Unraveled Wednesday: 4/13/22

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday today. I'm still working on the Antler cardigan, but to save you from another photo that doesn't look significantly different from the previous one, we're going to revisit the current Hitchhiker. It's also not a lot different from the last time you saw it, but I'm enjoying it as my car and travel knitting and I'm loving the colors.

I've listened to several good books this week, including The Swimmers and Heavy. On its surface, The Swimmers is a story about a diverse group of swimmers that swim their laps in an underground pool. They may be "overeaters, underachievers, dog walkers, cross-dressers, compulsive knitters (Just one more row)," above ground, but "most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind … And for a brief interlude we are at home in the world. Bad moods lift, tics disappear, memories reawaken, migraines dissolve, and slowly, slowly, the chatter in our minds begins to subside as stroke after stroke, length after length, we swim." No swimmers are named except for Alice, who has dementia. She may not remember the combination to her locker or where she left her towel, but she knows what to do once she gets in the water.

Then one day a crack appears in the pool. Some won't swim over it, some are obsessed with it, some ignore it, and there are "crack-deniers". “Because the truth is, we don’t know what it is. Or what it means. Or if it has any meaning at all.” The pool eventually closes and the rest of the story follows. I enjoyed Julie Otsuka's writing style so much that I've just started The Buddha in the Attic. 

Heavy is a memoir by Kiese Laymon, unlike any other book I've read before. It's about family, relationships, love, race, addiction, and much more as he makes the journey from Jackson, Mississippi to teaching at Vassar. It's a powerful, difficult book, and one that I will need to read again. 

“I learned you haven't read anything if you've only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader version of revision.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy

What are you making and reading this week?