Maybe a Bit Too Much

John has been away for much of the week visiting his cousin in northern PA. I didn't have any desire to go along; it's cold (4° F last night), there's no heat in the upstairs bedrooms in the old farm house, and the family stories are a bit boring to me. All of this means that I've been here at home to mostly do what I want. I've been eating grilled cheese or yogurt for dinner, I cleaned a little bit, decorated a little bit, caught up on laundry, and knitted. I also felt like baking something and settled on chocolate zucchini bread. John isn't a big fan of chocolate, so I saw this as my chance to make something that I wanted. 

I browsed a bunch of recipes and finally settled on smitten kitchen's version. I should have paid more attention to the fact that it was called "double chocolate" but I went ahead and prepared it as written, except I used 1/3 cup fewer chocolate chips and didn't sprinkle any on top.

 

 

I baked the bread for 75 minutes and even then, it barely tested as done. But I took it out, cooled it in the pan and on a rack, and tried a piece once it was completely cool. Whoa, this stuff is seriously chocolatey, in fact, maybe a bit too much if that's possible. 

I know John won’t eat much, if any, because of all the chocolate. Some family members are coming for brunch on Sunday, so maybe I can give most of it away. If not, I briefly considered sharing it with the neighborhood wildlife, until I googled it and learned that “chocolate harms raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and foxes because the theobromine and caffeine it contains are toxic to them, similar to how they affect dogs. Ingestion can cause vomiting, diarrhea, increased heart rate, seizures, and potentially death.” I definitely don’t want to be responsible for that.

 

Maybe next time I’ll make a nice, healthy zucchini quiche. I’ve been trying to align my eating with an anti-inflammatory diet, and that definitely doesn’t include anything labeled “double chocolate.”

Unraveled Wednesday: 12/3/25

I’m happily joining Kat and the Unravelers today, with some slipper progress. It feels as if time has been speeding up this fall, and once I turned the calendar page to December, and realized that there are only 22 days left until Christmas, I knew I needed to get knitting in earnest on Justin's slippers. (Ravelry link)

I've finished the first one and started on the sole of the second. It's relatively simple construction so I'm sure I can get the second one done in plenty of time. I was concerned that they might not be big enough while I was knitting, but they are actually quite large. 

You can't tell exactly from this picture on my size 8 feet but they should definitely fit Justin's gigantic feet. It remains to be seen whether he'll wear them but they should keep him warm if he does.

 

I haven't knit on the blue Hitchhiker for a week, but I did get the soft gray Silk Road Light back out of the stash, thinking that I might actually cast on a second Hitchhiker. I haven't done it yet but two Hitchhikers are better than one. 

We've got wintry weather and I had a wintry theme in my reading this week. The Land in Winter is a beautifully written, quietly observed novel that feels less like a traditional narrative and almost like a series of finely rendered snapshots. Set during the brutal winter of 1962 in England, Andrew Miller brings two neighboring couples, Eric and Irene, Bill and Rita, into sharp focus just as the world around them freezes into stillness. Their lives, already shaped by unspoken disappointments and the quieter strains of marriage, become even more exposed once the snow isolates them from the outside world.

I’ll admit that early on, I wondered where the novel was going once it opened with an isolated incident that I soon forgot about and the characters were introduced. After finishing the book, I’m still not entirely sure whether Miller was more interested in crafting these exquisitely written moments than in building a larger arc around them. The timeline feels secondary to the vividness of each scene, sunlight on snow, a half-heard conversation, the subtle shift of a relationship. And yet, that choice has its own quiet appeal.

What the novel avoids is melodrama. Even when old tensions rise or unexpected discoveries come to the surface, the tone remains understated, almost hushed, as if the cold has muted everything but the essentials. The result is a story that moves gently but with intention, rewarding readers who appreciate mood, atmosphere, and emotional nuance more than plot-driven momentum.

Miller’s prose is undeniably gorgeous, and his attention to the minutiae of daily life is often mesmerizing. While the book didn’t fully sweep me away, its delicate restraint and beautifully textured writing make it a memorable winter read. Three and a half stars rounded up.

Winter: The Story of a Season is a warm, contemplative wander through the season’s landscapes, both literal and emotional. Val McDermid proves she’s just as compelling in creative nonfiction as she is in crime fiction. This slim volume feels like settling in beside a fire: quiet, cozy, and full of small delights.

McDermid moves seamlessly between present-day reflections and childhood memories, capturing everything from the frosty streets of Edinburgh to the bracing Scottish coast, from Bonfire Night to Up Helly Aa. Along the way, I learned a surprising amount, like the fact that snowdrops come in more than two hundred varieties, something I had absolutely no idea about. I also picked up some great Scottish vocabulary: dreich (dreary weather), rouille (sauce made from garlic, olive oil, and cayenne or chili pepper), and shoogly (wobbly or unsteady). These little linguistic gems added charm and texture to her storytelling.

What stands out most is McDermid’s affection for winter’s rituals, some fading, some evolving, and her gentle reminder that this season can be a time of rest and creativity rather than simply endurance. The book never rushes; it invites you to pause, breathe, and appreciate the small mysteries of cold, dark months.

While Winter is a quieter book than some readers might expect, it’s a deeply engaging one, and it left me hoping McDermid will publish more nonfiction. She clearly has a gift for it.

A lovely, thoughtful read, perfect for anyone who enjoys reflective seasonal writing or simply wants to hunker down with something comforting on a cold night. Four and a half stars rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on January 13, 2026. Just a bit of a wait until publication day and it will definitely still be winter!

What are you making and reading this week? 

 

I'll See in a Month or Two

I have bursitis in my hips and they have been aching, stiff, and sore for a long time (as in several years). I have been to two different orthopedic doctors, gotten cortisone shots three or four times, done physical therapy four different times, I do exercises at home, and figured out how to manage the pain on a daily basis (ibuprofen and Diclofenac gel). It's not ideal, but lots of people have chronic conditions, and there really isn't anything else to do. My current orthopod has said that hip replacements won't help, but he can manage the acute pain with cortisone shots and he will refer me to the chronic pain clinic if/when I feel like I need it.

A little while ago I saw an ad for Osteo Bi-Flex and wondered if it really did anything. I've read several studies on the efficacy and the results are honestly all over the map. It has helped in some studies (often patients with knee pain) but shown little to no effect in other studies. So I decided that I needed to order some and try it for myself. I have 60 capsules so I will take one a day and see if there is any difference in a couple months. I don't take any other supplements or vitamins, but decided that a multi-vitamin couldn't hurt. It was hard to find one that didn't have 300% of some vitamins because that's just too much, but this one is a bit more realistic. 

I'll admit that I'm a bit skeptical, but I also did some reading about the placebo effect. Dr. Ted J. Kaptchuk, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard-wide Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been studying placebos for more than 20 years. He says, "People can still get a placebo response, even though they know they are on a placebo. You don’t need deception or concealment for many conditions to get a significant and meaningful placebo effect, especially in conditions that are defined by self-observation symptoms like pain." 

That sounds promising to me and I'm giving it a try.  

Tradition

It's important to keep some traditions alive to help ensure feelings of continuity and groundedness. I have a piece of birthday cake for breakfast the day after my birthday and a piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream is my breakfast the day after Thanksgiving. I’ll probably skip the news for a bit, just to hang onto this feeling of contentment a little longer.

I hope your long weekend is off to a delicious and relaxing start!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all who are celebrating a very Happy Thanksgiving, and a very Happy Thursday to those that aren't! I'm grateful for you and that you take time out of your day to read my thoughts and share yours. Thank you!

(I post this same picture every year on Thanksgiving, but it's simply because I like it so much and it says exactly how I feel.)

Unraveled Wednesday: 11/26/25

I’m here (maybe, hopefully, joining Kat) with some actual unraveling for Unraveled Wednesday. After finishing Justin's socks, I knew I needed to finally cast on for a Hitchhiker. I went through my stash, culled and organized it a little bit, and thought these yarns might work nicely. 

I only have one skein of the black & white speckled yarn, but the gray is a delightfully soft blend of baby alpaca, camel hair, cashmere, and silk. I thought this would make something perfect to wear around my neck, but after I cast on and knit twelve teeth, I decided that I really needed more color. So there was a small bit of unraveling, more digging in the stash, and it produced three skeins I had completely forgotten about. They're Wollmeise; I think they go together perfectly, and are providing the color and comfort knitting I wanted. 

 

 

I wound the skeins for Justin's slippers and plan to cast on the day after Thanksgiving, right after I've enjoyed my leftover pie for breakfast. My plans for the weekend are simple and lovely: knitting, reading, and relaxing in my pajamas for a while. No shopping for me!

I read two books this week. I was really looking forward to Winter Stories, especially because I loved Rishøi’s Brightly Shining. She has a gift for writing about people on the margins with tenderness and precision. But while this collection showcases her talent for atmospheric, deeply humane storytelling, I struggled to make an emotional connection with the characters this time around.

Each of the three stories centers on people trying to make their way toward stability, an overwhelmed young mother, a father newly out of prison, and siblings running from a home that no longer feels safe. Rishøi captures their desperation and small hopes with her usual clarity, and in each story a stranger steps in with an act of kindness. Yet those gestures, while meaningful, only make things marginally better, underscoring how fragile and temporary relief can be.

There’s a quiet power in these pieces and moments of real emotional resonance, but for me they never fully added up to the immersive experience I found in Brightly Shining. Readers who appreciate bleak but compassionate realism may find more to hold on to. I admired the craft, but the connection I’d hoped for never quite landed.
This one was three stars for me. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on December 2, 2025. There is a Goodreads giveaway if you're interested. 

 

Kat recommended this one and it was well worth reading. Run for the Hills is Kevin Wilson doing what he does best: taking a premise that sounds slightly absurd on the surface and turning it into something surprisingly heartfelt. The novel has his signature blend of offbeat humor, dysfunctional family dynamics, and characters who feel like they’re always one deep breath away from falling apart, but who somehow keep inching toward connection anyway.

The book’s energy is high from the start, almost chaotic at times, and while that momentum is part of its charm, it also makes some sections feel a bit scattered. There were moments when I wished for a little more grounding or emotional depth, especially compared to Wilson’s strongest work. Still, his dialogue snaps, his observations shine, and the way he captures the anxieties of modern life feels both sharp and forgiving.

What ultimately lingers is the tenderness underneath all the eccentricity; Wilson’s gentle insistence that even when everything feels unmanageable, people are worth loving and relationships are worth trying for. Run for the Hills may not be my favorite of his novels, but it’s a funny, affectionate, and consistently engaging read that will appeal to anyone who appreciates Wilson’s particular brand of oddball heart. Three and a half stars rounded up.  

 

What are you making and reading this week? 

Sometimes Monday ...

 ... is a good day for another poem. Yes, it's another one by Barbara Crooker but it felt right to share it for Thanksgiving week. I promise I'll move on to other poets (someday). 

Praise Song

by Barbara Crooker 

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough. 

 

Crooker, Barbara. "Praise Song". Radiance. Word Press, 2005. 

 

Here's hoping you can find a reason or two of your own to praise our "crazy fallen world".

A Gathering of Poetry: November 2025

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

Last month I posted a poem by Barbara Crooker. She was a new poet to me then, but in the month since, I've been reading more of her poetry and I continue to be impressed. The poem I chose this month spoke so clearly of the landscape, what I've been seeing outdoors, and how I've been feeling that I had to choose Barbara Crooker again this month.  

 

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

by Barbara Crooker

 

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry.  And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings.  Look at the trees.  They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer.  And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May.  The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise.  Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again. 

 

====

Crooker, Barbara. "Sometimes, I Am Startled Outside of Myself." Radiance. Word Press, 2005.

 

You can read more about the poet here. 

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unraveled Wednesday: 11/19/25

I always look forward to Wednesdays, but after reading Kat's incredibly sad news yesterday, things are different. I'm still going to write about Justin's bigfoot socks and some books I read, but mainly I'm thinking about Kat, her son and daughter-in-law and wishing I had something more to offer than thoughts and prayers. But that's all I can do, so I will be thinking about the whole family, every day for a long time.

So I tried the darning egg to graft the toes on the socks, but I don't think it's the tool for me (for that job anyway). Maybe because it's new, I felt clumsy using it. I did one sock with the egg and the other one without it, and I think the one I did without looks slightly better. I will try to actually darn some threadbare sock heels with it at some point, but since I usually decrease my socks down to 12 stitches at the toe, grafting isn't really that big of a deal. I just need to put my head down and get on with it. 

 

  

So here are Justin's sock in all of their bigfooted glory.

 

I'll be starting on his slippers soon, but first I'm going to toss the stash and look for some Hitchhiker yarn. I hope I remember how to knit one! :-) 

I had another good reading week and finished two books. The Heart-Shaped Tin is a warm, contemplative blend of memoir and cultural history, and Bee Wilson shows her gift for uncovering the emotional lives of everyday objects and the people attached to them. The book begins with a quietly devastating moment: several months after Wilson’s husband abruptly walked away from their marriage, she stumbled upon the heart-shaped tin she had used to bake their wedding cake twenty-three years earlier. That discovery becomes the emotional spark for a book that manages to balance a scholar’s curiosity with a memoirist’s vulnerability, offering a reading experience that is both intellectual and profoundly heartfelt.

The author moves gracefully between her own post-marriage reflections and the stories of others whose wooden spoons, saltshakers, toast racks, and tongs become touchstones for grief, comfort, creativity, and connection. Some of the most memorable sections are the deep dives into objects with long histories: the 5,000-year-old Ecuadorian chocolate vessel, the stoneware inscribed with defiant poems by an enslaved potter, the ceremonial tools, the heirlooms passed down through families. These moments broaden the book’s scope beyond personal storytelling and remind the reader just how universal these attachments are.

This was four stars for me, but what kept this from being a five-star read for me is also part of its charm: the book meanders. While Wilson’s writing is consistently sharp and lovely, the structure can feel a bit diffuse, and some chapters linger longer than they need to. Still, the overall effect is soothing, curious, and unexpectedly moving.

If you enjoy reflective nonfiction, especially books that blend history, anthropology, and personal narrative, The Heart-Shaped Tin is a rewarding, empathetic read. The author has written a wide-ranging exploration of how kitchen tools hold memory, identity, and sometimes even a kind of quiet magic. It’s a reminder that the mundane objects we reach for every day often hold our most intimate stories.

Before I Forget is that rare novel that manages to be both warmly funny and quietly devastating, often in the same paragraph. Tory Henwood Hoen follows Cricket Campbell, stuck in neutral, grieving an old tragedy, and now reeling from her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, as she abandons her running-away city life and returns to the family’s Adirondack lake house to care for her father Arthur. What unfolds is a late coming-of-age story that feels sharply contemporary yet deeply timeless.

Hoen writes beautifully about the disorientation of early adulthood, the slippery nature of memory, and the uneasy push-pull of family history. Cricket’s narration is wry and self-aware, but it’s her vulnerability that makes the novel so affecting. As she settles back into life at Catwood Pond, she has to confront the versions of herself she’s been avoiding and the ways grief quietly calcifies into habit.

Arthur, meanwhile, is a revelation. His Alzheimer’s is rendered with compassion and nuance, and the novel’s magical-realist twist, his growing ability to predict the future, is handled with surprising tenderness. Rather than feeling gimmicky, it becomes a thoughtful metaphor: as his past recedes, the future sharpens, and father and daughter meet each other in a liminal, often luminous space.

I loved how Hoen ties the emotional arc to place. The Adirondacks are drawn with crisp, lived-in detail, and the lake house and Catwood Pond become a site of both rupture and repair. Cricket’s slow reclaiming of memory, her own and her father’s, feels earned, moving, and often unexpectedly hopeful.

A funny, heartfelt, and insightfully crafted novel about what it takes to move forward when the past refuses to stay put. Four and a half stars rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on December 2, 2025. This was a good one, but thankfully, you won't have a long wait before publication day. There is also a Goodreads giveaway if you are interested. 

What are you making and reading this week? 

  

Sometimes Monday ...

 ... is a day for letting go. 

Ryan enjoys cooking and has been pestering politely asking me for several years if I thought maybe we could have Thanksgiving at his house. I've always said that it's my favorite holiday because it's just about good food and good company, with no extra pressure for gifts. I really do love Thanksgiving leftovers, even more than the meal itself, so I've always said, "That's okay, we'll just have Thanksgiving here."

But this is the year I've finally let it go. After a lively group text with Justin and Ryan, we decided that dinner will be at Ryan's. I will still be making a couple of pies, apple crisp, and crescent rolls, and Jess is bringing macaroni & cheese and Brussels sprouts. (Those are two different dishes!) Ryan is doing everything else, and I'm happy about it. I may have to bring home a piece of pie so I can have my traditional day-after-Thanksgiving pumpkin pie with too much whipped cream for breakfast, but I think Ryan will be okay with that. 

Sometimes it's good to let go and do something a bit different.

 

Thoughts on Some Books

I had a pretty good week in reading, and I'd like to tell you about the books I read. 

Some Bright Nowhere is a beautifully written, emotionally resonant novel about love, loss, and the quiet complexities of a long marriage. Ann Packer returns after more than a decade with a story that feels both intimate and universal, a portrait of two people facing the inevitable, and the way one shocking request reframes everything they thought they knew about each other.

Packer’s writing is as graceful and precise as ever. She captures the rhythms of a decades-long relationship with real honesty, including the small kindnesses, the familiar irritations, the enduring affection that deepens even as the body and spirit begin to fade. Eliot’s voice, in particular, is rendered with empathy and depth. His reflections on caregiving, love, and identity feel heartbreakingly true to life.

The novel’s pace is quiet, even meditative, which suits the subject matter but may feel slow to some readers. And while Claire’s “startling request” drives much of the emotional tension, it’s handled with restraint rather than melodrama and might be more an exploration of what love demands of us than a shocking twist. I really disliked Claire and her coven of friends and didn't understand what she wanted in her final days. Maybe I didn't understand her reasoning because I've been lucky enough not to be facing the end of my life, but I mainly felt sorry for her poor husband Eliot.

Ultimately, Some Bright Nowhere is a tender, thoughtful look at what it means to honor another person’s autonomy and to keep loving when love becomes hardest. Fans of Packer’s earlier work, like The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, will recognize her gift for emotional clarity and moral complexity. A moving, quietly powerful return from a writer who understands the human heart. Three and a half stars rounded up.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper for providing me with a copy of this book. It was published on November 11, 2025, and there is a Goodreads giveaway for it if you are interested. 

Julian Borger’s I Seek a Kind Person is a deeply moving and meticulously researched family memoir that bridges the personal and historical with impressive grace. What begins as a journalist’s investigation into a long-buried family secret becomes a powerful meditation on survival, silence, and the human capacity for both cruelty and compassion.

When Borger discovers the small newspaper ad that saved his father’s life in 1938 Vienna, he opens a door to a world of lost stories of children sent into exile by desperate parents, families torn apart, and the quiet heroism of strangers who answered those heartbreaking pleas. The author’s background as a journalist serves him well here; his research is exhaustive, and his attention to historical detail exacting. Yet what keeps the book from feeling overly documentary is its emotional core and the empathy Borger extends to both the remembered and the forgotten.

The book moves across continents and generations, weaving together accounts from Vienna, Britain, Shanghai, and beyond. At times, the sheer number of stories and names can feel overwhelming, but that may be true to the chaos of the time and a reflection of the fragmented lives left in the Holocaust’s wake. The passages about Borger’s father, Robert, and his lifelong silence are especially affecting, offering a sensitive portrait of inherited trauma and the difficulty of knowing those who survived by not speaking. 

While occasionally dense and perhaps a bit too detailed in its later chapters, I Seek a Kind Person remains a remarkable act of remembrance, both personal and collective. It’s a testament to the power of archival research, but more importantly, to the persistence of kindness in a world that so often forgets it. This was four stars for me.

Brightly Shining by Ingvild H. Rishøi is exactly the kind of book I’ve been craving: a story filled with gentler, kinder characters even as it faces hard truths head-on.

Christmas is approaching, Ronja’s father is once again out of work, and the family’s stability feels as fragile as ever. When Ronja manages to get him a job selling Christmas trees, it looks like fortune might finally shift, until the pull of the local pub proves stronger than his responsibilities. With social services close to intervening, Ronja and her sister step in, determined to keep their small family intact by selling the trees themselves.

What could easily have been a bleak or overly saccharine story instead becomes something quietly luminous. Rishøi writes with such warmth, tenderness, and deep understanding of the ways children create hope out of even the most precarious situations. Ronja and her sister aren’t idealized; they’re simply good, loyal kids trying their best in a world that hasn’t given them much. And again and again, kindness shows up, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes in small gestures that feel nothing less than life-saving.

Caroline Waight’s translation deserves special appreciation. Her rendering of Rishøi’s prose is clean and vivid, capturing both the humor and the heartbreak without tipping into sentimentality. The emotional truth of the story shines through in every scene.

Brightly Shining is a novella that carries surprising depth. It’s about addiction and responsibility, certainly, but even more about love, resilience, and the quiet generosity of strangers. For anyone seeking stories where goodness still has a place in the world, this four star book is a bright, moving gift.

Having just finished The Book of Guilt, I’m left with a strong sense of admiration for Catherine Chidgey. This book is ambitious, deftly written, and morally provocative. The author imagines an alternate Britain in 1979, with an unnerving under-current of institutional control and moral ambiguity. I found the world-building compelling; the three teenaged triplet boys in the Sycamore Homes, the daily routines of “The Book of Dreams”, “The Book of Knowledge” and “The Book of Guilt” work as powerful metaphors for surveillance, control and internalised shame.

Vincent’s voice (one of the triplets) is believable and his gradual awakening to the reality around him is quietly haunting. The way Chidgey layers the children’s trust in their "Mothers" with the creeping sense of something deeply wrong was, for me, the strongest part of the novel. Beyond that, the themes of dehumanization, complicity, science-ethical reckoning and what it means to be “other” in society feel both timely and deeply human. The prose, while at times understated, often glowed with small moments of vivid imagery: e.g., the description of the gazing ball “shimmering in the ferns like a great eye” was one of my favorite touches.

While Vincent’s sections were the most gripping, some of the other narrative threads (for example the Minister of Loneliness subplot) felt less emotionally grounded in comparison. The shift in perspective is clever, but I found that I was more invested in the boys’ story than the parallel ones. As a result, the latter parts of the novel, while thematically rich, didn’t quite land with the full force I was expecting.

If you enjoy literary-dystopian fiction with strong moral underpinnings, this four star book is one you’ll want to read. It has shocks, slowly-gathering dread, and characters you care about, and it leaves you with lingering questions about power, difference, and guilt. Both Remote Sympathy (the only other book I have read by Chidgey) and The Book of Guilt showcase her remarkable ability to explore moral complicity and the quiet, human face of institutional cruelty, but they do so in very different settings. Remote Sympathy is historical, set in and around a Nazi concentration camp, where Chidgey examines denial, guilt, and the uneasy intimacy between perpetrators and victims. The Book of Guilt moves into a near-future dystopia, an invented Britain where social control and moral judgment are systematized through eerie institutions. Together, they form a compelling diptych: one rooted in the atrocities of the past, the other in the moral dangers of the present and future.

I hope your weekend ahead includes some good reading!

Unraveled Wednesday: 11/12/25

I’m happily joining Kat and the Unravelers today, with progress on Justin's boot socks. 

I'm finished with one sock (except for grafting the toe) and well on the way down the leg of the second sock. 

 

And thanks to Araignee's recommendation, I now have a darning egg so grafting the toes will hopefully be faster and neater. This might even be incentive to get the second sock done faster so I can see how well it works.

 

 

I will welcome grafting if this slightly trepidatious task can be done faster and more neatly, and who knows? I might even darn a few socks that have needed it for a year or more. 

 

I read four books this week, so I'll be back on Friday with my thoughts on them.  

What are you making and reading this week? 

 

Read With Us: The Antidote

Hello, Read With Us friends! If you're looking for a rich, surprising novel to spark deep conversation, psychological exploration, and food for the mind and soul, let me tell you a little bit about The Antidote by Karen Russell. Below are five compelling reasons why I think this book is a wonderful choice for our next read. 

Why I think this one deserves your time:

1. A haunting setting that blends history and magic.
The novel opens in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s in a small Nebraskan town called Uz, already in collapse from drought, economic hardship, and historical erasure, and then a wild dust storm (on “Black Sunday”) lays bare the artificiality of the settlement, the cost of forgetting, and the fragility of memory. Russell layers in magical-realism (a “prairie witch” who stores memories, a time-travelling camera, a sentient scarecrow) to explore real themes of land-abuse, Indigenous erasure, and environmental collapse. For our book club, this means there’s both vivid story and rich metaphor: you’ll be reading a story of characters, while also talking about what the Dust Bowl means, what memory means, what our own era echoes.

2. Multi-layered characters whose stories interweave.
There’s Antonina (the “Prairie Witch” nicknamed the Antidote) who deposits other people’s memories; Harp Oletsky, the Polish-American farmer whose land miraculously thrives amid the drought; his niece Dell, a basketball-loving girl apprenticing under the witch; a Black photographer working for the New Deal whose camera shows more than meets the eye.  Because the novel moves among many viewpoints, we'll have plenty to talk about: whose story moved you most? Which viewpoint you found strongest or most compelling — and why.

Also interesting: the characters live with trauma, inheritance, place, and memory. After we read about someone leaving an abusive marriage in Nesting, you may especially appreciate how Russell handles trauma, memory, the “vaulting” of what we don’t want to remember.

3. Prose with ambition: beauty, strangeness, risk.
Russell is known for her inventive fiction (think Swamplandia!) and here she takes a big swing: the reviews talk about the “spell-binding” quality of her writing and how she uses metaphor and magical realism to make us think differently about American history. We are asking a bit more from you this time. For our book club, I think that’s a gift: you’ll find passages to re-read, lines to linger over, metaphors to unpack. I'm imagining that I might highlight how Russell describes dust, memory, wind, land, even basketball.

4. A narrative that connects to our time.
Though set in the 1930s, the book engages with themes still urgent today: climate collapse, settler amnesia, how we treat land, how we remember (and erase) history. For our Read With Us conversation, this means we won’t just ask “What happened?” but “What does this say about us now?” and “How does memory (personal, cultural, collective) tie into our lives today?”

5. Ideal for book-clubs because it offers both beauty and tension.
There’s tension: environmental disaster, murder, secrets, memory theft, going to the edges of what characters can hold. There’s beauty: language, character, strangeness, wonder. I think that mix can only add to our discussion. 

In an interview with BookPage, Karen Russell said she wanted to write a story where an apocalyptic future for us isn’t a foregone conclusion. “You can’t imagine a viable future, a world that’s kinder and more just than what we’ve got going today, without returning to the past,” Russell says. This sounds like a book for me. I've just started it and I'm finding it's not a book I can rush through, but it is a delicious read.

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout November. Discussion day for The Antidote is scheduled for Tuesday, January 6, 2026 at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always fun, educational, and entertaining Zoom discussion.

Whether you're new to Karen Russell or already a fan, we hope you'll Read With Us and discover (or revisit since I know some of you have already read it) this amazingly creative novel. I think it's ambitious but readable, magical but grounded, beautiful but thought-provoking. It offers spectacle and depth, characters you’ll care about (and question), metaphors you’ll carry after the last page, in preparation for a discussion you'll be glad you had. I'm already looking forward to it and I hope you'll Read With Us!

 

Bits and Pieces

I have a few things that aren't really enough for a post on their own, so it must be time for a Bits and Pieces post. 

Making - Venison stew, split pea soup, homemade dinner rolls, and zucchini bread. Now is the time to start using all of the things we froze over the summer. 

Finding Some Happiness and Hope - In all of the positive election results. I don't think I've felt this happy after reading the news in a long, long time. From our governor-elect Mikie Sherrill in NJ to the VA governor to all three Supreme Court judges in PA being retained, and a new Sheriff in Bucks County PA that will not be cooperating with ICE’s 287(g) program, it was a day of good news. Not just in the results, but there also seemed to be a much bigger voter turnout. Voter engagement is always a good thing!

House Price Gone Wild? -  The Zillow post above caused a bit of a stir on our street. The price was actually $460,000 but someone went a little crazy with zeros. I would sell our house if we could get anywhere near that, but alas, it was an error and has been corrected. 

Watching - The final of Great British Bake Off. I think I know who is going to win (Jasmine) as the other two contestants in the final have had some big baking mishaps. We'll see ...

Also Watching - The Daily Show where Jon Stewart talks to Joe Manchin. I used to think he was a bit of a "troublemaker" when he was in the Senate, but after listening to him, I see that I didn't really know much about him at all. It's a shame that he's no longer in politics and I don't think there are any centrists like him left.

 

The Coolest Thing - Showed up at our house with the tree guys. We were having two big oaks pruned and the tree guys brought The Spider. It's a really cool piece of equipment that they brought on a trailer and then drove it across the yard to the trees by radio control. It was so interesting that I had to go out and talk to the guy about it. He said there was a steep learning curve but it was part of why he had fun at work. 

 

 

Thinking About - maybe knitting a Hitchhiker. I have plenty in my knitting queue (Justin's socks and a pair of slippers for him, maybe some socks for John, a hat for Justin and one for me) but I think there are several skeins in my stash that would work. I miss the meditative quality of Hitchhiker knitting and I think I might need that; good election news can only go so far. 

 

 

Potholders -  I was looking through my files of potholder patterns and remembered that this was one I always meant to make. As soon as Justin's socks are done (which isn't going to happen if I keep dreaming of future projects) I think I'll get my loops out and give this one a try. 

 

We're supposed to have a warm Saturday followed by a rainy Sunday. That sounds perfect for reading a good book (The Heart-Shaped Tin for me). I hope you've got something good planned for this weekend!

 

Unraveled Wednesday: 11/5/25

I’m happily joining Kat and the Unravelers today, with a completed and modeled Rainbow Scarf for Ryan and 75% of the first boot sock for Justin.

There is still a needle in the scarf because I wanted to make sure the length was okay before I bound off. Ryan has deemed the length perfect so I will bind off this week and put the scarf in my Christmas pile o' gifts. I do kind of miss working on it and I have plenty of yarn left, so I might make a scarf for myself some day.

 

But first there are socks to finish for Justin and then slippers to knit for him. I'm about halfway through the foot on the first sock. It looks slightly odd now, but it is meant to be a tall boot sock and once I finish the foot (almost 12" long) it might look a little more normal, or at least like a normal sock for Bigfoot. I'm going to finish this pair of socks before I start the slippers. This yarn is really rustic wool and it's hard on my hands. I'm afraid if I don't make myself finish the socks first I might never get to the second sock. I have some lovely soft Malabrigo for the slippers and it is going to be a real pleasure to knit. 

 

I only read one book this week and it was a 48-page picture book! I stumbled upon Knight Owl, this charming picture book, loved the homophone word play of the title, and just had to check it out. The illustrations and the story are equally cute and delightful, so do yourself a favor and read it to a young child. (You could also read it yourself like I did, and I'm far from young!)

What are you making and reading this week? 

 

Sometimes Monday ...

... you are lucky enough to have a couple of early Christmas cactus blossoms, 

along with a bunch of buds waiting to burst forth with more color. 

I hope your week is off to a beautiful start! 

Some Books I Read This Week

I read four books this week so I'll share my thoughts here with you. The two average ones are up first. 

Kat read this book and it sounded interesting. It was, but it was also just three stars for me. A Biography of a Mountain by Matthew Davis is an ambitious, researched look at the complicated story of Mount Rushmore, its creation, meaning, and legacy. Davis traces the land’s origins as sacred ground for Native tribes, the expansion of the American West, and the monumental (and controversial) work of sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The book also connects the site’s history to modern movements like Land Back and ongoing debates about how America memorializes its past.

While I think Mr. Davis tried to be somewhat evenhanded in presenting both the United States National Park perspective and that of Native Americans, but for me he was not completely successful. I came away with too many personal stories, too much history told in a rather dull, textbook-like way, and not enough from the Native American side of the story. For a book that sets out to center those voices, their presence often felt secondary.

Still, I appreciated Davis’s effort to grapple with such a difficult subject and his willingness to confront the political and moral complexities of the monument. A Biography of a Mountain is a thoughtful, if uneven, read that may appeal most to history buffs and those curious about how a single mountain can embody so many layers of the American story.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on November 11, 2025. 

I’ve read John Grisham since his early days, when his legal thrillers were taut, fast-paced, and nearly impossible to put down. Unfortunately, The Widow didn’t have that same energy for me. The setup, a small-town lawyer whose new client turns out to be more than she appears, had some promise, but the story moved at a sluggish pace and often meandered through subplots that didn’t add much tension or urgency.

Simon Latch is an interesting enough protagonist, and the premise of being wrongly accused should have made for a sharp, suspenseful read. Instead, the narrative felt underwhelming, more reflective and procedural than thrilling. Grisham’s writing is still smooth and readable, but the spark that once made his courtroom dramas so gripping just wasn’t here. 

All in all, The Widow was an average read, but not the kind of tightly wound legal thriller I used to read Grisham for. This one was also a three star read. 

Written in Bone is a fascinating, sometimes unsettling exploration of what our skeletons can reveal about our lives and our deaths. Forensic anthropologist Sue Black draws on her long career working with the dead to explain, bone by bone, how each part of the human body tells a story. From the skull to the toes, she shows how age, trauma, disease, and even personality can leave physical traces behind.

What I appreciated most was Black’s deep respect for the human body and humans themselves. Her passion for her work shines through every chapter, and her quiet sense of humor often balances the darker material. The book is strongest when she combines case studies with personal reflections; those sections feel human and heartfelt rather than purely clinical. Sometimes the case studies are difficult to read, like the identification of fire victims and what can happen to bone in a fire, but it's still interesting and worth reading.

That said, this book isn’t always an easy read. The tone can shift abruptly from deeply moving to very technical, and some sections bog down in dense anatomical detail. Readers looking for a true-crime style narrative may be disappointed as this is more a textbook-with-heart than a thriller.

Overall, Written in Bone is intelligent, compassionate, and informative, though sometimes uneven in pacing and tone. I learned a great deal about both the science of bones and the humanity behind them. Three and a half stars, rounded up. 

 

 

Life: A Love Story by Elizabeth Berg is a beautiful, deeply human novel that glows with warmth and quiet wisdom. It’s the kind of book that makes you pause, smile, and feel grateful for ordinary moments, like the smell of coffee, a favorite comfortable chair, the light through a window. Berg has always written with a sensitivity to everyday life, and here she captures it perfectly through the voice of Florence “Flo” Greene, a woman looking back with honesty and ahead with grace.

Flo decides to leave behind not only her house but also a written legacy for Ruthie, the neighbor girl who grew up next door and remains like a daughter to her. What unfolds is part memoir, part letter, and part gentle nudge to keep living fully, no matter one’s age. Through her reflections and even her meddling in the lives of friends and neighbors, Flo becomes a vibrant force for connection, reminding us that love, in all its forms, is both fragile and enduring.

What I especially appreciated is that this is a profoundly positive and hopeful novel, but never saccharine. Berg’s prose is luminous yet grounded; she never glosses over loss or regret, but instead lets them coexist with humor, affection, and renewal. There’s real emotional honesty in the way Flo reveals her long-buried secret about her marriage, and in how she reaches out to others even as she’s preparing to say goodbye.

Reading this felt like sitting down with an old friend who tells the truth but still leaves you feeling lighter and more open to the world. I think Berg must have a compassionate spirit and it certainly comes through in her writing.

Thank to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on March 17, 2026. (I'm sorry that you have to wait five long months for the publication of this novel!)

I hope you've got something good to read this weekend!