The racism in Prester John is a disturbing aspect of the book, to be sure. And I wonder if this is only the character's stance or ... was it also the author's outlook? However, the storyline, itself, I found nigh electrifying. Such intrigue in the mystery. The first time I read the story, years ago, Buchan's landscape descriptions firmly fixed themselves in my mind's eye. Such vividity! I do think it was that aspect—as well as the intensity—that draws me to the tale more than anything.

I found when I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin, I wanted to start reading it all over again immediately. So powerfully written.

Since then I have read Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles by Darlene Deibler Rose. This is the gripping tale of an American missionary documenting her four years of forced labor and deprivation as a Japanese prisoner in the jungles of New Guinea during WWII. Her husband sadly died in another camp. I could hardly put the book down. And to my great surprise, we knew one of the young ladies in the book, Margaret Jaffray: when she returned from the mission field, she was part of our small, but very close, church family in Toronto. We had her over to our home a few times. (I was a young child then.)

I am now nearly finished Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption by lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights defense attorney. The movie was released near the end of 2019. The book is, of course, much more detailed, covering more of Equal Justice Initiative's cases, as well as Walter McMillian's, on whom the film focuses. Many pages are extremely unsettling, but so imperative to read to broaden my mind and heart.

My copy of A Chance to Die: the life and legacy of Amy Carmichael arrived, hurrah! This is by Elisabeth Elliot (wife of martyr Jim Elliot), another favourite author. At the same time, Harriet Tubman: the road to freedom by Catherine Clinton is sitting here, just waiting for me to pick it up and dive in!  

I am not sure which fiction to start next: my biennial The Lord of the Rings read or Wilson's The Dragon's Tooth.  

I finished The Dragon's Tooth and was very pleased with it. I liked seeing all of the Treasure Island references in a larger story that wasn't a strict retelling. I did want to know

I'm actually not diving straight into book 2, partly because I want to make this series last a bit, and partly because I have so many other books stacked up in need of attention. I'm rereading Garth Nix's novella To Hold the Bridge as an attempt to start rereading the Abhorsen/Old Kingdom series. (I just learned he's set to release a new novel in the series next year, titled Terciel and Elinor, which will reportedly focus on Sabriel's parents.) I've been wanting to go back through these for a while. I also picked up most of his Keys to the Kingdom series last week, so I'll probably dive into those sometime soon.

I recently finished up 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond.' If you haven't read it before, think Salem Witch Trials, but with a happy ending. It wasn't half bad, but the very, very end really irked me. 

And a huge THANK YOU to all of the books that you all mentioned. I'll be spending this next year reading through some of them looking for some gems. 😉

@courtenay - the only other Mollie Hunter book I've read (that hasn't been mentioned already) is Escape From Loch Leven, about Mary Queen of Scots. At least, I think I've read it. But it would have been a long time ago ...

My favourite book on her is Mary Queen of Scots and Her Hopeless Husbands by Margaret Simpson, a Horrible Histories-style book that outlines her whole life in an entertaining and fairly accurate fashion. I've not yet managed to read Antonia Fraser's biography on Mary, which I've heard is excellent.

I've recently read Holly Black's Folk of the Air series, which I enjoyed a lot. The main characters are horrible people but I liked how their characters developed even so.

Having decided I will never watch the Disney movie of Artemis Fowl, I've decided to re-read the series!

I decided to begin The Dragon's Tooth first, then save The LotR for early Autumn, and am currently about 5/8 of the way through TDT. Wilson's book is okay: I feel as if he is trying to pack too much into the story. I am intrigued, but not overly so. We shall see how the latter 3/8s pans out.

Having finished Just Mercy (very highly recommended), I am about to start a bio of Harriet Tubman by Catherine Clinton.

I finished The Dragon's Tooth early last weekend. Honestly, I don't think I will rush out to purchase the second book of the series. I am curious about a few things, but I'll just read your spoilers as they come up.  

On the other hand, the Tubman biography is gripping. I can hardly wait for each evening to arrive so I can dive back into it.
I am debating as to when to start The Lord of the Rings. Probably closer to the Baggins hobbits' birthday.  

Recently I've been on a pirate craze, and have begun reading David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag, as well as the infamous A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates. The latter is considered to be the main source of current knowledge about the Golden Age of Piracy, and it does have some interesting original letters and documents compiled in it. ( But a lot of it is thought to be anecdotal nonsense by some historians, based on other contemporary evidence.) I mainly enjoy it for it's weird little details (like a list of names on a pirate crew) and it's fun 18th century style (it was written in 1724, fyi). 

Under the Black Flag is all round a pretty good book, though the author seems to lean in the direction of " history in general wasn't the way you think it was, every stereotype about pirates is actually fake," which is frankly a bit annoying, given that people who pick up his book at all are probably interested in the subject enough to know at least a few things about it.

I mostly appreciate his detailed discussion of the different designs used on pirate flags, (because I'm obsessed with historic flags) and he provides some good info on the much-harped-on subject of pirate women. 

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Hurray for getting chapter three, @SnowAngel! And you'll definitely have to let me know what you think if the library gets the Crown and Covenant series.  

I heard from one of the librarian that they will getting the Crown and Covenant series and the Faith and Freedom series, based on past experience I expect it will be 4 to 8 weeks before the books are available for checkout.

My siblings are currently waiting for me to let them read chapter 4 of The Silent Bells, I am trying to get some vaccuuming or dusting in exchange for sharing with them. It's not bribery, not really.  

Popes and Feminists was good, I think it's 3.5 stars and it seemed like it should have gone through another round of edits. I wish it had more about the women of the Protestant Reformation, I was definitely expecting that part of the book to be longer. I just finished Eve In Exile by Rebekah Merkle last night, I enjoyed most of it. Next, I'm reading You Who? by Rachel Jankovic, this one has already been passed around by my sisters and they all enjoyed it.

My dad loaned me Pray Big by Alistair Begg, I've read one chapter so far. In the past year, my parents and grandparents have all read Pray Big and loved it. It's definitely got a lot of hype to live up to.

I got the first four Stuart Brannon books by Stephen Bly recently, they finally all arrived via the mail this week...they didn't really take that long to arrive, it's just that I am so excited to be reading the series again. Scarlet gave me book 5 for my birthday a few months ago, I have been waiting to read Final Justice at Adobe Wells until I either got the first four books or had time to listen to them all via Hoopla. I already listened to Hard Winter At Broken Arrow Crossing, but I'm going to read it again anyway.  

SnowAngel

Continuing my early American History series (which is severely limited by my app Libby), I finished up The Sign of the Beaver a couple days ago. I had to laugh because when I finished it, my reaction was "hey, I liked this one! Way better than The Witch of Blackbird Pond" and then the next page mentioned it was the same author. LOL I seriously missed that. But anyways.... yes. I liked this one much better. It's a keeper. 😉 

Moving onto the ultimate classic in early American history.... Johnny Tremain. 

Finished Harriet Tubman. Excellent! I decided to start my biennial reading of The Lord of the Rings, and am now in the midst of one of my favourite chapters, "The Shadow of the Past". Here we go! I am eager to get into my large Amy Carmichael biography (by Elisabeth Elliot), but will wait until further in to The LotR before adding that bio in.  

Goodness! I think it's been months since I was last in here. 

Finished Leigh Bardugo's Wonder Woman novel. Very good. Excellent read if you like myths and superheroes.

Can't remember which book club book I last mentioned here, but the past two months was The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld and The Falconer by Elizabeth May. The romance and the ending was what I liked least about both of them. Uglies was especially disappointing because Westerfeld's steampunk Leviathin series is a lot of fun.

The indie bookstore that hosts the YA club I joined also hosts several others and most of them have transitioned to remote meetings. I decided to join the scifi club because why not.   This month was Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. I liked it a lot. A noir detective type of character solves a murder at a magic school. Excellent use of tropes from both genres while still being its own thing. Content warning for goriness (the initial description of the murder scene is especially startling) and some swearing.

The next Attolia book is (finally) out in October. Almost time to start my re-read of the series.

I already starting re-reading Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive since those books are all at least 1,000 pages. The fourth book is out in November. I've known what I'm getting for my birthday for several months now.  

I'm about 350 pages into Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Loving knighthood and chivalric literature as I do, I knew this would be a book I would eventually read, but I was a little trepidatious of starting. I'm not generally a fan of satire or parody, especially when it's directed at something I love. It usually just makes me want to experience the thing that is being made fun of instead. Between that and it's length (my copy is 940 pages), it's a read that I kept putting off.

So far though, I've been enjoying it. It's not quite as cynical as I feared. Obviously, the title character is woefully ill-equipped to function in the real, modern (i.e. 17th century) world and a lot of the book's comedy stems from that. It doesn't come across as mean-spirited though. I'm not sure how much of this is me inserting my own ideas into the book, but Don Quixote comes across to me as partly a tragic figure. He isn't just a buffoon.

I also really like that there are real, living, breathing characters in this story, with real motivations, characterizations etc. It really does feel like a novel. One of the things that bugs me about a lot of comedies is that good story-telling is sacrificed at the altar of comedy. Characters often don't feel like real people because they exist for the sole purpose of making people laugh. It's the same with plot, setting etc. It doesn't matter if it makes sense, as long as it makes you laugh. Call me a killjoy, but it's a pet peeve I have. I have a hard time getting into stories like that.

@Jo, Buchan does write tension and suspense well. Unfortunately, the racism was so heavy in Prester John, it was hard for me to appreciate much else.
Evidence Not Seen sounds fascinating!

@stwin, I'm glad you enjoyed The Dragon's Tooth. 🙂

@snowangel, did you cave or did you get some vacuuming or dusting out of Chapter 4?  

@dot, thanks for the heads up on the new Stormlight Archive book! As soon as I read your post, I dashed over to the library site to place a hold; apparently news hasn't gotten around yet, because I'm only hold #17 (on 10 copies). I'm still waiting for the last Wax & Wayne to come out; I had thought it was supposed to come out before the next Stormlight, but apparently not.
I suppose I should also figure out getting a hold of a copy of the last Attolian book, since I didn't realize it was coming out so soon (ha!). I wasn't overly enthused by the most recent two, especially the last one, so I'm not as motivated as I would be otherwise.

I'm glad you're enjoying Don Quixote, Reepicheep775. I agree that comedy can sometimes undermine good storytelling, so it's good to hear that's not the case here.

I'm currently reading Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson*. I'm not too excited about it currently, but I suppose that could change. I'm in the middle of "Gareth and Lynette" right now, and all I keep thinking of is Gerald Morris' The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf with all its snide and snarky remarks.
The feature of much greater interest with the book was that it was apparently a high school girl's copy from 1935 and she (and her two best friends) scribbled names, sums, and notes over the front and back pages. As far as I can tell, they went to school in what appears to be a now unincorporated community in Kansas. I may be doing some research to see if I can find out anything else.  

*Okay, it says "Selections from", so it's probably missing some poems. Don't know that I will be searching out the missing ones, though.  

@valiantarcher Oh! I forgot. There is also going to be a Stormlight novella in October. I think it's called Dawnshard? Not sure what it's about. Based on the last update he did next is Skyward 3, Wax and Wayne 4, Skyward 4, and then Stormlight 5. Who knows if that will change. And Songs of the Dead (formerly Death by Pizza) is somewhere in there. He's writing it with another author so I guess it's on a different schedule than the rest.

@reepicheep775 I wouldn't say I dislike satire. Sometimes it can be really good and there are plenty of things that deserve to be satirized. But I'll take affectionate parody over satire and deconstruction any day. (I'm not recommending affectionate parodies to you, obviously, since they're comedic. I'm just describing my own tastes and how they relate to yours.) If a book or full length movie is going to be devoted to a genre, I'd rather it express love for a genre than disgust. (Satire, I find, is most enjoyable in subplots or short works.) 

There's also a risk inherent in satire, if it's in a commercial work satirizing other commercial works anyway, that it can come across as self righteous. Just because you point out flaws in other books/movies/tv shows/stage plays, does that mean you yourself are innocent of flaws-even the same flaws-in your own book/movie/tv show/play. If anything, setting yourself up as a judge means your own work should be held up to a higher standard.