It don't mean knit ...

Or what rhymes with knit. ha! Get it? Yeah, thanks for the grampa moment.

Reading has often meant no knitting. The Game of Thrones period really affected my knitting productivity ...

I admit I finished rereading an old mystery on my shelf and picked up a new one. Initially I had a hard time getting into this one Burial at Sea. I'm not sure if it's because of the flashback / chronological order of the narration, or if I missed the main character's cozy aristocratic home and routine. Eventually I came to really appreciate the author's break from his usual set up. Not that I find him particularly formulaic but he's set me up for some expectations nonetheless. Also who doesn't love a murder mystery set up in confined spaces?
 
The day I finished A Burial at Sea, Hotel Bemelmans arrived in the mail. Such timing. It has kept me reading in those not enough time to cast on a project moments.

This book is really fun. Ludwig Bemelmans is the author of the wonderful Madeline children's series. This is an exaggerated memoir/or autobiographical essays of his life growing up in the Food & Service Industry. If you've ever been a coffee jockey or a hostess or a server or worked some kind of retail, I think you'll appreciate it. Especially if you have a love for the food industry.

I like it because each chapter is a vignette in itself. I can put it down and pick up the needles, and not be too obsessed with what happens next (like I was with A Burial at Sea where I read in bed, before going to work on Monday... oops.) 

I've really enjoyed this latest return to reading.  I think it's been gentle stuff to ease me back in. I have a stack of books that have the potential to be EMOtionally draining for a fluff reader like me. But the emo reading is really good too, when you miss a well turned phrase and non "try-hard" prose. So this is the first "stack" of new books for 2013.