Ok! I just finished my online acquaintance's first novel. Having confirmed there isn't any content that is particularly outside the NW rules I can go ahead and name-drop it. It is Insignia: Scars of Lumierna by Kelsea Koops. 

Upsides: I got really fond of a number of the characters, and the premise tickled my fancy. Also the author illustrated with her own sketches, which I thought was neat!

Downsides: the main character's introduction felt like it was trying too hard to make me sorry for him, which naturally meant I took a minute coming around to liking him out of rebellion. Also there were a few instances of awkward typos and misplaced punctuation missed by her editor, which took me out of the flow of the story whenever they happened. 

Neutral: she made me curious about her worldbuilding, and I'm not sure she will fulfill that curiosity instead of leaving it at hints?

@silverlily Are you give your acquaintance the feedback? It'd be interesting to read your opinion of her revised version. Of course, you'll know the story then, so you won't be able to tell what it would have been like for a newcomer to read the improved draft. 

....it's already in print.... I'm not sure if pointing out errors would be useful at this point... unless they could be trouble-shot for the next edition??? 

@Arin, I really don't know anything about the "secret novels" but Tress is the only one I know the title of. Will it/the rest be printed on paper too, do you know?

@SnowAngel, congrats on getting Wraith finished! Did the last sibling make it through as well?

Congrats on finishing, @Silverlily! It was interesting to read your thoughts - sounds like there's some good there (and I hear you on reacting the wrong way to characters out of spite/obstinacy ). Maybe you could just mention to the author that you saw a few typos/grammatical errors and ask if would be helpful to share the instances for future printings? That's a hard spot to be in, though!

@valiantarcher -- Yep, they're all getting print releases. At some point i should be getting a copy -- hardcover, i think, which i'm really looking forward to, assuming the art is included. It's quite lovely.

So i had to return most of the books i've checked out without finishing them. I've been a bit too distracted with other things. I will probably give some of them another try, once things settle down around here; assuming they ever do. I did finish two more Ngaio Marsh books, so i've now read the first four in her Inspector Allen series. If anyone's curious, in order that's A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder and Death in Ecstasy.

I definitely liked the second two more, though still not on Agatha Christie's level, or even Dorothy Sayers. I'm not really sure what improved, either. Part of me wants to sit down, maybe read the books again and try to nail down what it is i liked or didn't, but the rest of me thinks that sounds way too hard. At any rate, i liked them enough that i'll probably read at least a few more Marsh mysteries. As a genre, i think mysteries are actually pretty good as "light" reading. So if anyone has any other mystery authors to suggest, i'd be interested.

A more modern detective would be appreciated, though. Like with Sayers, in a Marsh mystery i sometimes feel like i'm missing half the implications with all the 1920s Britishisms sailing right over my head. 

With the Little House books it may have been possible to make big screen movies or a miniseries for television. But it was decided to make a weekly TV series instead.  I don’t know what the reason for that was.  Perhaps network executives thought the series would make more money since the show would be broadcast for a much longer time. The Little House on the Prairie TV show was at least as popular as the books and was very well liked. I think it was a bit sentimental at times and less realistic than the book, but it was still very enjoyable for the acting and stories. Many people don’t seem to mind that stories which Laura Ingalls Wilder never wrote were often made up to be used for the scripts on the TV show. I don’t know if they would have liked that so much if it were done with adapting another author’s books.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, congrats on getting Wraith finished! Did the last sibling make it through as well?

Yeah, they all made it through, but just barely. We'll have to do better checking with the library in the future when we interlibrary loan a book that so many of us want to read. The three week clock started ticking on this book before we picked it up. 

I finished The Wound of Words. And I read Elysium Tide by James R. Hannibal. Trying to get back to reading more this week I have been way off on my reading lately. I had fun reading both books, although life has been very distracting and I'm having a hard time remembering what I liked about each book.   I should have written down what I liked about them as soon as I finished each book.

On that note, I am reading Do More Better by Tim Challies and I picked back up a mystery I had started in December. Going to try finishing what I had already started before digging into my 2023 reading list.

SnowAngel

Posted by: @snowangel

I am reading Do More Better by Tim Challies

One of my favourite living authors! I just finished his recent Seasons of Sorrow: the pain of loss and the comfort of God, which is heart-wrenching and deeply hopeful, concurrently. I was acquainted with Tim back in the 1990s, when he was the I.T. guy for the book/music store at which I was working verrry part-time, as in 4-8 hours/week. Who would have 'thunk' it back then that Tim's writings (both his books and his blog) would have such a huge influence on my life years later?!  

@jo While I haven't read any of Tim Challies's books, I remember reading a blog post of his about a crazy Amazon.com review of what was then his most recent work. (Why was I reading his blog if I wasn't interested in his books? It's hard to remember exactly, but this has stuck with me.) He didn't say much in the post about the review except that he was confused by it. I'm grateful to him for that since it made reading the actual thing that much more entertaining. Here it is. 

The author attempts at transcending pseudointellectualism but is unable to discern what constitutes orthodox Christian spirituality and his own distorted, incomplete psychological development and off-putting androgyne tendencies. There was a distinct lack of appropriately masculine tone to the whole book sure to alienate those orthodox Christians who still believe in a “manly Christianity” instead of the New-Age, gnostic, nihilist revision of Jesus. Overall, the theology reminds one of a limp-wristed, liberalized neo-deism with heavy doses of left-wing psychology. In all harshness, a most infelicitous theological scribbling by a liberal solipsist confusing his own mentality with that of normative Christianity. There is definite potential in this author if he outgrows the comfortable belief-systems of liberal-modernity he is still unconsciously enshackled to in his personality.

Addendum: Confusing one’s own ego with revelatory capacity is the fall of religion. This is a common symptom among today’s “post-modern” Christians–the insipid, bloodless psychological atmosphere of little boys self-complacently playing video games, little girls playing tea-party, or, the air of laid-back coffee-houses, rather than the harsh tragedian desert where Jesus taught a new revolutionary way of self-denial and self-sacrifice. A person can read a book and tell whether the author has tasted noble suffering or whether the author has led a modernist consumerist life of easy self-contentedness and egocentric domesticity; whether they use their intellect to play intellectual games or offer blood-bought truths, and nobly-endured suffering is the key to Christianity. The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon J. Podles comes highly recommended in this context.

I am reading lots of things. Now that I've finished Insignia I'm back to bouncing around my giant in-progress pile...

@arin, that's good to hear on the secret novels - thanks! I know Adeona and some others have greatly enjoyed Ngaio Marsh's books, but I disliked the only one I read by her enough to pretty much scare me off the rest of her books. I feel like I should be able to recommend some mystery authors to you but I actually don't seem to have read many lately.

Glad everyone made it through the book okay in the end, @SnowAngel! What mystery are you reading?

Hope you're making some headway on the in-progress stack, @Silverlily! Anything you're particularly enjoying?

I am currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time. We'll see how it ends up, but my current thought right now is how much better the book would be if the protagonist spent less time working out elaborate schemes of revenge and more time working out elaborate schemes of benevolence.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Glad everyone made it through the book okay in the end, @SnowAngel! What mystery are you reading?

I am currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time. We'll see how it ends up, but my current thought right now is how much better the book would be if the protagonist spent less time working out elaborate schemes of revenge and more time working out elaborate schemes of benevolence.

I got the first four books in of those Annie's fiction series, Annie's Secrets of the Quilt, for $4 at a bookstore in November. And I just finished book 2 Decadent Deceit by DeAnna Julie Dodson. I bought them because I like the Drew Farthering Mysteries also by DeAnna Julie Dodson, but under her pen name Julianna Deering. The series has been okay, I am not really a fan of the split-time thing. I'm going to read the other 2 books and then probably remove them from my shelves.

One of my sisters loves The Count of Monte Cristo. The first time she read it, it was all she talked about for days and she always wanted to talk about the murders at mealtime.  

SnowAngel

Part of my book collection is Children's Classics. It includes the original Winnie The Pooh books, 3 Mary Poppins ones, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Many of them are secondhand, but several are hardbacks.
Some are also part of the 'Children in Theatre' books that I love, and continue to read as 'comfort reading' especially before going to sleep. Does anyone else have comfort books, old friends that leave you feeling safe and cosy?

I have just finished re-reading one by Kitty Barnes, 'Family Footlights'. It's similar to, but better than, some by Noel Streatfeild (who wrote 'Ballet Shoes'). Four siblings spend a (surprisingly long!) winter holiday in an unfamiliar small town, with an unknown aunt, while their parents are away. It's the late 1930s, so the young boy from Austria (a talented musician) who now lives with his aunt (the domestic help where they are staying) could well have been written as a political refugee. The boy is a talented violinist, but the two violins he was bringing have been held by the UK Customs. They discuss putting on a play to raise money to buy him one.  Major characters are the aunt, her dog, her writer friend (who has a play ready to perform!), and his friend who is conveniently a London producer. I love going back and reading the descriptions in this book.

I'm a confessed sentimental, nostalgic, and theatre-minded person. Perhaps these books give me a childhood that I never had? Perhaps they take me to places and adventures I have missed?
But aren't stories supposed to do that?

@valiantarcher I do have some I'm particularly enjoying, but a number of them either have tricky content issues or I'm early enough in my reading I'm not sure whether they shall or not... I should probably report back as I go.

For Christmas, I got a copy of the complete fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (translated by Jean Hersholt.) Fans of C. S. Lewis may be interested that one obscure story, The Child in the Grave, is thematically similar to The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces. 

Since it's not a famous story, it's doubtful C. S. Lewis read it, but the connections to The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces are so obvious that it's hard not to wonder.