@fantasia, I'm glad you enjoyed Ben and Me! I think I almost didn't put that one on the list, since you hadn't liked Rabbit Hill.  Are you going to look for the one about Revere's horse?

@coracle, I've had Pillars of the Earth recommended to me, (it's the one about the construction of a cathedral, yes?) and the premise sounds interesting. I've never picked it up, though. Instead I read The Heaven Tree trilogy by Edith Pratager which was less of a time commitment and sounded like a similar premise. 

I finished Return of the Thief this morning. I gulped it in approximately two chunks (convenient the way the book is divided). I would count myself in the reasonably satisfied reader camp, and expect that my appreciation of it will grow with a reread or two.

Very glad I re-read Warbreaker (and read Elantris for the first time!) before Rhythm of War came out. RoW is probably the most Cosmere aware Brandon Sanderson book to date. He dropped a lot of lore, and there are indications of a lot of characters already world hopping beyond what was seen in Mistborn: Secret History. I think I liked Oathbringer better, and there are some stuff that I'm a bit iffy about it, but overall I liked it a lot. Definitely needed more Lift though (I suspect I shall be saying that until we get her point-of-view book somewhere in the second half of the series).

And Dawnshard was delightful. The e-book is available at different places, but if you're waiting for a physical copy it will be sometime next year. Thankfully, it's not required reading for RoW or the other way around. I need a Chiri-chiri action figure right now.

I actually ended up really liking The Light Between Worlds. There were a lot of Narnia references (the older sister goes to America, a nylons comment, the siblings planting trees outside the palace, conflict with another nation where the older sister almost agrees to stay with their prince), but it wasn't in a negative way. It was just a different take on the portal world concept. I knew going in there would be stuff about depression, but I did not know there was self-harm in the book so content warning to anyone who might want to read it. It was overall rather melancholy but the prose was often very dreamlike. And I appreciated the magical realism on "our" world that happened in the second half even though I usually don't appreciate magical realism as a general concept.

Next up: Wintersong by S. Jae-Hones for YA book club. It's a fairytale where the sister gets taken by the Goblin King and our heroine must journey into the Underground to save her. And she'll probably fall in love somewhere in there because YA. The description reminds me of the Norwegian fairytale Tatterhood, but I doubt the heroine is born holding a spoon and riding a goat in this book. Although I could be wrong.  

Hello all! Popping in to discuss Return of the Thief and shed a few thoughts/feelings.

Overall I'm fairly pleased and satisfied with it as a book and a series conclusion, and definitely like it better than Thick as Thieves (a relief). I expect it'll improve with acquaintance, too, like A Conspiracy of Kings.

Edit: Like several of you already mentioned, I was disappointed not to see

I just finished up 'Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers' by Ralph Moody a day or two ago. I REALLY liked it a lot. Except for the ending, which really has nothing to do with the author, because it's a true story of Ralph as he grew up on a Colorado Ranch back in the early 1900s. 

Anyways, big thumbs up. I think some of the reason I liked it so well was because my grandmother wrote her memoirs before she passed away, and this book reminded me a lot of that. 

@Mel tells me she likes the second book 'Man of the Family' better. I have it on hold at the library, but I won't get it before Thanksgiving break. Looking forward to reading it when they open up again.  

Cleander, are you still reading Taliesin or others in the series? It's been years, but I enjoyed Taliesin when I read it - the rest of the books kind of lost my interest, but maybe I would do better now

@SnowAngel, have you gotten to read any George MacDonald? And what Christmas books are you planning to read this year? I agree on Bond's writing not being as smooth as it could be, but I'm glad you thought the Crown & Covenant series was worth reading.

Thanks for the responses on RotT, @Dot and @Adeona!

fantasia, have you gotten Man of the Family from the library yet?

I am currently reading War Letters, a collection of letters written during American wars (edited by Andrew Carroll). I made it through the American Civil War (sadly it has nothing prior to this war) and WWI, two of the wars I enjoy learning about the least, and WWII is next (which is one of the ones I enjoy learning about the most).

I also have Rhythm of War on hold at the library. I'd originally hoped that I'd get it around Christmas or New Year's, but with the way book processing has been going, I'm leaning more towards February or March if that. I've also pretty much given up on getting a September release book this year.

more RotT thoughts/replies: 

Spoiler

RotT spoilers?

Posted by: @adeona

but nothing specific is coming to mind for the gates of Mordor moment?

It's the bit when Nauseresh taunts Gen about "I found Kamet"; it just really felt like the Mouth of Sauron holding up Frodo's coat of mithril to me.

Ooooh, I think you're right about the similarity of the Kingdom Far and Clear quote and that particular scene... I kept thinking that there's some comparison there that I'm not getting (beyond Leonidas and Thermopylae) and that may be what I was trying to come up with, since KFaC also has a lot of misty atmosphere.

Posted by: @adeona

Posted by: @dot

I have a theory. Most of the characters we know were traitors were ones Attolia had told the other royals to kill but they kept them alive. Maybe all of the people she said to kill were traitors?

This is intriguing - the only options I could think of are people in group A, so who did she say to kill that hasn't been confirmed a traitor?  ... Relius?! Anyone else?

I had like, half a thought, about how this is sort of an inverse of KoA where Gen has Attolia pardon the Guard and her spymaster; and how now Pheris is advocating for Gen to continue showing that same mercy, and how Sejanus is wound up in that same plot thread, and the ones Sejanus was trying to protect are folks who didn't have a choice in whether or not they participated?? ...that may be only about a quarter of a thought, actually, and it doesn't quite go anywhere. 

Relius was 'conveniently' absent, which does seem suspicious.  

@valiantarcher I finally finished The Ill-Made Mute, and have moved on to Lady of Sorrows. There were a couple of descriptions of a wintery landscape in the last third of the first book that just hit like an atmospheric painting. And there was a cottage where the main characters found rest and refreshment that was straight out of a fairy tale. An argument could be made that it's trying to do something similar to the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy; but I still don't know what's up with our heroine, if she's just lost and confused because the reader doesn't know the world and needs to be caught up to speed on all the lore and customs, or if there's a plot thread down there that I have yet to grasp.

Another recent read was In the Study with the Wrench, the second installment in Diana Peterfreund's Clue mysteries. I'm pretty sure she's doing several clever things as she rotates through the narrators and I think she does an excellent job of weaving familiar motifs from the board game through the stories. 

Posted by: @valiantarcher

fantasia, have you gotten Man of the Family from the library yet?

Not only did I check it out, I read through it in two days. I can't say that I liked it better or worse than Father and I Were Farmers. It simply flowed from one book to the next without stopping the story. The ending to the second book caught me completely off guard though. And I think it's interesting that the stories have both had

The Home Ranch is currently waiting for me to pick up at my local library. I did look up and see that it overlaps the same time period of Man of the Family. Is that correct for those of you who have read it? 

In other news, I'm currently reading through a book called Captain Nobody with my kids. This is the first book I've read to the kids that has elicited belly laughs from both of them. We're not done with it yet, but two thumbs up for the first 2/3 of it. 

Silent Bells Ch. 7 arrived last week. How far along is everybody on their copies? Last I saw everybody had stopped reading it due to life happening.  

@fantasia, yes, that is correct about where Home Ranch falls on the timeline.

I'm still on chapter 2 of Silent Bells; I stopped opening them because I haven't got around to getting the binder/holder system set up (mostly because I'm going to have to make the holders and I haven't quite wrapped my head around the materials needed) and I'm very invested in the idea of making it easy to read.  

@Mel, thanks for the update on The Ill-Made Mute! The Monster Blood Tattoo comparison is intriguing - but I would like to know if actually holds up. Is this series a trilogy?

@fantasia, I'm glad you got the book picked up and read (and enjoyed it)! Like Mel, I'm still back on Chapter 2 of The Silent Bells - I just need screw up my courage to slit the sticker holding it together. I did receive up to Chapter 7, though it bugs me that it is sometimes they are addressed to "Or current resident" - it makes me nervous about the possibility of missing chapters if I move at some point (which is not unlikely).

I left it out of the last post, but I also recently read Tolkien's translation of three medieval poems: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo.
Sir Gawain is a story that I really like in theory, but have yet to actually read a version I like - the original has some nice lines, but also read rather long and just meandered through a lot of description.
Pearl, on the other hand, was a poem I had no familiarity with, but ended up finding rather interesting. It's about a father coming to terms with the death of his young daughter through a dream and is actually mostly a theological treatise in poetry. The perspective is medieval Catholicism, but disagreements aside, I appreciated the approach and the rhyme scheme, not to mention some beautiful imagery.
Sir Orfeo is a medieval version of Orpheus and Eurydice; I enjoyed the story and the poem structure. The description of how Heurodis finds out she's about to be carried off by the fairy king bore a strong resemblance to how Ramandu's Daughter was attacked by the Lady of the Green Kirtle; I wonder if it was an influence?

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, have you gotten to read any George MacDonald? And what Christmas books are you planning to read this year? I agree on Bond's writing not being as smooth as it could be, but I'm glad you thought the Crown & Covenant series was worth reading.

No, I haven't, but I am going to plan to read one. I was reading really consistently until the week before Thanksgiving, I ended up only finishing a few books in November and only one of those was a full length book (Fire Storm by Nancy Mehl). It was a lousy month for reading.

Christmas books...mainly just the short kids books from the family collection and maybe a few from the library. As usual I would like to read One Shenandoah Winter by Davis Bunn or Pony Express Christmas by Sigmund Brouwer, but I have several library books in progress right now and I am not getting through them very quickly. I may just skip the other library books and read the Christmas books instead. Why do I feel like I've said this before?

My mom read the Ralph Moody books to my siblings and I when we were kids in between '06-'08 and I've read them myself more than once, @fantasia, but it has been a few years. I know I enjoyed some more than others, however I don't remember which ones at the moment. That is another series I would like to read again.

Re Silent Bells: I got chapter 7 earlier this week and surprisely chapter 8 arrived today...and I realized I never finished reading chapter 6 a while back. I hope to read both chapters this weekend which I could be doing if I wasn't on here.  

SnowAngel

@SnowAngel, sorry to hear November wasn't a good month for reading - I hope December is going better!
Hurrah for receiving Chapter 8! I keep expecting it in my mailbox now.

I am now partway through the WWII section in War Letters - there seems to have been an increase in the number of letters that are followed by a note saying the author was killed days, weeks, months later in battle. One of the letters without that note, though, was by an American nurse and it recounted the German bombing of her hospital ship as it was off the coast of Italy. I found that letter especially interesting because I'd read an account of the bombing in And If I Perish last year, so it was interesting to compare accounts.

 It turned out that Rhythm of War HAS come in at the library, and the first round of checkouts are underway; I'm now hold #6 on 10 copies, so it's POSSIBLE I will get it before the end of the year.

I just finished reading A Christmas Carol for the first time in years. I have to say I'm surprised how many little lines from the book were preserved in some of my favorite film versions. (And not just dialogue, but descriptions that are used either as dialogue or narration.) I have to say that I am sorry I haven't made more of a habit of rereading this one. Even though so much of it is familiar (almost too familiar at this point), I found that returning to the original was a rekindling of a sort in my own Christmas spirit.

That is so cool, stwin! I also finished a re-read of A Christmas Carol. I try to read it every few years at Christmas. What a fabulous tale, which never ceases to move me. Such a way with words Dickens had. My copy was my paternal grandfather's—a beautiful old hardcover with that nostalgic old book smell. Grandpa wrote his name in the inside front cover in 1907, when he was a teenager. There is no publication year in this edition.

I finished my biennial read of The Lord of the Rings a few weeks ago. ♥ Now I'm digging into the Appendices.

Aside from these, I have been reading some good biographies throughout the pandemic, with more in my To-Read pile, which I am eagerly anticipating.  

@valiantarcher, I've finished the second book in the Ill-Made Mute trilogy (yup, of course it's a trilogy ) where the overarching plot was finally revealed. I'm now working my way through the final installment.

One of the strengths of the writing is that the author is really good at drawing elaborate and atmospheric settings--they're the verbal equivalents of, say, a Thomas Cole painting. But it's a lot like walking down a museum corridor, looking at the different paintings, and noticing that most of them happen to have the same person somewhere in the composition. I think there was a deliberate choice to make the characterizations more fairy-tale level, which enhances the distance between the reader and the characters, but it also gives the whole thing a strong sense that things aren't happening out of frame, that they only exist as long as the viewpoint character is there to look at them, despite narrative evidence to the contrary.

I don't think I'm going to end up recommending the series as a story, (just look at how long it's taking me to read it, and it's not as much of a doorstop as say, Mistborn...) but I can certainly see myself returning again in another ten years or so, just because of the strength of some of the moments and images.

(We have a swan maiden who is A Lot, because she is an unwilling ally. It's very cool. And we had a part-Selkie host who couldn't cross running fresh water, and yet thought it was his duty to try for his guests... There are so many neat concepts that are barely included!)

@shastastwin and @Jo, I just finished reading A Christmas Carol and feel in very good company. Only, it was my first read (and long overdue - though I've been in and listened to and watch adaptations for as long as I can remember). I agree that, although it is very familiar, the original has some wonderful bits and details that are missed in adaptations.

I have to say I'm surprised how many little lines from the book were preserved in some of my favorite film versions.

Yes! And, it's a bit of a stretch, but when I read the passage where Dickens was describing all the fruits and vegetables in the store windows and talking about winking onions and blushing plums, all I could think was that the singing produce in The Muppet Christmas Carol was spot-on.

Thanks for the update on The ll-Made Mute, @Mel! The setting does sound lovely, but too bad that very little gets flushed out. Looking forward to hearing your final thoughts after finishing!