Yep, shortest day, longest night is today and it's very cold here. You would have thought that I would have extra time to knit and to read, but I'm busy, busy, busy with lots of fun stuff. The middle of winter is an odd time to pick up running again, but that seems to have happened, and we seem to be going to a show every week (last week it was Mart Poppins, the week before was &Juliet.) It's an excellent time.
I'm knitting Scotch Mist by Thea Coleman. I've just joined the front and back hems, and I feel like there might be a mistake in my set-up row. Which serves me right, I said i wasn't going to try to set this up at the pub, and then I did anyway. I'm really looking forward to getting home and working out what - if anything - I did wrong. It looks small on the needles now, but it looked huge before. All will become clear once I have knit on a little further.
I'm reading Our Magic Hour by Jennifer Down. It's a book about a 24 year old with a history of being abused whose best friend kills herself. It's beautifully written, but a little bit tragedy porn. It's a very Melbourne book - they are always driving from St Kilda (where I live) up Punt Road to the north. The title references this piece of public art, which I see regularly and which always makes me smile.
I'm still listening to Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok. It's beginning to drag a little for me. Aside from the mispronunciations, the main character, who is allegedly an observant orthodox Jew states that she can't be alone with or touch a man, but she is constantly alone with and touching men. More concerning is the pregnant 14 year old. No-one seems too concerned about how she got pregnant. There is a real problem with sexual abuse in religious communities, because the children are not educated about sex, and so it makes them easier to exploit. Also, a 14 year old cannot give consent. So the whole (barely developed) pregnancy plot-line is just a way of providing an available baby, which is icky. It's frustrating, because I was looking forward to some Jewish rep, but maybe the romance space is not the best place for this. Or maybe I'm just not in a place to suspend my serious, critical faculties enough to enjoy romance, and I should stick to depressing books (see Our Magic Hour). No fun for me!
And that's my week in reading and knitting.
To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as Sharondoubleknit and on GoodReads as Sharondblk.
I'm joining in with Kat from As Kat Knits for Unravelled Wednesday and Kat from the Bookdate for It's Monday, What Are You Reading. Thanks Kat and Kat for hosting these linkups.
I get really annoyed when the author gets things wrong even in fiction books. That would be enough for me to set it aside for something else. I hope you figure out what is wrong with your knitting project. Come see my week here. Happy reading!
ReplyDeleteIt's much easier to start running in the winter, because you can wear clothes to fix cold (and I guess rain but I'm more wimpy about that) but there is only so far you can go to fix hot.
ReplyDeleteHmm, a friend just recommended a Jewish romance to me -- Season of Love by Helene Greer. But I think it's not set in an Orthodox community.