@Jo, you always have such intriguing WWII books on your reading list!

@Lady-Merian, to be fair, I don't remember exactly how The Chestnut King resolves. Which also says something. But, otherwise, no - I didn't care for the epilogue either, but I also didn't care for the main thing I remember about the ending

@narnian78 / @waggawerewolf27, yes, Rilla of Ingleside is the last book in the Anne series.
You can find Water Babies in the US, but I don't think it's very popular. I did run across and read a copy of it a few years back, but mostly found it very odd - I'm not sure what the point of it was either!

@narnian78 I am not sure which book was the last of the Anne of Green Gables series.  I don't think my church library has all of them.

Do you have a council library service where you live? I agree that some localities might be better served than others, especially in such a big place as USA, but in Australia, especially in the State of New South Wales, where I live, if you do belong to such a municipal or shire library, you might not only be able to borrow what is available at that library, itself, but you can also ask the librarians if they can get a specific book from some other library if it isn't held in your local book collection. Across Sydney & throughout the state, its municipal & shire libraries are in a network, when your own local library might have particularly good collections in some subjects, but weaker in other subjects which interest you. An obvious speciality might be local history, for example.    

This system of lending is what we call interlibrary loans, & you would be asked to pay a fee for doing so, usually the cost of postage. Of course, library rules do apply, though I find the lending time to be often very generous. I've even found myself being able to borrow from the NSW State Library, part of the network, through interlibrary loans, where most, if not all, its collection is usually made up of reference materials, to be consulted in the library's main reading room, for example. 

@narnian78 I did run across and read a copy of it a few years back, but mostly found it very odd - I'm not sure what the point of it was either!

I think the book was mainly about the Irishwoman in the raggedy outfit being really Mother Carey, & the chimneysweep's master finding himself in a turnip patch, somehow, but I can't be sure. Mother Carey and her chickens got to be part of the local patois, when some politician or other was stuck with Carey as a surname. Or was it because Archbishop George Carey, was for a time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England? Thus, those of the Anglican persuasion might get called "Mother Carey's chickens", I suppose. And that is how an otherwise unexceptional book might contribute to everyday discourse, in the newspapers, for instance. 

Though his books are definitely for adults, have you ever read any of Tom Keneally's books, such as Schindler's Ark? In reading the preface of that book, filmed as Schindler's List, I was startled to realise that I might have even met one of the characters, whose surname was Pfiefferburg, or something like that, when he ran a luggage shop in Beverley Hills, a Sydney Suburb, not far from Earlwood, where I lived until I married in 1971. At first, I had thought the shop would have been in Beverley Hills, near Hollywood, not our particular Beverley Hills. 

Keneally also wrote novels like the Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, & another about Joan of Arc called Blood Red, Sister Rose. Currently, I am reading Commonwealth of Thieves: the Sydney Experiment, which is Tom Keneally's take on Australian history. The trouble is, with Christmas coming on, I don't really have the time to sit down and read for too long. 

@waggawerewolf27 

There is the Lakeland Library Cooperative, which serves several counties here in Michigan. It may be the same thing as a council library service. It has its own catalog of books, which are available for interlibrary loan, and there is delivery to local libraries.There is  also a service which delivers books from college and university libraries, considering that they are reasonably close to where I live.  It seems like Anne of Green Gables books are more likely to be in a public library.  I remember decades ago when it took weeks or longer to receive a book through interlibrary loan. That is one of the good things that technology has brought us-- much faster service. The whole process is much easier than it used to be.

Did you like Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows?  I remember reading that book decades ago for a children's literature course in college.  How does it compare to the Chronicles of Narnia?  I think Lewis' talking animals are more like real animals.  But Graham's book has kind of a charm and is really quite enjoyable. I recommend it very highly for entertainment  even though the animals are a lot like humans. 🙂

This the latest edition with illustrations by Ernest Sheperd which I purchased recently:

Amazon.com: The Wind in the Willows: The Centennial Anniversary Edition: 9780684179575: Grahame, Kenneth, Shepard, Ernest H., Hodges, Margaret: Books

@narnian78 The Wind in the Willows is a book that I loved to death, after I left boarding school. I'm sure that the copy I had, & read obsessively, once belonged to my mother first, & has bit the dust only because old books don't last forever, & usually become so tatty, dogeared and in such bad condition that passing them onto charity isn't an option anymore. It is a story of tranquil life in the English countryside, just as much as it is about Mr Toad's mania for driving in the countryside. My favourite bit was the chapter when Moley goes back to his deserted home with Ratty, to spend Christmas there, together with the Carol singers. And also, that beautiful moment at the Gates of Dawn when Moley & Ratty find Otter's missing son curled up asleep at the foot of Pan, safe and sound. 

Another book I loved very much was the more recently written Watership Down (by Richard Adams) which is more about Hazel's leadership of his fellow rabbits than is the case with Wind in the Willows. Again, talking animals are involved, just as is the case for Narnia. I once had to compile an essay on other worlds, when I studied Children's Literature for my original Librarian Certificate, but though I most definitely included The Hobbit and the Narnia Chronicles, as well as Alice in Wonderland and the barely remembered Phantom Tollbooth, I can't remember whether or not I included the Wind in the Willows, and I hoped I did. 

@narnian78 The Wind in the Willows is one of my favorite comfort reads. As someone whose favorite season is Autumn, I especially appreciate this passage. 

It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering — even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple

Since Christmas is coming, I recently reread Valentine Davies's novelization of his movie Miracle on 34th Street. Truth be told, it's not the most well written book. There's a lot of telling rather than showing and summarizing what would be better depicted in detail. But Christmas puts me in a forgiving mood, and I do like the story. It's interesting to compare the book version to the movie.

Spoiler

Spoilers If You Haven't Seen the Film

The circumstances under which Kris ends up hitting Mr. Sawyer in the novelization are quite different from in the movie. The book's version of the scene actually strikes me as more cinematic-and funnier. But on the other hand, I'm fond of the character of Alfred, who isn't in the book.

@Narnian78, I've read and enjoyed The Wind in the Willows, though it's probably time for a reread.

Does anyone have any reading goals they're trying to squeeze in finishing before the end of the year? Or reading goals they're setting for next year? I'd like to try to sneak in reading another book or two off the to-read shelf before December ends, but we'll see how it goes!

@valiantarcher   Does anyone have any reading goals they're trying to squeeze in finishing before the end of the year?

Yes, I do. I really must finish reading my library book, Tom Keneally's Commonwealth of thieves: the Sydney experiment, if only because I have to return it soon to the library, or face overdue fines. Although I quite understand people saying that it sounds like just another non-fictional, boring history book, hardly relevant to them, this book, in my opinion, should really be compulsory reading for every Australian, if only to get a better idea of exactly what did happen on 26th January, 1788, when Sydney was first founded, and the anniversary of which has become Australia Day, our national day.

It may have been the ending of the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and clearly the Gadigal & Bediagal people, running around, saying Werre werre (translated as "Go back to where you came from", basically) didn't like the newcomers who broke all their own laws. They later invited the Governor, Arthur Phillip, to a gathering where they ritually speared him, forcing him prematurely to return to Great Britain. But when the Comte de La Pérouse's 2 French ships were also moored on 26/1/1788 in Botany Bay, Australia Day still commemorates this land's Awakening to the rest of the world. Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales, & also Warrane to the Aborigines, is still the oldest & largest city in Australia and often still acts as Australia's gateway to the rest of the world. 

In other words, there are always two sides to an ongoing debate.  

Meanwhile, Valia if there is a preferred reading list for this thread, could you please provide a link to where I might see it?

And happy Christmas in 2025, to everyone, and for the following New Year in 2026.  

@valiantarcher Hmm. How I remember it ending goes like this:

I do have a goal of finishing Book 6 of The Faerie Queen by the end of the month/year. I’m currently on Canto 8, so nearly 2/3 of the way done!

I was onto Murder in Mesopotamia in the Poirot series, but I wasn’t liking the audiobook narrator much. I was already not sure of her but then her voice for Poirot himself was worse than the others, which cinched it: I’d read this one as an ebook. So that’s the ebook I have going, but as I still need an audiobook in the morning I decided to skip ahead and listen to Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, figuring it is the right time of year for that. I’m going through it rather faster than I’d anticipated, and my ebook time has been mostly catching up on the ebook of The Faerie Queen, (still doing a combined audiobook and ebook which has the original spelling, which does slow me down but it is fun too, but this means sometimes I’m in need of a different ebook and a different audiobook) so I’m going to have to decide what to listen to next.

@narnian78

That makes sense, yes, re: the edited versions. I’m sure George MacDonald would be bewildered by the adaptations. I’m fond of Lewis’ portrayal of MacDonald in The Great Divorce, but I did not enjoy Phantastes and I wished to, knowing how Lewis said it “baptized his imagination.” But I did like The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie even if I still found some parts strange. They’ve stuck with me so that is usually the first thing I think of when I think of George MacDonald.

also I haven’t read The Wind in the Willows yet (it is on my tbr list) but my older brother has, I think and that looks like a lovely edition!

@col-klink that is a lovely passage from it!

I have replaced some of my books with editions of higher quality which I hope will outlive me. Recently I bought new editions of Treasure Island, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Robinson Crusoe. They are cloth bound editions a little higher in price, but I think they will last longer. I don’t know if anyone else here replaces paperbacks with hardcovers. The Canterbury Tales is a modern English translation by Nevill Coghill, which I read decades ago and enjoyed it. I will enjoy reading it again. I don’t know if C. S. Lewis thought highly of modern translations, but I think they make something medieval much more accessible to the modern reader.

@waggawerewolf27, I hope you're able to finish your book quickly! Do you have far to go? It sounds like an interesting topic.
There's no preferred reading list for this thread, though some of us have enough similar tastes that we end up reading the same books and can discuss them. Then again, sometimes the reading overlaps when the tastes do not and we can debate them.

@Lady-Merian, re: The Chestnut King: 

I hope you can make your goal of finishing The Faerie Queen this year! And how fun about reading the Poirot Christmas mystery at the right time of year. Though, I think you've tended to go through all the Poirots faster than anticipated.

@valiantarcher so the part I like most is the part you don’t remember. 

well, I’m now onto Canto 10 so I’m 3/4 of the way done! 

I was wondering if anyone else here still owns the original 1980 hardcover edition of Cosmos by Carl Sagan. The book is still in print, although it is now in a much cheaper paperback edition without the beautiful illustrations of the hardcover from over forty years ago.  I remember that I paid $20.00 for the hardcover back in 1980, which was then considered an expensive book. I also bought Comet a few years later, which was also available in a similar edition with beautiful illustrations.  I don’t know if anyone here remembers the 1991 series The Astronomers and its companion book, which was published in a similar format.  I wish they would bring back companion books to old PBS series especially now that the network may be shutting down.  The books are a great way to remember old educational programs.  I am also watching the Cosmos series again on DVD, which is a great way to appreciate astronomy.  🙂

The BBC has similar books based on David Attenborough’s series such as The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. They are also beautiful hardcover volumes with excellent photography.  I think most of them are still available, although I am not sure if they are all still in print. They are fine additions to your library.