I am still reading about a million books at a time – once again, I appear to have a bit of a problem with commitment. The book in this photo is Abraham Verghese’s The Tennis Partner. I’m a big fan of Verghese’s novel, Cutting for Stone, and this is a nonfiction book that he wrote published in 1998. In this memoir, Verghese is a physician and professor of medicine whose personal life is falling apart – I’m about a hundred pages into the book, and at this point he and his wife have decided to separate, but they’re still living together because Verghese can’t seem to find an apartment that he can stand; in fact, the whole process of apartment hunting depresses him. At the same time, he has started playing tennis twice a week with one of his students, a fourth-year medical student named David, who played tennis professionally before he went to med school. So of course there’s a lot of cross-cutting power dynamics going on, since Verghese is the authority figure at the hospital, but David is the superior player on the court and often coaches and instructs Verghese. Verghese is an expert in infectious diseases, and portions of the book read like episodes of House (which didn’t exist when this book was published in 1998). Verghese lives in El Paso, Texas, right on the Mexican border, and many patients admitted to the hospital are intravenous drug users. That’s all I’ve read so far, but I know from the back cover that David has a secret past as a drug addict, and that before long the stress of learning to practice medicine will prompt David to relapse. This book is really, really good, although it’s not for the faint of heart or for those who like to read while they eat. You really don’t want to know all the places that IV drug users stick needles – trust me.

I’m also quite delighted with this children’s sweater I’m knitting. It’s the rollneck pattern that I’ve knit many, many times before, but what’s making this sweater so exciting is that I LOVE the yarn I’m using. It’s Lion Brand “Amazing” Yarn in an ever-shifting sequence of pinks, purples, blues, and pale yellows. Imagine the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen: that’s this sweater (even if I do say so myself :-)).

There is an exciting development coming up in my knitting life… I’m hoping that next week at this time I’ll be ready to make an announcement. We’ll see…

Yarn Along is, as always, hosted by Ginny on her wonderful blog, Small Things.