Unraveled Wednesday: 1/21/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today, with a miniscule start to a second mitten and more of the Hitchhiker. It's been quite cold here, and temperatures in the single digits finally prompted me to start the second mitten. 

I'm just working on the ribbing but it's supposed to be cold for two weeks so there will be time to finish the pair. I'm debating knitting some fingerless mitts using the same pattern but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

 

 

I've been working on the Hitchhiker but it looks pretty much the same as last week. For some variety, this week I took my photo while I was watching The Pitt instead of All Creatures Great and Small.  

I did read two books this week. The first was The Mindful Art of Space Making. This is a refreshingly practical book about decluttering and making space, both physically and emotionally, without the usual self-help fluff. April Scott Tandy offers a gentle, compassionate approach that feels realistic rather than aspirational, and that’s what ultimately makes it effective. This isn’t about dramatic purges or aesthetic perfection; it’s about creating the conditions for true, lasting change.

What I appreciated most is how grounded the method is. The guidance is calm, thoughtful, and respectful of the fact that many of us are deeply attached to our belongings for emotional reasons. Tandy doesn’t shame that attachment; she helps you understand it and work with it. Her advice on developing your own “compass question” was helpful for me. It's a simple but powerful tool to guide decisions when you’re stuck or overwhelmed. Likewise, her discussion of how to notice and navigate difficult emotions instead of trying to bypass them made this feel like real guidance, not just tidying advice.

With April’s help, I genuinely feel like I may finally be able to deal with the photos and objects I don’t truly want but have been holding onto out of emotional obligation. That alone makes this book worth reading. It’s also a great companion to her YouTube channel; the two together reinforce the ideas in a way that feels supportive rather than repetitive.

Four stars because change still requires honest effort on the reader’s part, but this book gives you a better chance at making that change stick. Now, if I could just convince my husband to adopt these ideas, too.

The second book was an ARC; The Keeper is the final book in Tana French’s Cal Hooper trilogy, following The Searcher and The Hunter. I read the first book, somehow missed the second, and still found myself able to follow the characters and story quite well. French does a careful job of providing enough context that nothing felt confusing or incomplete.

That said, these books are likely to be even more rewarding if read in order. While The Keeper could function as a stand-alone novel, the emotional depth, character relationships, and long-simmering tensions clearly benefit from the background laid in the earlier books. Knowing the history of this small Irish community and its central figures adds layers to what unfolds here.

The characters themselves are deeply human, interesting, flawed, and multidimensional, and Ardnakelty, where the story takes place, is almost a character in its own right. The town’s residents share an unspoken understanding of how things are said and done, what questions can be asked, and which ones are best left alone. Part of my enjoyment of this novel came from trying to think like a resident of Ardnakelty, viewing events through that quiet, communal logic rather than from an outsider’s perspective.

As always with Tana French, the real strength lies not just in the mystery but in the atmosphere and the people who inhabit it. The pacing is deliberate, the setting richly drawn, and the moral questions feel grounded and human rather than flashy or contrived. This is less about plot twists and more about consequences, what people carry, what they hide, and what eventually surfaces.

A strong and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, one that reinforces why French remains such a compelling writer of place, character, and quiet menace. Four and a half stars rounded up.

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Viking for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on March 31, 2026. 

What are you making and reading this week?

It's A New Book!

We're thrilled to announce the Read With Us winter selection: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. First published in 2004, it has won multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and many others. 

Some novels don’t just tell a story, they also create a space for reflection. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is one of those rare books that is quiet on the surface, yet vast in what it asks of us as readers.

Told as a letter from Reverend John Ames to his young son, Gilead unfolds in a small Iowa town in the 1950s. Ames knows he will not live to see his son grow up, and so he writes with tenderness and humility about faith, doubt, forgiveness, race, history, and the everyday beauty of a life lived attentively. What emerges is not a conventional plot-driven novel, but a deeply human meditation on what it means to love the world, despite its brokenness. I could certainly use this and that may be true for many others as well. 

This is a book that rewards slow reading. Robinson’s prose is luminous without being showy, grounded in ordinary moments that open into something larger such as a shared meal or a difficult conversation left unfinished. Readers may find themselves pausing, not because the book is difficult, but because it is quietly profound.

I think Gilead will offer us opportunities for a rich and layered discussion. Gilead is also a novel that invites many kinds of readers in. You do not need to share its religious framework to be moved by its questions or its compassion. At its heart, this is a book about attention, moral responsibility, and the grace found in ordinary lives.

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout February. Discussion day for Gilead is scheduled for Tuesday, March 17, 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 educational and illuminating Zoom discussion.  

Whether you've read it before or this book is new to you, we hope you'll Read With Us and discover this quietly reflective novel.  

 

A Gathering of Poetry: January 2026

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

HUBBLE’S TOP 100 • #3 • Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage 

A friend is having knee replacement surgery at the end of this month and I just met up with her for lunch. I loaned her my copies of Winter Morning Walks and Braided Creek as I thought they might make good post-surgery reading, but I had to look through them first. These poems come from Braided Creek, a collection of poems sent back and forth between Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison that began when Kooser was hospitalized. Both poets continued their exchange for ages, making it clear that if the conversation were ever to be published, which it was, any notion of individual authorship should remain a mystery. The book, then, is written by two poets, both at once. Every word is a word written by two hands. 

Reading poetry late at night
to try to come back to life.
Almost but not quite.

The hay in the loft
misses the night sky,
so the old roof
leaks a few stars.

Rain clouds gone,
and muddy paw prints
on the moon.

I've never learned from experience.
What else is there? you ask.
How about ninety billion galaxies.

What is it the wind has lost
that she keeps looking for
under each leaf?

You told me you couldn't see
a better day coming,
so I gave you my eyes.

At the end, just a pinch of the world

is all we have to hold onto,

the hem of a sheet.  

==== 

Harrison, Jim, and Ted Kooser. Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry. Copper Canyon Press, 2023.

 

You can read more about Jim Harrison here. 

 

You can read more about Ted Kooser here.

 

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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! 

 

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Unraveled Wednesday: 1/14/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today, with just a bit of Hitchhiker knitting and a really bad book. 

I'm not sure why I didn't get more knitting done this week. Maybe I was exhausted from wedding dress shopping. (No dress has been chosen yet, but we're going again on Saturday. Oh, goody.) Maybe it was feeling horrified, unsettled, and ungrounded after all the brutal happenings last week. It could be because John decided to change his hotel reservations for Florida next week and ran into some roadblocks that he needed my help with. I bet it was all the time I spent on the phone with the credit card company because we had heating oil delivered and were charged twice for it. Whatever the reasons, I didn't knit as much as I would have liked, but I hope to get much more done during the rest of the week. Especially now that I can watch the next season of All Creatures Great & Small and The Pitt while I knit. 

I did read one of the worst books ever, but I had a reason. I didn't want to be like the book banners that denounce and castigate books without ever reading them, so when I found The Housemaid on hoopla, I decided to give it a try. I wanted to read The Housemaid to better understand why it was so popular. I kept reading largely out of disbelief. I genuinely wasn’t sure if this was meant to be satire, a send-up of domestic thrillers, or if Freida McFadden truly intended the story to be taken at face value. Unfortunately, by the end, it was clear this was meant to be serious.

The plot is utterly ludicrous, stacking one implausible twist on top of another until it collapses under its own weight. Characters are little more than cardboard cutouts, defined by a single trait and never developed beyond what the plot mechanically requires of them. Motivations shift without explanation, and actions feel dictated by shock value rather than logic or psychology.

The writing itself is extremely simplistic, bordering on careless, with little nuance or texture. Any tension is undercut by how obvious and contrived the story becomes. And then there’s the ending, which makes absolutely no sense, even by the book’s already generous suspension-of-disbelief standards.

Thrillers are not usually my genre of choice, but I can appreciate a fast-paced one that makes sense. This one left me more baffled than entertained. I have a certain amount of respect for almost any published author. Freida McFadden has written 30 books, so she clearly knows something. While I still don't understand why this book is so popular, at least I now know this type of book is not for me. This was just one tiny, tarnished star from me. 

What are you making and reading this week?

Hold On!

A friend and I were recently discussing author Frieda McFadden and she asked me what I thought of her books. I told her that I had never read any of McFadden's books so I really had no idea what they were like. They are certainly popular and I found out just how popular when I tried to place holds on a couple of Frieda McFadden books.

I'm used to seeing long hold times in Libby. Oftentimes, they are ~ a month or so, but for popular books they can be much longer, as you can see above. Dear Debbie isn't even published January 27, so I'm sure that hold time will get much longer after the publication date. 

One of my libraries uses Cloud Library instead of Libby and this hold just made me laugh. 

I didn't actually place a hold on this on this one. There are some books I'm curious about, but not curious enough to actually buy the book or wait 13 years. Thrillers aren't my genre of choice, but they certainly are popular with other readers. 

 

Here's hoping your library books are available and if not, that your hold times are short!  

 

 

 

 

Bits and Pieces: January 2026

I've got a few topics that I could post about but none of them are really enough for a whole post of their own. It's clearly time for a Bits and Pieces post. 

• The photo above shows the Milford Bridge, where I usually cross the Delaware River when traveling to Pennsylvania. There was a light dusting of snow, along with the early stages of ice forming on the river. Around here, people call it “scab ice” (yuck!), though the proper term is anchor ice. Anchor ice typically forms in flowing water when supercooled, loosely packed bits of ice collide and stick together, eventually attaching to the riverbed. Over time, this creates a bottom layer of ice that may later break free and float to the surface. There’s much more to say about how ice forms in rivers, but that's probably quite enough for now.

• I get to go look for wedding dresses tomorrow! I haven't mentioned it here yet, but Jess and Justin got engaged this past fall. Their wedding is scheduled for October 24th and I think much of the planning (for the big stuff, anyway) is done. Justin had one request, that they not get married in a hotel, resort, or "fancy" wedding venue. They've chosen a place in the Poconos that is rustic and everything can be outside if the weather permits. Jess is looking at dresses on Saturday, and I'm kind of excited to go along. Her mother lives in Ohio so she won't be there, but Jess has also invited her maid of honor, one of the vets she works with, and John's youngest sister. I may end up just holding the phone in case Jess facetimes with her mom, but I think it will be a fun experience. The bridal salon website says to plan on two and a half hours and their dresses start at $3500. I chose my dress in 20 minutes after work and paid $200 in 1981, but things have certainly changed since then!  

• Thank goodness John is traveling to Florida later this month. He used to travel quite a bit when he was working and I got used to it. It's been an adjustment since he retired and my alone time is much harder to come by. He has a good friend (David) that lives in Orlando and is quite ill with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and hypertension. David just got a pacemaker and is on the list for a heart transplant, so John thought it would be a good idea to visit him. John does not do very well in cold weather (he tends to nap too much) and when his sister offered to go with him (she has friends there and they will go to Disney World), he agreed. I have four days to myself, no dinners to prepare, and I only have to take John and his sister to Trenton airport. That's much easier than driving to Newark, so I'm really looking forward to my mini-vacation. 

• I've been looking for small things that make me happy, and one of them is feeding the birds. Justin got me a small feeder that I have attached to the kitchen window and I love seeing the finches (and occasionally a cardinal or two) come to the feeder when I'm sitting at the kitchen table. I've started feeding them sunflower kernels which they seem to like best. A five pound bag lasts about five months and that is a small price to pay for multiple daily finch visits that always bring me joy.

• Another thing that has made me happy is spinach dip. I made some as an appetizer for Christmas lunch and we've gotten a bit addicted to it. I've made three batches of it since Christmas, but it may be time to stop. I can rationalize and say there is lots of spinach in it, but it's also got plenty of fat from cream cheese, sour cream, and mayonnaise. We ate some of it with French bread or crackers, but this last batch is being enjoyed with carrots and celery sticks. More vegetables!

That's it for my bits and pieces. Feel free to let me know any interesting things going on in your world, especially if they are making you happy and maybe even healthy. I'd love to replace my spinach dip obsession with something that's a bit better for me. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! 

 

 

Unraveled Wednesday: 1/7/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today, with some (hopefully) better mittens in progress and continued Hitchhiker knitting. 

I haven't knit the thumb yet, but the Comfy Gusset Mittens are a much better fit for my hand. Jane sent me a link to a great youtube video about knitting perfect thumb gussets that I think will be helpful in knitting the thumbs without gaps. 

The gray Hitchhiker is growing slowly but surely. I'm a bit tired of mittens but i should probably finish the pair and actually knit the thumbs before I quit. But I am glad to have this Hitchhiker on the needles as it's what I've wanted to work on recently.

I caught up on some ARCs over the holidays but I'll save my thoughts on those for closer to the publication dates, especially because they aren't published for three months or more. I did read The Rest of Our Lives and found it a bit underwhelming. It begins with a genuinely intriguing premise; a man who has quietly promised himself that because of her affair, he will leave his wife once their children are grown has finally reached that moment. Instead of turning back home after dropping his daughter off at university, he keeps driving west. The first chapter is strong: reflective, restrained, and full of promise about what this reckoning might mean.

Unfortunately, for me, the novel doesn’t live up to that early potential. While the setup suggests an emotionally charged exploration of marriage, betrayal, regret, and self-deception, the story quickly loses focus. As the road trip progresses, the book devolves into something more random, a series of loosely connected visits, memories, and observations that never quite cohere into a satisfying whole. The narrative begins to feel like a string of digressions rather than a journey with momentum or purpose.

There are moments of insight along the way, and Markovits is clearly interested in the quiet textures of middle age: the ways we rationalize our choices, the things we avoid naming, and the lives we might have lived. But those ideas are often buried under rambling reflections and disconnected bits and pieces, which left me feeling impatient rather than contemplative.

This is a novel with an interesting premise and real promise at the start, but one that goes quickly downhill after that. I can see it working better for readers who enjoy meandering, introspective road trip novels, but I finished it wishing it had stayed closer to the emotional clarity of its opening pages. Two and a half stars rounded up.

What are you making and reading this week?