive is the way each POV reveals things about the other characters that they themselves don't or can't see. With every shift in perspective, my understanding of the people and their relationships changed a little, and Orringer uses that mechanism beautifully. These are complex, deeply human characters, and none of them can be reduced to a single motivation or judgment.

I won't repeat the plot details here, as the Goodreads description already gives you plenty to go on. What stayed with me was the exploration of trust, betrayal, truth, connection, obligation, and devotion, and the unsettling ways that love can coexist with all of them.

And then there is Luna. This astonishing, horribly injured dog becomes an unexpected throughline connecting so many of these lives and experiences. I loved the way Orringer allows Luna's story to echo and illuminate the larger story without ever feeling forced.

The writing is beautiful, the characterizations are exceptional, and the ending feels exactly right. Orringer has woven all of these voices and stories into something intricate, heartbreaking, and ultimately moving. I was completely absorbed by this exquisite book, and I'm fairly sure that it will be one of my favorite reads this year. Four and a half stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a copy of the book. It will be published on October 13, 2026. 

 

 

It's been three months since Margaret's husband, Derek, died. It has also been forty years since their eleven-year-old daughter, Jeannie, disappeared while delivering newspapers. In An Unlikely Visitor, Joanna Cannon introduces us to a woman who is struggling to imagine a future without the man she shared her life with, all while carrying the weight of a loss that never truly healed.

Everything changes when an unexpected visitor arrives at Margaret's home. Together, they decide to finally search for answers about what happened to Jeannie all those years ago. What follows is part mystery and part meditation on grief, but more than anything, it's a story about finding hope after unimaginable loss.

As Margaret retraces the past, she learns powerful lessons about life, love, forgiveness, friendship,healing, and herself. Cannon has a wonderful gift for creating deeply compassionate characters, and Margaret's quiet courage made her impossible not to root for. My heart cheered with hers and broke with hers as she slowly opened herself to new possibilities.

While the mystery itself kept me engaged, it was Margaret's emotional journey that made this novel so memorable. It's a gentle, moving story that reminds us that even after decades of heartbreak, it may not be too late for hope, healing, or a new beginning. It was four stars for me.

This unlikely, yet emotional story stayed with me long after I finished it. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a copy of the book. It will be published on October 20, 2026.  

 

Now I'd love to know what you are reading!  

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/7/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with the beginnings of a badger. 

I was glad to see that the badger only uses four colors and they are all in fairly discrete blocks. He doesn't look too badger like now, but hopefully he'll have the right half of his face done next week and then the hat will be finished!

 

I also cast on another dishtowel; this one will be a gift for Jess. I'm using my favorite color along with my favorite pattern, so I'll still have to make another one exactly the same for me. It is good to work on in the evening when it's really too dark to stitch on the hat. I need lots of natural light for that. 

 

 

What are you making this first Wednesday in October? 

Ravelry links:

Cilantro Tea Towel  

  

Read With Us: It's A New Book!

It's time for us to announce our RWU Fall book and it's a good one; maybe almost as good as our Summer book!

It's Partita by Barbara Kingsolver.  

I can't say I'm wild about the cover design, but I will say that the story between those covers is brilliant. If you've read Demon Copperhead, you might be expecting another story in a similar vein, but let me tell you right up front: Partita is a completely different book. And, in my opinion, so much better! While I recognize that Demon Copperhead has plenty of admirers, Partita struck me as a much more intimate, thoughtful, and beautifully constructed novel. It's a book that drew me in and gave me plenty to think about, and I found myself appreciating Kingsolver's writing in an entirely different way.

At its heart, Partita is a story about life, art, love, and the choices we make along the way. Livia Cable has settled into what appears to be a comfortable life in the farm country of Tennessee where she grew up. But a phone call from someone in her past sets in motion a reconsideration of the life she's built and the person she might have been. As the story moves between past and present, we get a closer look at the relationship between the lives we imagine for ourselves and the ones we actually live.

Kingsolver has given us plenty to talk about here: the compromises we make, the pull of the past, the role of art in our lives, and the sometimes complicated relationship between personal happiness and the responsibilities we take on. There's also much to appreciate in the way she develops her characters and allows their lives to unfold.

And isn't that what we enjoy about Read With Us? We don't have to agree about everything, and we certainly don't have to come away with the same interpretation. We just need a book that gives us something to talk about, a few questions to wrestle with, and perhaps a different perspective or two.

The hardcover and audiobook versions have a (somewhat) manageable hold queue at my libraries, so I hope that is also the case for you. The book is just being published today, so I urge you to get your hold requests placed early. I read the Kindle version (and by read I mean that I raced through it in two days). I will be rereading it by listening to the audiobook version.   

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout July. Discussion day for Partita is scheduled for Tuesday, January 12, 2027 at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always educational and illuminating Zoom discussion. This is one of my favorite novels this year, and one that is also very discussable, so I hope you'll Read With Us!

 

Books on Thursday

I read several interesting books this week. 

Imbolo Mbue’s Every Story Is a Love Story is a thoughtful, beautifully written novel about grief, forgiveness, and the complicated ways people find their way toward healing.

 

At the center is Wolo, who is still living with the devastating loss of his pregnant wife and their unborn twins three years after a car accident. His grief has softened with time, but it hasn’t disappeared. Then a letter arrives from Victoria, the woman who was driving the car. Her remorse and her desire to meet force Wolo to confront feelings he has tried to put aside, and to consider whether forgiveness is possible when the person who caused your greatest pain is also suffering from what happened.

What I appreciated most is that Mbue doesn't make forgiveness easy or sentimental. Wolo isn't simply expected to forgive and move on, and Victoria isn't reduced to either a monster or a saint. Both are complicated, wounded people trying to live with an event that cannot be undone. The novel asks some genuinely difficult questions about guilt, responsibility, mercy, and whether forgiving someone is something we do for them or for ourselves.

I also enjoyed the Cameroonian family and community life surrounding Wolo. Mbue gives the story a strong sense of place and fills it with complicated relationships, humor, faith, and the sometimes exasperating involvement of family members who believe they know what's best. Told in two timelines, we see Wolo’s marriage and the life he lost while gradually understanding the enormous weight of his grief. The contrast between the warmth and promise of his life before the accident and the emptiness afterward makes his journey toward healing especially poignant.

This is a quiet, deeply compassionate novel about living with the unlivable and finding a way forward without pretending that the past can be erased. I didn't find every part of the novel equally compelling, but its central questions stayed with me. Every Story Is a Love Story is ultimately a moving meditation on whether, after unimaginable loss, it is possible to make room for hope again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of the book. It will be published on October 6, 2026. I gave this one four stars initially, but I've been thinking about it quite a bit, questioning whether it's realistic or possible at all. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you decide to read it. 

 

I was almost afraid to read this book. I spent nearly every day during his first term and now even more in this imperial second term reading the news, doomscrolling, and worrying about what Donald Trump is doing to fellow human beings, to our country, and to the world. So the idea of voluntarily spending several hundred pages immersed in his presidency wasn't exactly appealing. And yet, Regime Change is an important book.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan don't give us a lot of information that will be completely new to anyone who has been following the news closely. What they do is put it all together in a remarkably well-researched, coherent, and detailed account. Their reporting gives context and connects the dots in a way that daily headlines and breaking-news alerts simply can't. The result is a much clearer picture of how this second administration operates, how much has changed since Trump's first term, and how the people around him have responded to the enormous power he has amassed.

It's also a sobering read. Early in the book, the authors write "Given his cartoonish persona, his deep orange complexion, and his oversized ties and coiffure, there is often a temptation to cover Trump as if he is a clown." The book emphasizes that beneath the theatrical presentation lies an intentional and consequential deployment of executive authority, rather than mere performance or absurdity. There is no reassuring conclusion here, no suggestion that everything will somehow work itself out, and certainly no reason to expect the authors to provide us with hope for the next several years. That's not their job. Their job is to report what they have found, and they do that thoroughly.

My bigger problem may be what this book, and the news in general, does to me. Watching the news every day isn't doing my mental health any favors at the moment. I know I can't continue doomscrolling from morning until night, but I also don't want to look away completely.

Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between: step away from the daily news cycle, take a breath, and occasionally consult the people who have done the painstaking reporting for us. Regime Change is a difficult book to read, but I’m glad Haberman and Swan did the difficult work of putting this moment into a coherent historical record. Now I just need to figure out how to read that history without living inside it 24 hours a day. 

 

 

Barbara Kingsolver has written another extraordinary novel. Partita is a beautiful, deeply moving meditation on music, memory, ambition, love, loss, and the ways a single relationship, or a single decision, can alter the course of a life.

Livia Cable has built a quiet, settled life in the place where she grew up, but a phone call from a man she loved decades ago forces her to look back at the young woman she once was: Livia Bohusz, a gifted piano student whose entire life seemed to be opening before her. As the novel moves between Livia’s present and her past, her memories unfold through the language and structure of music. It’s an ambitious device, but in Kingsolver’s hands it feels completely natural. The past doesn’t simply get remembered; it gets played again.

What I loved most is the way Kingsolver explores the complicated relationship between "art and life". What happens when extraordinary talent collides with class, family expectations, love, and circumstances beyond our control? Is pursuing the thing we love worth the sacrifices it demands? And can we ever completely leave behind the person we were before life took us in another direction?

Kingsolver writes with such intelligence and compassion that even the painful parts of Livia’s story never feel merely tragic. There is an understanding here of how people make choices with the knowledge and emotional resources they have at the time, and then spend years living with those choices.

And the music! Music isn't simply decoration in this novel; it is part of the story's emotional vocabulary. The ARC includes a listening list, which I am very grateful for, because the one thing that might make Partita better would be a link to all of the pieces referenced in the book. I will be searching YouTube for Ravel’s Ondine, Bach’s Partita in C Minor, and the rest of the pieces before I read this stellar novel a second time. I have a feeling the experience will be even richer with the music playing alongside the words.

This is one of those books that makes me want to close the cover and immediately start over, not because I missed the story, but because I want to experience it again, this time knowing where all the notes are leading. Five enthusiastic stars, and I'm already looking forward to the encore.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on October 6, 2026.  

 

Now I'd love to know what you are reading! 

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/30/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with my finished stack of dishtowels for Ryan's Christmas gift.

I usually get my Wednesday posts ready on Tuesday, but I stayed up late last night trying to finish and still had several rows of seed stitch to go on this last towel. I did that this morning, so I'm a little later with this post, but I didn't want to subject you to yet another week with an almost finished dish towel. 

I did cast on another dishtowel; this one will be a Christmas gift for Jess. But more importantly, I am back to working on Justin's hat. I hope to be back here next week with the final badger in progress (and maybe even completed if I'm lucky).

Several people have asked how I can stand to knit the same thing over and over (Hitchhikers, dishtowels, and who knows what will be next). I may be a boring knitter but I truly get a lot of pleasure out of repeating these patterns and the yarns I've used. These dishtowels started as an idea for Christmas gifts, but along the way I realized that they are helping me to stay grounded in this horror show we live in. Apparently knitting the same things over and over and over again is how I manage and I'm glad to have found that out. Virginia Woolf said "Knitting is the saving of life," and I think that may be true. 

What are you making this final Wednesday in September? 

Ravelry links:

Cilantro Tea Towel  

Nested Squares Kitchen Towel 

Chili Pepper Kitchen Towel 

 

Books on Thursday

I only read one book this week, but it was a good one. Barbara Kingsolver recommended it, so I figured it might be worth reading (and it was). 

Labor is a deeply personal memoir about medicine, family, identity, and women’s reproductive autonomy.

As an OB/GYN, Dr. Mary Afsari has spent her career caring for women, and much of the book explores the tension between the care she wants to provide and the increasingly complicated realities of the medical system. Her decision to leave the traditional hospital setting and create a mobile women’s health clinic becomes both a professional and personal turning point. Her central message is clear: women deserve agency over their own bodies, health care, and lives.

I was interested in the connection between Afsari’s medical career and the mystery surrounding her grandmother Mehry’s death in Iran in the 1950s. Uncovering this part of her family history gives the memoir another dimension, particularly as Afsari considers the ways that culture, family, and expectations shape women’s lives. The sections about Iran and her family history were among the most compelling parts of the book for me. I also appreciated the stories of Afsari’s patients and her efforts to make medical care more personal and compassionate. Her commitment to the women she serves comes through strongly.

That said, I didn’t connect equally with every part of the memoir. At times it felt more like a professional manifesto than a memoir, and some of the discussions of the medical system slowed the narrative for me. I also found myself wishing that certain personal and family stories had been explored more deeply.

Still, Labor raises important questions about who gets to make decisions about women’s bodies and health. Its strongest moments are those in which Dr. Afsari connects her own family history and experiences as a physician to the larger struggle for dignity, autonomy, and compassionate care. A thoughtful memoir with an important message about medicine, women’s health, and the power of reclaiming one’s own path. Three and a half stars rounded up. 

Now I'd love to know what you are reading! 

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/23/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a dish towel finish, but I'm still plugging away on the last one.

I finished the Hurdle stitch towel and it has joined the growing pile of gift towels that sits on the arm of my knitting chair. It just makes me happy to see them. This was definitely my favorite pattern and I'll be knitting one or two of these for myself later.

I'm still knitting on the last purple Nested Squares towel. It seems like I'm always making (and then fixing) seed stitch mistakes. Whenever this happens, I tell myself that I'm stretching my brain and possibly preventing dementia, but it's still not a fun pattern for me, and this dark purple yarn I chose doesn't help at all. 

 

 

But I do want to finish it before I start working on Justin's hat, otherwise it may never get done.  

What are you making on this penultimate Wednesday in September? 

Ravelry links:

Cilantro Tea Towel  

Nested Squares Kitchen Towel