Any other Ashtown Burials fans excited for the long awaited release of the final chapters of The Silent Bells? Such a lovely email to find in my inbox this spring morning.   Now to see if I can also get my missing chapter. I think I might finish the books I'm currently reading and then do a read through of the series to get ready for new chapters.  

This past week I read the Old California series by Stephen Bly, another series I had not read for ages. I was going to read Cheney and Shiloh: the Inheritance series (by Gilbert Morris and Lynn Morris) next, but then one of my sisters mention something about this series and I realized it had been an awfully long time since I read it. The first book, Red Dove of Monterey, has the best plot and characters in the series, but I like all three books.

I think I'll read through Cheney and Shiloh: the Inheritance series before probably moving on to Ashtown Burials by N.D. Wilson.

@waggawerewolf27, I have read Great Expectations before (it was my first Dickens), but I don't remember Madgewick with any amount of detail, I'm afraid.

The French fairy tales sound fun, @Col-Klink! I hope the semi-translations turn out well.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Persuasion, @Lucy85! Are you hoping to eventually read all of Austen's works?

I was a bit shocked by the email, @SnowAngel - I knew there was supposed to be news about it at some point, but I'd forgotten since it'd been so long since that last email. I hope you can get the missing chapter without too much trouble (I had to get one I was missing too); maybe once the new chapters start coming in consistently, I'll actually read the older ones too - or maybe I'll wait until I have the last one, just to be sure it's actually happening. XD
You also finally nudged me to do a reread of the first five Love Comes Softly books. While I see some of the rough patches and imperfections better now as an adult, I also saw a number of things I appreciated that I didn't notice as a younger reader. I had a lot of fun overall and had to remind myself I didn't actually want to read the last three. Instead, I did a reread of A Woman Named Damaris (oh boy, a mixed bag but there's still something about it) and am eying a reread of A Gown of Spanish Lace (which I suspect will be similar) and perhaps a handful of other ones if I can track them down (I don't have access any more to all the ones I did when I was younger).

 Interestingly enough with the recent discussion, I recently read a collection of P.G. Wodehouse's letters and am currently working on a collection of Jane Austen's letters. The Wodehouse letters were well-edited and had a lot of helpful explanatory and biographical notes and were thus pretty easy to read. The Austen letters seem to have been edited for a more academic reader, or at least one who has a much more detail understanding of her life, family, friends, acquaintances, residences, etc. Ah well.

Posted by: @snowangel

Any other Ashtown Burials fans excited for the long awaited release of the final chapters of The Silent Bells? Such a lovely email to find in my inbox this spring morning.

I just filled out my form!!! Now I need to go dig out my previous newspapers to make sure I have them all. I'm not entirely sure where they even are.  

  @Valiant Archer

I have read Great Expectations before (it was my first Dickens), but I don't remember Magwitch with any amount of detail, I'm afraid.

Abel Magwitch was a major character from Great Expectations, set in about 1829.  Though he was a frightening character, Pip was kind to him and after serving time in New South Wales, he came back under another name, Provis, to repay Pip's kindness.

Wikipedia says: Compeyson argued that his escape was due to being terrorized by Magwitch. Consequently, his punishment was light, whereas Magwitch was put in irons, retried, and deported to New South Wales for life. Magwitch had a number of jobs in Australia, including that of a sheep farmer and stock breeder, and became rich. He never forgot Pip's kindness to him and decided to do something for the boy, in part because he reminded him of his lost daughter, who would have been about the same age as Pip. 

Abel Magwitch wasn't the only underworld character Charles Dickens put into his books, when, in Oliver Twist, Fearless Fagin appears as a secondary character, along with the Artful Dodger. 

According to Wikipedia, Fagin's character might be based on the criminal Ikey Solomon, who was a fence at the centre of a highly publicised arrest, escape, recapture, and trial.

This real-life transported convict to Van Diemen's Land in 1828 AD, has also been written about extensively by others, in particular, in Bryce Courtenay's Potato factory. Sometimes truth is more entertaining than fiction.  

I was wondering if anyone here has read the book Aslan’s Call: Finding Our Way to Narnia by Mark Eddy Smith. I have just received my own copy from one of Amazon’s sellers, and I am very pleased with this book about Narnia. It was published in 2005 at about the same time that the first Walden film was released. I recommend the book very highly. 🙂

I'm feeling a bit uncertain about my goal of 35 books this year at the moment. I read 20 books in 2023, and set myself a goal of 30 in 2024, which i only just reached, which is why i only increased my goal by five books this year. Goodreads had assured me i was only one book behind schedule, having just finished Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, but a quick check shows it's counting a couple of my books twice, as i read them on my Kindle and marked them as finished, then marked a different edition as read on Goodreads as well. I'm not sure how to fix that.

Anyway, more book-specific stuff! I see we have some Dickens discussion going on in the thread, and i wonder if anyone else has read Our Mutual Friend? It's one of my top two Dickens so far -- i'm not sure if i like it better than Bleak House, which is one of the re-reads on my list for this year, but it's definitely a close contest. 

Re: Fagin above -- in-between the writing of Oliver Twist and Our Mutual Friend, Dickens was apparently surprised to discover that Jewish people were not fond of his portrayal of Fagin, and in addition to rewriting the character to make him less offensively an antisemitic stereotype, wrote the much more positive character of Aaron Riah in Our Mutual Friend, and took antisemitism to task much the same way he did other social injustices.

I'm in the midst of reading Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest Hunger Games prequel, and i'm afraid it's going to be my least favorite of the bunch. If i had to put my finger on it, i think it's the pacing. That's never been Collins' strongpoint, in my estimation, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes kind of struggled with it as well. Some of the references to the main series make me raise an eyebrow, but it's not awful. I'll probably finish it, at least, but i don't know that i'll hold onto it afterwards.

I only read two non-fiction books last year, and while i still prefer fiction, my intentions to read more are off to a good start, as the first two books i read were What If and What If 2, by Randall Munroe. I recommend both to anyone who likes mixing science and humor, and while Munroe's webcomic xkcd occasionally includes adult content, his books (at least these ones) do not. 

Posted by: @valiantarcher

...am eying a reread of A Gown of Spanish Lace (which I suspect will be similar) 

Oh, my, have I got a story about the first time my little brother read A Gown of Spanish Lace...he skipped the diary parts (thought they were boring/not essential) and didn't realize until much later how essential they were to the plot. He couldn't figure out how the plot worked out or why most of the siblings liked the book...it was only once a discussion occurred with siblings that he realized he had skipped the vital details in his hurry to read the book.  

So glad you enjoyed reading Love Comes Softly again too.  

The more I think about The Silent Bells the more I'm still not sure I quite believe it is really happening...again. It has been over three and half years since the chapter 15 was released.  

@fantasia, I stashed mine in a very safe place too, I had to look multiple places before I found them again and they've been in the same place for nearly 4 years.  

Posted by: @arin

Goodreads had assured me i was only one book behind schedule, having just finished Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, but a quick check shows it's counting a couple of my books twice, as i read them on my Kindle and marked them as finished, then marked a different edition as read on Goodreads as well. I'm not sure how to fix that.

Oh. I've had that problem several times too, very frustrating. It's usually a duplicate read date and to remove it you have to open the review for the book and delete the extra set of reading dates. If goodreads has shelved two editions, you should be able to delete one from your read shelf.

I like to read a few short kids books when I get behind on my goal for the year, then it doesn't feel so much like falling behind, more like revisiting long enjoyed short stories. I nearly always fall behind at some point in the year, so this way I have the pleasure of reading a few books that I haven't read for ages. I'm actually a bit behind right now myself and am eyeing a couple books that belonged to my grandparents.  

I'm reading Where Two Seas Met, a few minor details are annoying me this time around that I didn't remember from previous readings. It's annoying me for two reasons, one it doesn't fit the character development from the original series and two it's very modern and therefore doesn't fit the time period of the books and characters. I wonder if I just didn't linger over the plot as long when reading the books before and so didn't even notice the minor inconsistences or if they really are only annoying to grownup me. For the most part it doesn't affect the main plot points of this book. But I'm wondering if I will enjoy the final two Cheney and Shiloh books as much as I had before.  

I read Our Mutual Friend for the first time last year. There's a lot I love about it but it's not my favorite Dickens book. The story is split up into four parts (Book I, Book II, etc.) and the first one was mostly just setting up the multitudinous (even for Dickens) subplots which barely seemed to relate to each other. I found that rather frustrating. But in Book II I got hooked and I stayed hooked for the rest of it (though the book has something of an infamously controversial ending, and I've got say I'm one the people's uncomfortable with it.) Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam are two of my favorite Dickensian heroines though I question their taste in men. 

Posted by: @col-klink

I read Our Mutual Friend for the first time last year. There's a lot I love about it but it's not my favorite Dickens book. The story is split up into four parts (Book I, Book II, etc.) and the first one was mostly just setting up the multitudinous (even for Dickens) subplots which barely seemed to relate to each other. I found that rather frustrating. But in Book II I got hooked and I stayed hooked for the rest of it (though the book has something of an infamously controversial ending, and I've got say I'm one the people's uncomfortable with it.) Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam are two of my favorite Dickensian heroines though I question their taste in men. 

I was a bit discomfited by the lack of one single driving story question, with the question of John Harmon's murder

Our Mutual Friend is unusual for Dickens in that it has so many characters whom we're not sure are good guys or bad guys. 

Recently, I was part of an online reading group that went through all of Dickens's books in the order they were published. I even got to write some articles for it. 

https://wreninkpaper.com/author/theadaptationstationmaster/

I also recently read Twilight Land by Howard Pyle. It's a collection of original folktales. Well...sort of. They're technically new stories but they're mostly or entirely made of taking parts of different fairy tales and combining them. (Jim Henson's The Storyteller is rather similar.) I'd previously read Pyle's The Wonder Clock which was the same thing. I think of the two, I prefer Wonder Clock because the stories were less formulaic. Of course, folk tales are formulaic by design but it's weirdly specific how many of the stories in Twilight Land are about foolish young men who throw away their opportunities. Nevertheless, I enjoyed both books very much. Now I've got to read Pyle's third such book Pepper and Salt or Seasoning for Young Folk. Sadly, it's the shortest of them. 

I haven't read Aslan's Call, @narnian78, but glad you enjoyed it.

That miscounting of your books on Goodreads sounds frustrating, @Arin! I hope you can get it sorted out. And it's good to hear you have already found a couple of enjoyable non-fiction books this year.

Oh my, @SnowAngel! So your brother finished A Gown of Spanish Lace without finding out the final resolution of that major plot point? How did he think it was resolved (or did he think it wasn't at all?)?
I am not holding my breath about The Silent Bells, but it does seem a bit more hopeful than it has been for a while.

Interesting about Pyle's remixed (for lack of a better term) fairy tale collections, @Col-Klink! Hope you enjoy the third one in the series.

I did go ahead and reread A Gown of Spanish Lace - I had forgotten how highly dramatic it was. It also seemed to struggle in its pacing and felt like it could've used maybe another pass on editing. But I feel like I had a better grasp on the outlaw gang plot this time thanks to knowing more about that general history know than I did when I was younger, and I had a fun time overall.
I am still working through Jane Austen's letters and apparently I am not a big enough fan of hers to be reading them, as it often feels like more of a drudge than a joy. However, I am just about halfway through the letters and I feel like I'm getting a bit more into the swing of it, so hopefully the second half will go by faster.

@Arwenel Re: Fagin above -- in-between the writing of Oliver Twist and Our Mutual Friend, Dickens was apparently surprised to discover that Jewish people were not fond of his portrayal of Fagin, and in addition to rewriting the character to make him less offensively an antisemitic stereotype, wrote the much more positive character of Aaron Riah in Our Mutual Friend, and took antisemitism to task much the same way he did other social injustices.

Hi Arwenel,

Thank you for that reference to another Charles Dickens book, you say, has a positive Jewish character. I might well borrow it from the library, if they have it in stock.  

Fearless Fagin, most likely based on the very real Vandemonian convict, Ikey Solomon, undeniably Jewish, but also undeniably one of the more colourful of my Vandemonian ancestors' compatriots, is hardly the only anti-Semitic depiction in English literature. Take the Jewish protagonist in Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, set in French Revolution times, & which was also part of my English studies at school. Unlike my favourite Charles Dickens novel which happens to be A Tale of Two Cities, another French Revolutionary tale. It is nice to hear that Great Expectations' Magwitch & Our Mutual Friend puts a bit of balance into Charles Dickens' work. Mischievously I ask, has anyone ever read Marcus Clarke's "For the term of his natural life", I wonder?  

Posted by: @valiantarcher

Oh my, @SnowAngel! So your brother finished A Gown of Spanish Lace without finding out the final resolution of that major plot point? How did he think it was resolved (or did he think it wasn't at all?)?
I am not holding my breath about The Silent Bells, but it does seem a bit more hopeful than it has been for a while.

I'm honestly not sure how he thought the plot worked out.  

I finally got a response about my missing chapter, so maybe chapter 16 will actually be reality next month.  

I am not enjoying the second to last Cheney and Shiloh book, The Moon By Night. It has a much darker plot than other books in the series and the character development is not as good either, so overall I am ready to be done with this one and move onto something else. I am kind of wishing I had just skipped the last two books, it's been so long since I last read them I didn't remember the quality of the series tanked that much.  

I guess it is okay to talk about magazines here in the book thread.  I don’t know if anyone else here subscribed to Lighthouse Digest magazine.  The magazine has recently stopped publishing and apparently is going out of business.  If you are interested in lighthouses it is definitely worth browsing through the old issues about lighthouse history. It is very sad that this magazine will no longer be published since it offered so much intriguing maritime history. I subscribed to it for over twenty years, and I will certainly miss it.  🙁