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 

 

Read With Us: Off the Shelf

Hello, and welcome to our latest Read With Us spin-off!

During the last Zoom call that Kym, Carole, and I had to discuss our next books, Kym came up with yet another great idea. Off the Shelf is a place where we’ll talk about why a particular book has earned a spot on our personal library shelves.

We’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and not create a schedule for this one. Instead, you can look for an Off the Shelf post on random Mondays. There may be Mondays when all three of us post, Mondays when none of us post, and every possible combination in between. In other words, there are no rules (which seems very Read With Us)!

My library at home consists mainly of a three-shelf bookcase filled with books I’ve saved over the years. The top shelf has all the Harry Potter books, the middle shelf holds poetry and some of my special fiction, and the bottom shelf is mainly children’s books that I can’t bear to part with. The book I want to tell you about today is from the middle shelf, and it’s the one I thought of as soon as Kym mentioned her idea.

 

 

Early Candlelight Stories, published in 1922, belonged to my grandmother when she was a child. She kept it in the room where I stayed whenever I visited her. The book opens with a grandmother arriving to spend the winter with her grandchildren, Bobby, Alice, and Pink. As the children gather around her in the evenings, Grandma shares nostalgic stories about her own childhood, family life, childhood adventures, and small-town community, all accompanied by charming illustrations. All I have to do is pick it up, and I’m transported back to the warm feelings the book has always brought me.

I used to read several of the stories each night when I was staying with my grandmother. I don’t read it much anymore because the binding is falling apart and a few pages are coming loose. I’ve looked for replacement copies and have found some reprinted versions since the book is in the public domain, but they just aren’t the same.

So I’m content to keep my old, falling-apart book just as it is. It’s still in good enough shape to hold all the lovely memories I have. Its pages may be loose, but its place on my shelf is secure. 

Books on Thursday

This week was a nonfiction week for me. One was sad but highly educational and informative and the second one was an exceptional recommendation from Kat. 

 

After reading Robert Kolker's Hidden Valley Road, I was eager to pick up The Vanishing Family. His previous exploration of a family devastated by inherited schizophrenia was both compassionate and fascinating, so a book about another family confronting a devastating genetic legacy immediately caught my attention.

This time Kolker turns his focus to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), following a Pennsylvania family over decades as sibling after sibling faces the possibility and the reality of inheriting a rare genetic mutation. What makes the story so heartbreaking is that the disease often strikes people in the prime of their lives, fundamentally altering their personalities long before their memories disappear. Watching family members struggle to understand what is happening, while living under the constant shadow of a 50/50 chance of developing the disease themselves, creates an almost unbearable sense of tension.

Kolker has a remarkable gift for explaining complicated medical research without losing sight of the people at the center of the story. The science is fascinating, but it never overshadows the emotional weight of the family's experience. Their resilience, grief, disagreements, and determination to contribute to research make them feel like people you come to know rather than simply subjects of a case study.

While the book is deeply moving, I occasionally found myself wishing for a slightly tighter narrative. The scientific discoveries and the many family members can sometimes make the story feel repetitive, especially in the middle sections. Even so, Kolker's empathy for his subjects and his skill as a storyteller kept me engaged throughout.

This is an engrossing blend of medical mystery, family history, and human resilience. Like Hidden Valley Road, it reminds us that behind every scientific breakthrough are real people whose willingness to share their stories may ultimately change countless lives.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be publsihed on September 29, 2026.

On Witness and Respair is a deeply moving collection of essays that feels both intimate and expansive. Jesmyn Ward writes about family, grief, motherhood, race, literature, and the experience of being a writer with the same lyrical intensity that makes her fiction so powerful. There’s a real sense throughout that she is trying to understand how we carry the people and experiences that have shaped us, and how we keep going after loss.

The essays about literature were some of my favorites, particularly Ward’s reflections on Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, and Octavia Butler. I loved seeing how these writers became part of her intellectual and emotional landscape, and how she connects their work to her own life and writing. Her thoughts on what fiction can do and why stories matter also made this feel like a fascinating glimpse into her creative mind.

The titular essay, “On Witness and Respair,” is especially heartbreaking. Ward writes about the sudden death of her partner with tremendous honesty and restraint, capturing both the enormity of grief and the strange, disorienting experience of trying to live alongside it. The book’s idea of “respair”, hope that persists despite everything, is what ultimately stayed with me.

I’ve seen other reviewers mention that they found the essays repetitive, but I didn’t experience them that way. There are certainly recurring themes and ideas, but I appreciated that repetition as part of the collection’s coherence. Ward keeps circling back to family, literature, loss, and resilience from different angles, and each return felt like another layer rather than simply saying the same thing again.

Not every essay resonated with me equally, which is why I landed at four stars rather than five, but there is so much beauty and thoughtfulness here. Ward’s prose is as haunting and gorgeous as ever, and this collection left me thinking about the relationship between grief and hope, and about the stories we inherit and the ones we choose to tell. Thanks for the recommendation, Kat! 

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

 

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/16/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today. And guess what; I'm still knitting dishtowels! I'm almost finished with the hurdle stitch one, just a couple more inches to go. I thought I might get it completed yesterday, but Ryan and I ended up talking too much and I had to tink back four rows where I made a mistake. The conversation with my son was well worth a bit of tinking and reknitting. 

I still have a dark purple nested squares towel in progress that I need to get back to after I finish this cream one. Then I think I am done with Christmas gift towels.  I want to return to Justin's hat; there's just one badger left to stitch and then the hat will be complete. The weather is finally cool enough that my fingers don't get sticky stitching with wool yarn. But I still might need to make myself a dish towel now that I know which ones are my favorites. 

What are you making this Wednesday in September? 

Ravelry links:

Cilantro Tea Towel