@mel Oh, I remember loving Dragonwings ! Some very interesting looks at cultural differences with the POV character as well. Pretty intense for young readers in some moments I think -- I remember older brother got mixed up in or in trouble with a local gang -- but very good and interesting writing. Honestly it's been long enough I might be down for a reread.

Posted by: @snowangel

I am also listening to R.C. Sproul: A Life by Stephen J. Nichols. A couple of my sisters read it via interlibrary loan, but I didn't get to it before it had to be returned. So I'm listening to it while I still have Hoopla from our previous library. I didn't realize until I started the book that's been quite a while since I "read" a full length biography that wasn't center around WWII. It's also reminding I received Chosen By God by R.C. Sproul for my birthday and I haven't read it...yet.

Wonderful! I have really wanted to read Nichols' book! I have not ordered it yet, but that is definitely on my list. Sproul was a fascinating man. What a legacy he left!

I don't think I mentioned in my previous post that I was also in the middle of reading Isaac's Storm: a man, a time, and the dealiest hurricane in history, which is the gripping, terrible account of the devastating Galveston, TX hurricane on September 8, 1900. Quite the intense and hard (emotionally) read! Recommended!

And I have just begun a re-read of the excellent Blood and Daring: how Canada fought the American civil war and forged a nation. Really, really good, and a book one cannot just breeze through; concentration is definitely necessary. John Boyko follows the intriguing stories of six contemporary characters during those years—John Anderson, William Henry Seward, Sarah Emma Edmonds, Jacob Thompson, George Brown, John A. Macdonald, alongside many other notable names. We were introduced to this biography in 2015, read it as soon as we laid our hands on a copy, and now it's time for a re-read. I learned SO much through this thorough telling.

@SnowAngel, glad you were pleasantly surprised by the book! It's such a weird feeling when that happens.
Do you find Nero Wolfe or the mysteries less compelling or the writing less engaging or something else you can define? I know at least one of my friends read and enjoyed the Rex Stout books and I have a vague notion I might've picked up one once, but I've never moved them high up on my reading list.

@Silverlily, good to see you pop back on! Been reading anything interesting of late?

@Jo, the book on the 1900 Galveston hurricane sounds intriguing!

I did indeed alternate between Patricia Wentworth's mysteries and P.G. Wodehouse for a couple of rounds until I finished them. I still have one unread book out from the library (a reread), but I'm hoping I can convince myself to read a few more books I own while I'm waiting for some holds to come in.

@valiantarcher I have been reading *lots* of things. Some of them very interesting in my opinion, a few of them probably not forum material though. 

One that I enjoyed pretty well that was more likely to be down the forum's alley was The Door At The End of the World by Caroline Carlson. It's an upper middle-grade or younger YA offering dealing with the adventures of a lesser beaurocrat in an interworld travel agency whose day has gone horribly wrong...

While I'm slowly reading the last few chapters of LOTR (for this year), I'm squeezing in a few more books that have been waiting. One is by Clarissa Dickson Wright, an interesting character, who has written lots of books on cookery, been the main person on at least two TV cooking programmes, and grew up in the upper class world of hunting, fishing, and socialising. She talks about enjoying wild and farmed game birds, racing greyhounds (coursing, with two dogs chasing one fast rabbit), and some of the interesting people she has met in her book signing, talks (in one southeast English town she was told that the Chairman of the local women's group would be there; she was amazed to be introduced to Queen Elizabeth).  Clarissa died several years ago, but she was one of those larger-than-life people. My sister loved one of her programmes in the 1990s, and when I had the chance to meet her and get a photo together at an outdoor stall in Edinburgh (for a small donation to charity), I sent the photo and a signature from Clarissa back to my sister. She framed the two items, and I now have them.

Does anyone remember how I was part of this online reading group going through every book by Charles Dickens? We've been doing Bleak House for a while now. We start the final section this week. It's not my favorite Dickens book but it is a favorite for several critics and fans, and it is a very interesting one. 

I actually got to write an article for the book club's site. Bleak House: The Anti-Dickensian Dickens Book? – All the (Dickensian) Year Round (wreninkpaper.com)

In between that (I've read the book more than once, so I usually finish each week's reading with time to spare), I've been diving into a couple of Sherlock Holmes novels. (I'd read a couple of the short stories a long time ago and remember liking them.) I enjoyed them but I admit I also found my mind wandering quite a bit, While Arthur Conan Doyle's prose is good, I don't love it the way I do Dickens's and I'm not a huge fan of "pure" mystery stories. I gravitate more towards stories where the mystery is one element among many, that being said, if I were a fan of mystery novels, I'd love A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Though be warned, if you're a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the first one will offend you.) I'd seen the Wishbone adaptation of the second one and I wondered if knowing the culprit's identity would ruin the experience for me. It really didn't. At least, I don't think it did. I can't really say what my experience would have been if I hadn't watched that Wishbone episode but having watched it, I was still gripped. Well, once the suspects started piling up and the story got going anyway. 

I just ordered Past Watchful Dragons by Walter Hooper since I have not been able to find the book at my local libraries. The book is mainly about Narnia and I am not so sure how much longer it will be in print.  Even though there was some controversy over Mr. Hooper’s publishing of The Dark Tower I think he was right in having it published.  I guess we will never know for certain whether all of the story is Lewis’, but I think everyone should read it. We can be always very grateful to Mr. Hooper for spending his lifetime in making so much of Lewis’ writing available to his readers. 🙂

@narnian78 Past Watchful Dragons is a very interesting book and well worth reading — I've had it since soon after I first read all the Chronicles and I've always particularly enjoyed the chapter on "Theological Parallels", as well as the intriguing "Lefay Fragment", which is clearly an early draft of the opening of The Magician's Nephew and focuses on Digory as a boy who can talk to animals and trees in our world, but who loses this power when he wilfully cuts a branch off a tree to help Polly build her raft. It does make one wonder where the story might have gone if Lewis had stuck with that plot. One theory I read about it a few years ago, incidentally, is that while most commentators have assumed that the "Lefay Fragment" was written after LWW and intended to be its sequel (that's what Hooper assumes as well), there's the possibility that Lewis started writing it before LWW, when he initially started getting the idea of writing a children's book, and then put it aside when he found that plot wasn't going anywhere. We'll most likely never know! But Past Watchful Dragons does give a very good general perspective on Lewis's creative processes and what he intended (and didn't intend!) to achieve with the Chronicles, and the last chapter, where Hooper gives a personal account of Lewis's last days and his death, always deeply moves me.

I hope you enjoy reading it and would be interested to hear any thoughts here once you've finished it!  

@courtenay 

l’m glad that I could still find it. Evidently the book is still read, but it is scarce in libraries. There was another companion guide to C. S. Lewis’ books and life by Walter Hooper that is now out of print and $82 for a hardcover copy. This book was easier to find and less expensive (around $20) but I don’t know how much longer it will be available.  I always wondered why out of print books are so expensive.

The Christian World of C. S. Lewis by Clyde S Kilby is another fine book about Lewis’ work and his Christian philosophy. I would highly recommend it especially to college students taking a C. S. Lewis course. It is definitely worth reading the older books about Lewis. 

Posted by: @narnian78

I always wondered why out of print books are so expensive.

Depends on the demand for them, I think. If they're relatively hard to come by and there are enough people looking for those particular titles or authors, sellers can start asking really silly money for them. I've seen classic children's books (Enid Blyton and so on), which we used to be able to get for 50c or less at op shops (Australian for charity shops) and second hand book stalls when I was little, going online for 3-figure or even 4-figure price tags, just because it's got about that they're "rare" and "collectors' items" and so on. Even for a first edition of something with a pristine dust jacket, that's excessive, but sometimes you see sellers trying to ask similar prices for a scruffy paperback!! But obviously there are people out there who are willing to pay that sort of money for old books, or else sellers wouldn't keep on charging like that...

 Posted by: @valiantarcher

@SnowAngel, glad you were pleasantly surprised by the book! It's such a weird feeling when that happens.
Do you find Nero Wolfe or the mysteries less compelling or the writing less engaging or something else you can define? I know at least one of my friends read and enjoyed the Rex Stout books and I have a vague notion I might've picked up one once, but I've never moved them high up on my reading list.

I did indeed alternate between Patricia Wentworth's mysteries and P.G. Wodehouse for a couple of rounds until I finished them.

I really liked the first Nero Wolfe book, the second one was just okay. I think the conclusions of the Perry Mason or Lord Peter mysteries are more satisfying and that the pacing of those stories is better. I would probably read more Nero Wolfe books at some point, but not until I have read the other Perry Mason and Lord Peter books I can get my hands.

Your recent reading reminds me of Scarlet's; she was reading Irene Hannon, then P.G. Wodehouse, followed by Steven James, and then back to Wodehouse.  

I had to read Bear Knight (Lightraider Academy #2) by James R. Hannibal before continuing on with my summer reading plans, little sis was dictating my fiction reading again with her interlibrary loans. I was the third sibling to read it, but not the last. It was a solid second book in the series, but I wish James Hannibal would not have add so many new characters, the series already had quite a few characters to keep track of/get to know.

Now I am reading a Max Brand western that was a birthday gift this year. Then I'll read another library book and hopefully follow that with either Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers or a book from my collection that it might be time to part with.

I finished one of the nonfiction books I was reading, so it's onto Chosen By God by R.C. Sproul.  

SnowAngel

@courtenay 

I started reading Past Watchful Dragons by Walter Hooper. In the preface to the book two of my former professors at Hope College are mentioned, Dr. Charles Huttar and Dr. Peter Schakel. Both of them are C. S. Lewis scholars, and they encouraged and provided assistance to Mr. Hooper when he wrote the book in 1971. (It was published in 2007). This was really interesting, and I was  very impressed by the help that they gave to Mr. Hooper. The book looks great, and I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in how Lewis created Narnia.

Acquired Past Watchful Dragons but it will be a bit until I read it, as I have a deep reading list right now! 

@SilverLily, The Door at the End of the World does look fun!

@Col-Klink, it's been ages, but I think I saw that Wishbone episode too! Wishbone was my introduction to a lot of classics (some of which I still haven't actually read).

@SnowAngel, the conclusion of a mystery really does make a big difference in how enjoyable it is as a whole! And that's funny about my reading paralleling Scarlet's. How is your fiction reading going?

July into August hasn't been great for reading, but I did get the second book in The Blades of Acktar series by Tricia Mingerink read. A bit surprisingly for me, the main impression I'm left with is a desire to immediately reread it instead of carrying on to the third book. I think maybe it's because there were a few scenes and themes that struck me but I haven't really absorbed yet. At any rate, I'll have to make a decision soon because both books can't stay out of the library indefinitely.

Posted by: @fantasia

Hey fellow book lovers, I need some suggestions! My kids and I finished up the Civil War era at the end of our previous school year, so we're getting ready to to start the next round of history. I've got several books lined up for settling the midwest, including the Little House books and Caddie Woodlawn, but after that, I've got nothing. So I'm looking for some good historical fiction between the late 1800s up through and including WW1. Grade school level preferred, but I have read some middle school level books to them before and those work just fine. 

I have no perfect matches for you, but if you'd be interested in "close," try these:

SEASONS OF THE HEART by Janette Oke in 4 titles. (Once upon a summer; The winds of Autumn; Winter is not forever; Spring's gentle promise.) Character ages from 10 yrs to about 35 yrs. Location never given but the author is from the Canadian plains. The last book ends in the Great Depression. (Review at https://potluck2point0.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/seasons-oke/ )

HIGH, WIDE, AND LONESOME by Hal Borland. Non-fiction/biography that reads smoothly like fiction. The author was 10-15 yrs when his family settled in 1910s (?) in Colorado. The government offered settlers the land for free IF (big IF) they could survive for 5 years without "starving out."

THE LAST FARMER by Howard Kohn. Non-fiction/biography that reads like fiction. Author writes about his aging dad trying to hold on to the family farm alone in the 1980s when none of his children want it.