@valiantarcher, I only read the last three books in the Love Comes Softly series this time because it had been so long and I did want to say I read the whole series again...not really a great reason, but that's it. I was super annoyed reading them that Drew didn't get better character development and Belinda really just isn't that interesting even if you try to read them quickly.  

I was disappointed with the Dashiell Hammett book, I really like the Continental Op stories, but this set of short stories was hit and miss...mostly misses. Although I really enjoyed a few of the stories, I don't think I will be keeping it. However reading it did make me want to read the Continental Op stories yet again, even thought it actually hasn't been that long since I read most of them (summer 2022).

I rearranged some of my bookshelves, so I've been working on a small stack of westerns that I pulled from my larger stack of unread books. I enjoyed the first two (Savage Range by Luke Short and The Dude by Max Brand), I started a third one by yet another author, but I don't think I will finishing it. I'm finding the westerns I like best are ones that were written before the 60s/70s (unless they're Christian fiction), lots of duds in the 70s ones I've tried reading. Will not be picking up anymore even if they're a bargain which the ones I've tried were from a bag sale.

I've returned to reading the Stonewall Jackson bio, if I read 10 pages a day I will finish it this month. Also continuing to read  Haunted Cosmos, it's excellent.

Oh, ha, that makes me feel a bit better about not liking the last three books either, @SnowAngel. But too bad about the Dashiell Hammett book and the 70s western books (even if it's nice to be able to get a book off your shelves). Did rearranging your shelves provide any more space or just help you sort through some of the books you have?

I finished my reread of The Shadow of the Bear and have made it through one and part of a second of the Chesterton short story collections (both rereads, though the first one I hadn't remembered until I started it). I'm hoping to start a reread of Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen and do a first read of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens soon, though. I've also gotten a few more books knocked off my to-read shelf and everything is back to fitting on one shelf! I just need to keep at it a little more before the next major opportunity to buy books comes up soon.

Nicholas Nickleby is actually one of my favorite books. I hope that doesn't raise anyone's hopes for it too high though. My opinion on the book isn't universally held. A lot of people consider it an "immature work." But the things they criticize, like the stark division between good and bad characters, are honestly part of its appeal for me. 

Maybe it's because I first encountered the story when I was nineteen like Nicholas and it was great seeing a guy my age be a hero, take care of his family and stand up to bullies. 

I'm a lifelong reader whose education included lots of Dickens and Austen, but who also loves kids' classics and previously read books.
I try to make myself read new books, as it takes a bit more brainpower to get into them and think about the people and the world they inhabit. I'm proud to say I just finished a murder mystery that's been on my shelf for nearly two years (bought from second hand sale at library). I've also started reading another series recommended by a friend; had to buy first two on Kindle as our local library didn't have them. (has anyone read "Her Royal Spyness"?)

@Col-Klink, that's good to hear about why you love Nicholas Nickleby! I don't have strong expectations for it, just hoping it'll be a fun or interesting enough read.

@coracle, congrats on finishing the mystery after a couple of years! Was it any good? I have heard of Her Royal Spyness before, but I don't think I know much besides the name.

@valiantarcher

I only started it recently. It was sitting waiting for me to begin. 

 

I have read Nicholas Nickleby now and have just started my reread of Pride and Prejudice. @Col-Klink, you'll happy to hear I did enjoy it quite a bit! With your comment about it being an earlier work, I could see some of its flaws (there were several side plots that really didn't seem to have much weight or tie in as well and some of the characters were not as well-developed as I expected) but it was still a good time. I appreciated Nicholas's sense of honour and justice and liked how Kate mirrored him in those as well, and the brothers Cheeryble were splendid. I also thought Newman Noggs, Tim Linkinwater, and Miss La Creevy were well-done side characters. I'd actually seen an adaptation years back, but didn't remember much about it, so it was interesting to have the book jog a few memories from the adaptation - but not enough to make me confident about how exactly things tied up (though I did remember most of the major items).

I've gotten the urge to reread Sense and Sensibility lately. I like the book a lot though I feel like it should have been shorter and faster paced. I'm always ready for it to be over long before the last chapter.

But I do enjoy the humor, and I really like the characters of Elinor and Marianne and their relationship, how they always disagree and rag on each other but if you mess with Elinor, you mess with Marianne and vice versa. And as an introvert, I appreciate how the book satirizes annoyingly social people like Sir John Middleton, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, etc. 

I don't really get why some readers consider Edward Ferrars to be a boring character.

In his banter with Marianne, he's quite witty and there's his angst over his evil mother to make him interesting. I wouldn't call him one of the greatest literary characters ever or anything, but I don't find him boring. 

It recently occurred to me that Neil Postman's comparison of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley kind of applies to Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Dickens feared that what we fear will ruin us. Austen feared that what we desire will ruin us. I'm much more of a Dickens fan than an Austen fan but I feel like her message is more what people need to hear nowadays. 

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Did rearranging your shelves provide any more space or just help you sort through some of the books you have?

My bookcase definitely looks neater, but it doesn't really have extra space...three of the five shelves on the bookcase have two rows on each. I did move three westerns into the stack to get rid of plus the Dashiell Hammett book, I'm currently keeping two of the westerns I've read this year. The only problem with going through the paperbacks is they are so small they don't clear much shelf space.  

I'm down to less than 50 pages left in the Stonewall Jackson biography which has been off the shelf so long I filled in the space where it belongs. Earlier this week I enjoyed reading Jackson's view on chaplains and their importance. It will be nice to complete reading the book and get it back on the shelf, but also a little sad since it ends with Jackson's death.

For fiction, I started reading through another series that I have been wanting to read again for what seems like ages, but I hadn't...the Cheney Duvall M.D. series by Gilbert Morris and Lynn Morris. I read book one, The Stars For A Light, in just over two days and I'm so delighted to reading about Cheney and Shiloh again. I remember the first book I ever read in the series was In The Twilight, In The Evening when I was 12 and Scarlet and I got it from the library. I have very fond memories of tracking down the rest of the series (and the sequel series) and sharing them with my sisters. Also just realized that I had started to read the series again a few years ago, only read The Stars For A Light before getting sidetracked with library books...and that "few years" was six.  

Anyway I quickly moved onto and then through book two, Shadow of the Mountains, not one of my favorites, but I will not skip a book about Cheney and Shiloh when I've got my hands on the whole series.    I'll probably start book three, A City Not Forsaken, this evening.

So neat you enjoyed Nicholas Nickleby, @valiantarcher. I tried to read it a couple years ago, but only made it a third of the way through before it had to go back to the library and I wasn't enjoying it enough to make me want to finish it at the time. I think one of these days I might give it a try again, I really hate not finishing books.

Sense and Sensibility is ranked in the lower half of Austen's books for me, but you're making me think perhaps I should give it another try sometime, @Col-Klink.

Ah well, @SnowAngel. That's true about paperbacks not taking up much room anyhow, but congrats on being able to weed out a few anyhow! How are you coming along with your reread of the Morris series? I find I often get distracted partway through rereads of series and it takes a concerted effort to actually complete one.
I hope you get a chance to finish Nicholas Nickleby some day (and that you enjoy it)! I often find Dickens slow going and try to strategically plan starting his books for times when I will have a good chunk of time in which I can read, so that I can get far enough to be engaged before other things distract (one recent exception was A Tale of Two Cities, partially because it was a shorter Dickens).

 I finished my reread of Pride and Prejudice; I struggled a bit with it in the beginning, which was a surprise, but I really got going and had fun once I got about a quarter of the way in.

 I also went to a book sale recently and came out with quite a large number of books. Thankfully, not all were for me and I've only filled my "to-read" shelves back up to about 2/3rds of the second shelf. Books for me include Tolkien's translation of Beowulf, letter collections for both Tolkien and P. G. Wodehouse, and Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens.

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Ah well, @SnowAngel. That's true about paperbacks not taking up much room anyhow, but congrats on being able to weed out a few anyhow! How are you coming along with your reread of the Morris series? I find I often get distracted partway through rereads of series and it takes a concerted effort to actually complete one.

I'm really enjoying the Cheney Duvall M.D. series, such a fun trip down memory lane. I read Toward The Sunrising over the weekend and now I'm nearly done with Secret Place of Thunder, these two are probably the best in the series or at least my favorites. I love how Cheney and Shiloh visit so many places and yet the series plot flows from book to book really well. I'm looking forward to reading the last three books and seeing if it's as good as I think it is.  

I finished the Stonewall Jackson biography and it's now back in its place on my bookshelves. It was excellent. And I'm down to the final two chapters in Haunted Cosmos, I've enjoyed reading it...I think I like the chapters written by Brian Sauvé a little better than ones by Ben Garrett.

I've already got another nonfiction library book thanks to my little sis, I'm going to read 1453 by Roger Crowley next. It's about the fall of Constantinople, a nice light topic.  

Has anyone here read Welcome to Lizard Motel by Barbara Feinberg? It's a memoir that's largely how depressing she found a lot of the award-winning kids’ books her son was assigned to read in school, like Walk Two Moons and Bridge to Terabithia.

Now I was a weird kid who gravitated more toward classic books and award winners than toward whatever was popular with my peers. And many of those classics and award winners, like the Narnia books, had relatively dark and dramatic stuff in them, so my automatic instinct is to defend the books Feinberg criticizes and talk about how we shouldn’t shield kids from reality and yadda yadda. But she makes a really good argument, mainly that kids don’t seem to actually enjoy those books. She polled her son’s classmates and either they thought those books were just OK or they disliked, even hated them. It seems like adults are the main ones who enjoy books like Walk Two Moons and Bridge to Terabithia. That's pretty consistent with my memories of childhood. I only gained an appreciation for depressing literature as I matured.

(Note: Feinberg's son, who hated those books, was really into comedy and he loved the standup routines of Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor that talked about dark, adult topics. When she asked him what the difference was, he said it was because the comedy was "funny." So she's not saying kids should never be exposed to serious or depressing issues.) 

Feinberg compares the young hero of the average award-winning children’s book these days with ones from older books. Huckleberry Finn, like many protagonists of those modern stories, comes from a terrible home and is an outcast from society. But Huck isn’t angsty or habitually miserable like they are. He enjoys his juvenile delinquency. He enjoys wearing raggedy clothing, being dirty, stealing food, playing by the river and being a stereotypical boy in general. Anne Shirley, who also comes from a bad situation, is much more of a drama queen and closer to the modern heroine of an award-winning kids’ book. But she also enjoys life. She enjoys fancy clothes (when she gets them), reading poetry, daydreaming, looking at flowers, and being a stereotypical girl in general. Notably, both characters enjoy the natural world. The books Feinberg criticizes have beautiful descriptions of nature, but they tend to sound something like this. “The woods were so beautiful they made me depressed.”

My interpretation of the authors Feinberg criticizes is a bit more charitable than hers. She seems to think they want kids to grow up really fast. I imagine it's because they were really angsty and depressed when they were kids, and they wanted to see their young selves represented on the page. But I also think she makes a good point. The books that most kids demonstrably gravitate towards, like Captain Underpants, tend to have more fun-loving protagonists. If the books teachers and librarians keep promoting are all gloom and doom, the message kids might get is "great literature and fun/joy are mutually exclusive." That's not good! 

I hope I'm not offending any fans of Bridge to Terabithia or Walk Two Moons. My memories of the first are that it was very well written, but I confess I've seldom, if ever, felt like rereading it. Anyway, I recommend Welcome to Lizard Motel. It's got a lot of interesting thoughts, not just on the kind of books that are assigned to kids, but on how society in general (in Feinberg's experience) seems to want kids to start thinking like adults as soon as possible. 

P.S.

If you read Sense and Sensibility again, ValiantArcher, I hope you enjoy it. 

I'm trying to clear out some books from library sales etc.

I've begun reading an historic novel from the time of Alfred the Great (9th century), with Anglo-Saxons and Danes, Christians and Pagans. Its called Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell. Has anyone read this or others by him? 

Posted by: @coracle

by Bernard Cornwell. Has anyone read this or others by him? 

Not this one, and I don't remember if I read any of them, but someone I knew really liked the Sharpe series, beginning with Sharpe's Eagle. Apparently, he liked writing historical fiction--there are other standalones, and more than one series, some written with his wife.

@coracle I'm unfamiliar with the author however I'm interested (as I'm sure many of us are) in the Medieval period so the setting sounds like something up my street. Let us know how you find it and if it's any good I'll add it to my TBR.