Last week, I showed you that I’d gone astray with my knitting. Now you can see that I fixed it and am back on track. If I didn’t hate this slipped-stitch ribbing (I’m struggling with tension), I’d be further along, but we’ll take three rows of progress at a time over none.

I’m three quarters of the way through Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Aurora Burning, the middle book of their second snarky YA space trilogy, but fell asleep tonight instead of reading the final 150 pages. But I did listen to some of SJ Bennett’s The Windsor Knot, a mystery starring HRH Queen Elizabeth as a sleuth solving a murder at Windsor Castle, while I was out and about earlier, so all is not lost.

Rudi and I caught Free Guy at the movies tonight. If you haven’t seen the bazillion commercials, it’s about a sweet, generic video game character named Guy (played by Ryan Reynolds) who essentially lives the same day over and over again until one day when he crosses paths with the woman of his dreams. Guy is an NPC or non-player character (essentially a one-dimensional character who’s part of the background to the story), but after interacting with her, he changes. He starts doing good deeds in order to gain levels (she says she won’t talk to him until he levels up) and in the process draws a cult following for disrupting the normal gameplay and for playing by different rules. But because he doesn’t realize that he’s living in a shoot-em-up video game called Free City, he also doesn’t realize that the girl of his dreams is a woman in the real world (played by Jodie Comer), who, it turns out, is actually half of a pair of programmers who had created a video game, the code of which may have been included in Free City. She’s hunting for clues to help her in a lawsuit against the guy who stole the code.

A little bit Wreck-It Ralph, a little bit The Lego Movie, and a little bit The Truman Show, Free Guy is about daring to live your authentic life and breaking free of the parameters that have been placed on you. It was surprisingly sweet and I highly recommend it.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our ten favorite places to read:

1. At the beach.
2. Under the covers when it’s raining.
3. Next to a fire during a snowstorm.
4. In my rocking chair.
5. At the park.
6. By the pool.
7. On the couch.
8. In bed.
9. On the metro/a train.
10. Anywhere and everywhere.

How about you? Where do you like to read?

I plowed through the first third of Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Aurora Burning yesterday, as I do every chunkster the pair of them combine to write. I’ve had the middle book of their second series out of the library for months now, so it’s good to finally tackle it.

It’s time for the final Bout of Books readathon for 2021.

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, August 16, and runs through Sunday, August 22, in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 32 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

I’d like to finish one of the two print books I’m actively reading this week and read a majority of the days this week. But if that doesn’t happen, I know not to stress about it. There is no failing at Bout of Books, after all!

Today’s weather forecast promised to be unsettled, so I’d expected to spend a large part of it indoors. However, the storms west of us kept breaking up as they came over the mountains, giving us an ever later target for when to expect the rain and lightning — first early afternoon, then teatime, then after sunset, and finally sometime overnight.

This meant we were able to spend hours at the pool and then wrap up the evening on the patio of our local watering hole (also, a yuppy grocery store) — and that we could also take our chances with not watering the garden.

As I type this, the rain has moved in. It’s not heavy enough to hear it over the a/c, but Rudi could hear it when he went into the bedroom. My phone just warned me of flash floods, but I am tucked inside for the night, so I think it will be fine. But maybe I’ll go check the dry bags by the window just to be safe.

Here’s what I’m thinking I might get up to for the rest of the weekend:

• Swim, just preferably not immediately before the thunderstorms are expected Saturday afternoon.
• Go to the library to return a dvd and pick up some things coming off the hold list.
• Cook tomatoes. (I reserved a flat that I need to pick up at the farmers market.)
• Knit more on my shawl, now that I’ve fixed my error.
• Read, preferably outside.
• Get my volleyball team organized for the fall.
• Do laundry.
• Paint my nails.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Replace the batteries on the fairy lights.