Lately...

The last book is up on my current MP3 download, The Kite Runner. The book has been recommended over and over to me, and finally I have it downloaded and queued. I loaded a lot of books last time around, going mostly for length. I listened to two Obama volumes, Barack Obama's volume one and Michelle's Becoming, each read by its author. Michelle has a sibilant S, and I love her all the more for it.

Another engrossing book was Know My Name, also read by its incredible author, Chanel Miller. Ms. Miller was the victim of sexual assault on Stanford University campus in 2015. She pressed charges against her 18 year old assailant, and two years later, after suffering a demoralizing and degrading trial, her assailant, Brock Turner was found guilty on all three counts.

Like many, I learned of the case when she wrote a victim impact statement that went viral within an hour. It was read eleven million times in four days, all thirty pages. Ms. Miller was known as Emily Doe from the time she was found unconscious, throughout the trial, and to the publication of her memoir. After the statement was read in open court, the judge read his verdict: ninety days in county jail, as anything else would be unfair to such an outstanding athlete and young man commencing his adult life.

Fittingly, the judge was recalled. The young man lost his scholarship and was banned from Stanford campus.

Know My Name was a compelling "listen". Actually reading it would have been the same--impossible to put down.

The books I downloaded lined up alphabetically, and so A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson popped up early. I bought and started reading the book a couple of years ago, and gave it up. Listening to it narrated was a much better experience, and I sailed on through. Light reading, but satisfactory.

Much further down the alphabet I came on Pearl Buck's The Good Earth.  On the whole I was going for length, and this is a long one. I remember reading it from my parent's book shelf, when I was a teen ager, but have not encountered it since. The entire length I struggled to place a time on the book. I simply could not place the novel in a context that included trains, soldiers with guns and a revolution. The Mao Zedong change of China was post World War II. A trip through Wikipedia reminded me of the 1911 revolution.

I did not remember one iota of my first reading of the book, sixty years ago. Definitely worth my time, though not a book I would read again.

And so I come to The Kite Runner. I hope it's as fascinating as has been claimed. A lot of good books these last several months and I have put a lot of towels on the shelf, as well as shipping more than a few around the country. It took me only a month to clear the last warp of towels, and I hope to weave off the current before the first Peninsula show, the first weekend of June.

I've made enough colors to make a decent color wheel. I've included a cream towel for some time, just to have a decent array. It's redundant, I think, with the cream rose center, and I probably will leave it out when the next towel is ready.

And it will be periwinkle. Also on standby, yellow: