A friend of mine recently recommended Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity which I loved. It's about two young women involved in the war effort during WW2 in Britain, one who has been captured by the Nazis. It's a great character and friendship study, though it can be tense and harrowing. I've also read a prequel called The Pearl Thief but I didn't enjoy it so much.

The Faded Map: Lost Kingdoms of Scotland by Alistair Moffat is a non-fiction book about some of the old tribes and kingdoms in Scotland and Northern England. Despite living in Scotland for most of my life it's amazing how much I don't know about my own country. It covers from the Roman occupation to around 1000AD, charting the various languages and people groups. Ancient boundaries still contribute to some of the North/South and East/West divides within the country, and why the Borders is so like Northumberland. It also details the spread of Christianity throughout Scotland. A fascinating book.

After watching Arrival and realising it was based on a short story, I purchased Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (though my copy is the movie tie-in). Normally this isn't what happens, but I prefer the film to the short story ... I can't say why, at risk of ruining the great plot twist, but I'd recommend watching the movie first. For those who have seen the movie:

At the moment I'm reading Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante. My dad bought me this book (he was recently in the US; I don't think it's published over here) so I didn't know anything about it other than it's about Louisa May Alcott and her mother, the 'real' Marmee. What I didn't expect is for it to be quite so shocking - Louisa's father was very odd, and seemed to have little or no respect for his wife or for women in general. Abigail May Alcott, by contrast, tried to make her daughters' childhood as good as possible in often difficult circumstances. However it is interesting to hear stories from Abigail's childhood and see how Louisa wove them into her novels.

SA, hiding Christmas presents is always hard, but keeping the surprise of a book makes it even worse.

AJ, I know a number of folks on NW loved Code Name Verity. (I am a dissenting opinion, so no comment from me. ) The Faded Map sounds fascinating, though!!
I knew that Alcott's father was...very odd and that her childhood was very odd, but I really don't know anything about her mother. I may have to look into Marmee and Louisa.

I finished the rest of the stories I could read in Arcanum Unbounded - I think just Sixth of the Dusk and Edgedancer. I liked both of them. Sixth of the Dusk was a bit of a surprise, as I'm not a fan of

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messages back and forth with Gawp, and the explanation of Stump and her actions. And Wyndle continues to be hilarious.

I've mostly been reading a few things out of the to-donate basket of books lately. Nothing stands out too much so far, though I did read Dear Papa by Thyra Ferre Bjorn. It was billed as being similar to I Remember Mama, but I didn't enjoy it as much. I haven't been able to formalize why yet, though.

I am currently reading As I Was Saying, which is a G. K. Chesterton reader containing excerpts of essays, poems, and selections from books. I'm still early but so far it's been pretty interesting.

I'm at part IV of Oathbringer, and so far I'm enjoying it a lot.

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However, there is not nearly enough Lift or Jasnah. The Dalinar backstory is . . . useful for understanding his character more but I still don't like him very much. Elhokar's death was actually kind of tragic (though not nearly as tragic as Evi's [good grief she deserved better]), and I liked him more in this book than in the first two. So far my favorite part is the conversation between Shallan and Wit where she finally starts to accept all of the different aspects of herself. It was beautifully written and I almost cried. Kaladin and Syl continue to be some of my favorite characters, and some of the best parts continue to be the Bridge Four characters (Rock's family!). Still not very fond of Adolin though.

I also finished Mistborn: the Secret History

I was wondering what you thought of it. Yeah, I didn't think

Mel, how many books have you added to your "sounds interesting!" list since I last saw it? (And how many have you gotten to read...?)

I'm afraid the answer is lots and none, in that order.

I finished Diamond Age and overall I enjoyed it. Parts of the ending were very satisfying, but other plot threads seemed to just sort of trail off or ended abruptly after a lot of build-up. I left it with positive impressions but no great eagerness to look up anything else by that author, so...

Thanks to some Black Friday sales I picked up a bunch of new ebooks and raced through the Beaumont and Beasley series by Kyle Robert Shultz. The premise is a private investigator gets drawn into a series of cases involving fairy tale artifacts. They're wacky and fun despite taking some dark twists with the original tales.

Are there any Sci-Fi readers here? I don't usually see sci-fi mentioned here... outside of Dune and Ender's Game that is. My husband is a sci-fi fan and I'm not, so my knowledge of that genre is limited. I've been looking for some good books for him for Christmas and was wondering if anyone has read 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' by Robert Heinlein and/or 'Old Man's War' by John Scalzi? They both have great reviews and it looks like similarish plots, so I was thinking about them. But I've been guilty of getting movies/books for people that I haven't previewed myself and they have um.... very adult material in them so I'd like to have a second opinion before I spend the money.
I also plan to get him 'Beren and Luthien' and I don't believe we have 'Children of Hurin' so that one as well.

I used to read quite a bit of sci-fi. Asimov is always a great read.
Heinlein needs to be carefully filtered, as there is a lot of unsavoury material in several of the books.

The more recent Tolkien publications are not yet on my shelves.... but there will be time.

Dot, glad to hear you're enjoying Oathbringer. I have a feeling I will find it hard to put down (not to mention have a hard time trying to fit it into my lunch bag for work XD ), so I'm holding off until Christmas-time to read it. I just have to remember to track down a copy before then.
Ditto your thoughts on Mistborn: The Secret History. I hadn't considered Sanderson's ability to

Sorry about the lack of progress on your to-read list, Mel. So hard, isn't it?
Glad to hear Diamond Age was mostly worth the effort of reading it.
And the Beaumont and Beasley series sounds interesting! Too bad I have such a bad track record with reading things digitally... :/

fk, I'm afraid that I've watched far more sci-fi than I've read - and even much of that isn't hard-core sci-fi. I somehow have an impression of much of sci-fi being a) too bogged down in science, b) overly-complex just like a lot of high fantasy, and c) boring. I should remedy that impression and read some sometime.

I am still slowly making my way through As I was Saying. Despite a break over Thanksgiving, I've pretty much got to the point with Chesterton where I want to throw the book against the wall. This is a common reaction to an overdose of Chesterton, but usually it happens after a couple of books, not halfway through one. XD I think it's partly due to the fact that his anti-Protestant, anti-Calvinistic, anti-Reformation comments are concentrated due to the nature of the collection...it should hopefully improve when I make it past the theology section.

Otherwise, I have mostly been working my way through the family to-donate pile I mentioned earlier. I did fit in a reread of The Shadow of the Bear by Regina Doman (which I thoroughly enjoyed), and also picked up something light and fluffy (sorta) in Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub. I say sorta because the story is set in Verona, post Romeo and Juliet, but with a growing body count. I didn't love it, but it hooked me and kept me reading at a good pace - and a number of parts did make me grin. There was a mini-series made about it earlier this year, by which I'm intrigued - for one thing, the protagonists appear to be more mid-20s than 17, so I'm curious how a bit more maturity changes some of the incidents.

fantasia_kitty, generally John Scalzi books are good, and relatively low in 'adult material'. I remember language in Old Man's War and the sequels, but not much worse than that. It's been a couple years since I read them, though, so I could be forgetting something.

Another recent sci-fi series that I enjoyed was the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie, starting with Ancillary Justice.