What are you reading this week?
Making Things: Finding Use, Meaning, and Satisfaction in Crafting Everyday Objects
by Erin Boyle
and Rose Pearlman
Making Things champions handmade crafts that infuse the no-waste ethos with glamour and fun.
Through easy-to-follow tutorials for over 100 projects that are both accessible and aspirational, Making Things invites readers to try their hands at a variety of crafts and celebrate the satisfaction that comes from slowly and carefully creating for oneself. Learn to fold magazine pages into Masu Boxes for organizing bits and bobs, make a cardboard loom for weaving potholders out of old linens, braid your own Kumihimo Dog Leash, or starch fabric scraps for decorative bunting.
Makers Rose Pearlman and Erin Boyle met in 2018 and immediately struck up a friendship, united by a reverence for everyday objects. Their approach towards craft reflects a shared commitment to sustainability and accessibility – as they write in Making Things’ introduction, “Craft can be exquisite and exacting, the result of formal training and years of practice, but it can also be experimental and messy and not quite perfect.”
Scouring sidewalks, stoops, and thrift stores, the authors repurpose materials to create projects that range from functional to fun and frivolous. Step-by-step guides make it simple to start and finish each project, while the book’s stunning photographs show how each craft can fit within an organized, thoughtfully curated home.
As Making Things demonstrates, relying on a limited range of supplies and repurposing the same materials can spur our creativity, encouraging us to look at a pile of junk on a stoop and see endless possibilities.
The Housekeeper's Secret
by Iona Grey
Duty, desire, and deception reside under one roof.
Standing in the remote windswept moors of Northern England, Coldwell Hall is the perfect place to hide. For the past five years, Kate Furniss has maintained her professional mask so carefully that she almost believes she is the character she has created: Coldwell’s respectable housekeeper.
It is the summer of 1911 that brings new faces above and below the stairs of Coldwell Hall―including the handsome and mysterious new footman, Jem Arden. Just as the house’s shuttered rooms open, so does Kate’s guarded heart to a love affair that is as intense as it is forbidden. But Kate can feel her control slipping as Jem harbors secrets of his own.
Told in alternating timelines from the last sun-drenched summer of the Edwardian Age to the mud-filled trenches of WWI, The Housekeeper's Secret opens its door to a world of romance, the truths we hold onto, and the past we must let go.
Losing Hit Points
by Kristopher Mielke and K.A. Mielke
Losing Hit Points is a nerdy queer romance book set against the backdrop of a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game. A romantic story filled with goblins, adventure, and the healing power of admitting our mistakes.Equal parts touching and laugh-out-loud funny, trans teen Journey has the chance to play an epic game of Dungeons & Dragons. Surprise encounters are common in D&D but what they don’t expect is to reconnect with an ex-friend who they still love and have wronged in the past.K. A. Mielke's newest novel melds the fun of the popular fantasy role-playing game with a touching plot about admitting one's mistakes and making up for the past, while looking ahead towards a brighter future ― together.
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