@lady-merian 

I took two of Dr. Schakel’s classes at Hope College. One was called Practical Criticism (applied to poetry) and the other was the C. S. Lewis course.  I really liked both of them. Dr. Schakel’s books are just as interesting as his classes. He also wrote a book about Narnia called The Way into Narnia. 

@lady-merian Out of curiosity, do you like C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy? Because I have a theory that C. S. Lewis fans who really like the Space Trilogy don't like Till We Have Faces and fans who really like Till We Have Faces don't like the Space Trilogy. (I'm in the latter group.)  

I'm rereading Bleak House by Charles Dickens right now. I love Dickens but this isn't my favorite of his books. It has two narrators, a first person one and a third person one. The first-person narration gets kind of annoying with her protestations that she's nobody special (though I'd argue they make sense given her ultra strict upbringing) and the third person narrator's aloofness can get tiresome too. Nevertheless, the book's full of great stuff and I've read it many times. (When I was part of an online reading group that went through all of Dickens's novels, they graciously allowed me to write a blog post about how some of Bleak House's themes are seemingly the opposite of what we expect from Dickens.  Bleak House: The Anti-Dickensian Dickens Book? – All the (Dickensian) Year Round ) 

I took a break from reading BH though to read the novelization of the movie Love and Friendship by screenwriter/director Whit Stillman. For those not in the know, Love and Friendship is based on Lady Susan by Jane Austen. The premise of the movie novelization is that the narrator is Lady Susan's nephew (by marriage) and he's writing to defend his aunt whom he claims Jane Austen, or "that spinster authoress" as he calls her, maligned but it's obvious that he doesn't have a leg on which to stand and Lady Susan is just as evil as Austen wrote. It's a fun read. For my thoughts on the plot and characters of Love and Friendship, or Lady Susan for that matter, feel free to check out this blog post. Love and Friendship-or Not | The Adaptation Station.com

@valiantarcher I have one more Savery book in my physical TBRs.  

I am currently reading a book I picked up at a garage sale (or rather, a church basement sale). It is called "The Fourth Part of the World" by Toby Lester. It is meant to be about the Waldseemuller map that first gave America it's name, but in essence it is a history of what people knew about the world at various points in history, leading up to this groundbreaking map in 1507. It's really cool, and now I want to see the map at the Library of Congress if we go to DC for the 250th celebration in July. Funnily enough, I did find myself crossreferencing it with the timeframe of "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour, as there is a lot of overlap of times, places and events. L'Amour would have loved this book.

Posted by: @anfinwen

Thanks for the recs (and non-recs, those are just as important)! I've been itching for a good western, and I've read nearly everything of Louis L'Amour's. My favorites of his are actually his more pirate-y/adventure on the high seas books. They are set in the late 1500s/early 1600s

I had to look it up, but I do remember reading and enjoying Footsteps in the Dark. I think it was a good one. I also remember liking Why Shoot a Butler? 

I know the local library has a lot of the westerns, not sure about the adventure books. Any title recommendations?

I'll put on Why Shoot A Butler? on my list to look for, thanks.

Posted by: @mel

*makes notes on @ladysnowangel's Luke Short recommendations*

Good westerns can be hard to find, I also like Will James (I think I read 4) and Max Brand is hit and miss (I've liked about half of what I've read, but what I liked I did really enjoy).

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Have you finished the Tahn series, @SnowAngel?

 Yes, I finished the series and I really enjoyed them. Last time I read them was a few years ago and it was during pretty stressful stretch, so it was nice to read them again with less going on.

Posted by: @lady-merian

@snowangel I remember that Childhood of Famous Americans series! I did like the Robert. E. Lee one a lot.

Ooh, Tahn is one of my favorite books! I do like the other two books but Tahn is one of my comfort reads.

We didn't have any of the CoFA series when I was a kid, but the younger siblings got to enjoy a few and now I pick them up whenever I stumble across them. I was very pleased to find the Robert E. Lee one at the library sale.

Yes, Tahn is the best.  

I read Gunman's Chance by Luke Short, wow, the movie is so much like the book. Now I want to watch Blood On The Moon.  And I also finished The Two Swords of Christ by Raymond Ibrahim, it was so good...it's very well written and super interesting.

Still have 150ish pages of Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War that I didn't finish back in the fall, would like to finish it and then start The Stars In Their Course by Shelby Foote. I've only 10 pages of it this month, so I'm going to have to step up my pace if I'm ever going to finish it.  

This month I have read one book, Shadow Catcher by James R. Hannibal which I finished this morning. I'm hoping to get back on track with my reading over the next week. I'm going to start Shadow Maker (the sequel to Shadow Catcher) this evening. I have most of James R. Hannibal books, so I'm thinking I might reread couple more this month.

Posted by: @col-klink

Out of curiosity, do you like C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy? Because I have a theory that C. S. Lewis fans who really like the Space Trilogy don't like Till We Have Faces and fans who really like Till We Have Faces don't like the Space Trilogy. (I'm in the latter group.)  

Oh, now that's interesting. I have read Out of the Silent Planet, and I really, honestly, genuinely didn't like it. Even taking into account that it's sci-fi of the 1930s (so ideas about space travel and the other planets of our solar system and so on were quite different then from what they are now, in an age where we have actually sent people into space and been to the Moon and had close-up looks at the other planets from space probes), and, of course, Lewis is writing it with a Christian thematic basis, so it's got a different underlying agenda from most other science fiction. I read it as open-mindedly as possible, but I still didn't like it. Well, I enjoyed the scenes where Ransom befriends and lives with the hrossa (although it is a little hard to believe he could have mastered their language well enough, in a relatively short time, to be able to discuss deep abstract and philosophical concepts in such detail with them), but as the book went on, it just seemed to get more and more overdone. And I found the ending far more pretentious than portentous.  

Mind you, it's at least 8 (possibly 10) years since I read it, and I wasn't in a good place personally or mentally at that time, and things have since improved a lot for me in all ways — including in my faith journey, so to speak — and so there's a possibility I might think differently of that book, and get a lot more out of it, if I read it again. As it is, though, I haven't felt drawn to it again, and I certainly haven't had any desire to read the two sequels either. But perhaps I should revisit the trilogy (starting by re-reading the first book) some time in the future and just give it another go.

Anyway, my point is that what you say makes me hopeful that I may "really like" Till We Have Faces! So I'm now eager to give that one a try and see what I think. I do know Lewis dedicated it to Joy (or did he simply write it with her in mind?), and he considered it the best thing he'd ever written, so I'm definitely curious and I will have to read it some time.

Posted by: @anfinwen

Posted by: @anfinwen

Thanks for the recs (and non-recs, those are just as important)! I've been itching for a good western, and I've read nearly everything of Louis L'Amour's. My favorites of his are actually his more pirate-y/adventure on the high seas books. They are set in the late 1500s/early 1600s

I had to look it up, but I do remember reading and enjoying Footsteps in the Dark. I think it was a good one. I also remember liking Why Shoot a Butler? 

I know the local library has a lot of the westerns, not sure about the adventure books. Any title recommendations?

The ones I like the most are the first four books of the Sackett series, telling how the family first came to America around 1600 (Sackett Companion says the first book is dated 1600).

The books are: Sackett's Land, (lots of seafaring, they don't become settled in the new world yet, just England shenanigans and lots of sailing back and forth), To the Far Blue Mountains (more seafaring, but also settling), The Warrior's Path (a Sackett leaves the settlement and goes to Jamaica), and Jubal Sackett (one of the Sackett sons goes as far west as Colorado and encounters the Spanish, no sea voyages, but it's still set in the 1620s)

Others have mentioned The Walking Drum. It is set in the late 1100s and covers much of the medieval known world, including Spain in the Islamic Golden Era, Russia and the pre-Mongols, and Constantinople. This is one of L'Amour's less moral heroes, but still a good story that will make you wish you knew more about the time period. Get ready to Google people and places lol.

Last but not least, Fair Blows the Wind, it's very much an adventure tale, spanning Europe and the New World. It consistently bounces back and forth between the present and the past, annoying, but the story is good enough that I don't mind. It chronicles a man named Tatton Chantry.

Honorable mention, not a sea tale, but also not a classical western, as it takes place in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and the land in between. Ride the River is the bridge between these earlier stories and the later westerns. It is where the Sackett and above-mentioned Chantry families come together, so if you read these, you'll want to try it. Also, the narrator/main character is a girl, which is fun!

I've finished reading an English Translation of Les Misérables that I hadn't read before, the one by Julie Rose. I admit I got this one partly so I could laugh at it. I'd heard it was very modern and... colloquial, for lack of a better term. Instead of an informer, Javert is called a snitch. It also uses expressions like "driving me nuts" and "in a sec." At one point, it even mentions a stethoscope. (There's also a lot more profanity in this translation than in others. Julie Rose claims that's because older translations censored Victor Hugo. Running the original French text through Google Translate (thank you, Project Gutenberg) doesn't necessarily show this though.) But, hey, I still found the book very moving. 

I feel like trying to make Les Misérables read like a modern novel is a hopeless task. Maybe I'm just not reading the right modern novels but do many of them use the word "ineffable" much? Or philosophize about "the Infinite?" To be fair though, the first translation I read was (an abridged version of) the very 19th century one by Charles Wilbour. Maybe if I'd read Rose first, I'd find Wilbour stuffy. I do think some of the characters' dialogue, particularly Gavroche's, benefits from modernization. 

As far as modern-sounding translations of Les Misérables go, I think I'd rate Rose's as below Christine Donougher's but above Norman Denney's. It's hard to say since the Charles Wilbour translation is the only one I keep rereading. 

BTW, has anyone read any of Victor Hugo's novels besides Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris AKA The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I've been thinking of trying Ninety-Three or The Man Who Laughs. Which are the best English translations of those? 

@col_klink  BTW, has anyone read any of Victor Hugo's novels besides Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris...

Do you mean in English or in French? My answer to your question about Victor Hugo's writings is broadly no, but as a scholar of 5 years of High School French & then several years afterwards, another 3 years studying French as a Bachelor of Arts major, I did come across Les Misérables, not only in excerpt form. But then, in an exam translating "unseens", where the candidate has to translate French excerpts into English, I found myself translating back into English, an excerpt from Prince Caspian where Doctor Cornelius urges him to fly, or otherwise flee, due to the birth of Miraz's son, along with another excerpt from some James Bond novel or other, in which 007 had to turn down (not kiss) a thermometer . Maybe I should have admitted that lucky time, that I knew the English version of Prince Caspian all too well.   But how on earth was I to know that before I entered the examination room?  

@col_klink   Instead of an informer, Javert is called a snitch.

My impression when I read the book was that "Inspector" Javert was a regular police officer, one of the French gendarmes, not just a "police informer". Javert recognised Jean Valjean as a prison escapée. In Sydney during the 19th century, he might have been called a "stool pigeon" rather than just a "snitch" or a "nark" & would have been considered as much of a crook as any miscreant he was after, who would have despised him for "dobbing in" his "mates". It depends on which part of the Anglophone (English-speaking) world the translator comes from. Les Misérables isn't the only piece of French literature I've had to study. Irish author, Samuel Beckett, famously wrote a play called Waiting for Godot, which being bilingual, he wrote in both English & French, the language in which I had to study it. Without an English translation available, I still don't remember clearly what that play was all about?  

@mel -- That's disappointing to hear, but not surprising. The first chapters held promise, but it was really an awful book. No stakes, no plot progression, terrible characterization... i could go on, but i think i need to read a book or take a class on story structure to be able to categorize its many flaws properly.

I started Team of Rivals last year, and haven't finished it yet. It's very interesting, but also quite dense, and i got a bit burnt out on the Civil War era in my teens; encountered so much Civil War fiction as a kid. Right up there with WW2. I think Civil War fiction tends to be disproportionately popular with homeschoolers, or at least the homeschooling circles i grew up in. I can understand the appeal, but it certainly doesn't apply to me.

@lady-merian I can certainly see where you're coming from, and i think i agree with your spoiler comment. That specific idea didn't occur to me, but i do think that aspect of Sunrise does poes a problem to the chronologically-later books. I still prefer Ballad over all, but i'm not sure i could say why.

@col-klink I actually like both Till We Have Faces and the Space trilogy 😉, though not equally -- i like the former a lot more than the latter. The 'interpretation' scene near the end of Out of the Silent Planet made me laugh out loud the first time i read it, and Till We Have Faces is i think my favorite Lewis book. I read it around the same time as The Four Loves, and i think the latter helped me understand the former. 

Meanwhile, my reading has somewhat stalled again, which is annoying. I got partway into Strength of the Few, but something interrupted me, and i haven't picked it up again. Not because i wasn't enjoying it, just because i haven't figured out how to get back into the reading groove. 

I borrowed three Christie books from the library -- A Pocket Full of Rye, They Do It With Mirrors, and The Mysterious Mr. Quinn. The first two were re-reads, both Marple mysteries, and the last is a collection of short stories i had never read. While i find Miss Marple the more appealing Christie sleuth in theory, i don't tend to like the mysteries she's in as much, and that definitely held true here. I remembered being somewhat disappointed with A Pocket Full of Rye the first time i read it, and the re-read didn't do it any favors. For some reason i remembered They Do It With Mirrors being, or at least feeling, a lot longer than it was. I don't remember what i thought of it the first time, but on the second i didn't particularly care for it, either. 

The Mysterious Mr. Quinn was a strange one. I didn't precisely like it while i was reading it -- some of the stories were interesting, but they were all so short, the resolutions were too sudden to feel natural -- but the lingering impression it leaves is slightly more positive. I think that while the writing wasn't good enough to support the short stories' premises, it was at least strong enough not to undermine it. Probably won't re-read, but i've definitely read worse things this year alone.

I've gotten through the first two parts of the first volume of War and Peace. I'm sorry to say I'm reading the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation instead of the Constance Garnett one recommended by Narniawebbers because it's the one the public library had. I feel like a hypocrite for reading a more modern translation when I made such a big deal in this forum about preferring an old school translation for Les Misérables. But with this book, I think it might not be such a big deal. 

I read a critical blurb somewhere that said if time had a writing style, it would write like Tolstoy. I wonder if that critic was trying to find a nice way to say Tolstoy's writing lacks personality. Every once in a while, there's a really interesting sentence, but much the book thus far just seems like "X said this. Then Y said that. X said something else, so Y said something else." I do find the main characters of Pierre, Andrei and Marya interesting (and if I recall correctly, Natasha ends up being interesting too) but none of the background characters are grabbing me and the book's been largely about them. 

But I've started Part 3 of Volume 1, and it seems like the book is improving, so I'm going to keep at it. 

P.S.

I hope you weren't offended by my theory about The Space Trilogy and Till We Have Faces, @arin. 

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@Jo, lots of interesting books on your list (as always!). What are you reading now?

See below (to my Burgess paragraph). The books I have just completed are:

*After The War: from Auschwitz to Ambleside by Tom Palmer (2020), an historical fiction based on the true events when Jewish children from concentration camps to the English Lake District to begin their long recovery. A well-done film, "The Windermere Children" is also based on this.

*Hans Brinker (or The Silver Skates) by Mary Mapes Dodge (1865, with the story set in the Netherlands in 1940). This was a re-read, although my first read was decades ago, so it was lovely to take the tale in again.

*I have always enjoyed Patricia St. John's books, and recently re-read The Secret at Pheasant Cottage (1978).

*A re-read of the fascinating biography of one of my heroes, Hannah More—a contemporary of William Wilberforce, another hero of mine. This book title is Fierce Convictions by Karen Swallow Prior (2014).

Posted by: @Mel

@jo I have had A Train in Winter sitting on my shelf waiting for me to read it for two or three years now, and I just haven't sat down and started. 

I encourage you to read it when you are able. It is not in any way a comfortable or easy read, but so important. 'Tis unbelievable  what unspeakable horrors millions of people endured, and less than one century ago.

On a hugely lighter note, since I often read heavier non-fiction (mostly biographies), I am taking a two-week break and delving into my old Thornton W. Burgess books from my childhood. Some of the copies we have are from my mom's childhood, and are dated 2014 (publication). Burgess was an American naturalist and conservationist, and these darling children's stories are ripe with his knowledge, descriptions, and adventure.

After these (I am about halfway through the 20 volume stack we own ... you can easily read one of these delightful tales in a couple of hours), I will get into non-fiction books again. Not sure what yet, but all in good time.  

@col-klink  Oh no, not at all 😊.

I went to the library the other day to drop off some returns, but since i walked there, i decided to hang around and read a little. Since i didn't have my library card, i went for something i could read in one sitting, which turned out to be another Agatha Christie re-read, Trial by Innocence. 

I don't always give little plot summaries of the books i'm reading. Is that confusing for people? Since i'm going to talk a bit more about it later: Trial by Innocence begins with the revelation that a man who was convicted of murder and later died in prison was actually innocent. The victim was his adoptive mother, and as the case is re-opened, it's clear that the murderer must have been someone in her household: one of her other four adopted children, her husband, his secretary, or the housekeeper. 

It reminded me a bit of They Do It With Mirrors, in that it has some opinions on something (a home for troubled youths in Mirrors, adoption in Trial) that i don't think have aged well, but not as badly as, say, the original title for And Then There Were None. That said, i liked it better than They Do It With Mirrors, though i'm not sure i could say why. I think it was the characters. It was easier to be sympathetic for the people in Trial by Innocence, perhaps because their reasons for unhappiness were better-established, or possibly just less self-inflicted. 

Thanks for the list, @anfinwen. Of the seven titles the local library only has The Far Blue Mountains, but my brother does have Sackett's Land which I don't think he's read yet. I'm going to add them to my list to read.  

Instead of continuing with James R. Hannibal, one of my sisters had borrowed the book I was planning to read next, I read The Scarlet Pimpernel because my little brother was reading it and I kept seeing it every time I walked through the living room. So I dug my copy out and leisurely read through it, though not as slowly as my brother was. He was reading it so slowly he was having a really hard time getting into the story, so I encouraged him to read a full chapter or more each time and he said that made the book better. Score one for the big sister.  

I'm currently reading the Sam Keaton: Legends of Laramie series by Sigmund Brouwer, I think this is the fourth or maybe fifth time I've read the series and the last time was January of 2019. I read Evening Star (book 1) over the course of a week, and then I read well over half of Silver Moon (book 2) on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. I love the combination of western and mystery in the series.

I've fallen way behind on my reading goals for the year, just 17 books finished and barely have 3 nonfiction for the quarter. Might have to revise my goals again this year. Oh, well, at least I've enjoyed most of what I've read this year.  

Posted by: @snowangel

Instead of continuing with James R. Hannibal, one of my sisters had borrowed the book I was planning to read next, I read The Scarlet Pimpernel because my little brother was reading it and I kept seeing it every time I walked through the living room. So I dug my copy out and leisurely read through it, though not as slowly as my brother was. He was reading it so slowly he was having a really hard time getting into the story, so I encouraged him to read a full chapter or more each time and he said that made the book better.

If you are interested, you might like to watch the Logos Theatre musical of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which can be bought on DVD https://theacademyofarts.org/product/scarlet-pimpernel-gift-set/    or https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thescarletpimpernel   for the vimeo streaming.   (yes, it's very good!)

Did you ever read Black Beauty by Anna Sewell as a child?  I remember that I once had a simplified version of that story with some very colorful illustrations when I was about eight or nine.  I always liked stories about horses. I read it again in a children’s literature course in college. Recently I bought the Barnes & Noble edition for older children, and it is nicely bound and illustrated.  It is a modern edition, although the story was first published in 1877.  The book is great for older children and adults who wish to read the wonderful story again. 

I also remember our fifth grade elementary school teacher reading My Friend Flicka by Mary O’ Hara, another horse story.  I wonder if today’s teachers would take the time to do that.  Decades have passed, and I still have fond memories of teachers reading stories aloud to their students. Some of them had a gift for dramatization. 🙂

Has anyone here read the Emily books by L. M. Montgomery?  They are a trilogy and include the novels Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest.  I would say they are about as good as Anne of Green Gables. It is interesting to read what Prince Edward Island was like in the 1920’s.  I think they were made into a television series, although I have never seen it.  I have seen Anne of Green Gables and enjoyed it very much, even buying it on DVD and Blu-ray.