Vintage Tales discussion

That's great Werner! I took a break from what I was reading (Little Women and A Tale of Two Hearts as stated above) to read these two Agatha Christie books 4:50 from Paddington and A Pocket Full of Rye. I guess I needed a little mystery sprinkled into my festive December, lol! It was a thrilling interlude. Now I'm back to reading Little Women once more:)

Yesterday, I started reading Fireside Book of Christmas Stories (1945). I won't finish it before January, when I'm planning to start other reads; but it will be an anthology I'll come back to dip into during the Christmas season in future years, too. So for now, it's on my "being read intermittently" shelf.

In keeping with my current goal of completing or keeping up with the various series I'm reading, today I started on Made to Be Broken by Kelley Armstrong. It's the second volume of her Nadia Stafford trilogy.

To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel I am really enjoying this version. :)

I have been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho a chapter a day. Which means I'll be reading it for months. I'm only on Chapter 11.

Cider with Rosie: A Memoir by Laurie Lee

I'm reading Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens with a group

That's a great book.

I'm trying to finish Brideshead Revisited today :)

Gia wrote: "I'm reading Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens with a group"

I want to read this someday. :)

I also recently started rereading Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

I'm wrapping up my reading of Kelley Armstrong's original Nadia Stafford trilogy by starting on the third book, Wild Justice.

I've started reading The Trinity by Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, part of Eerdmans' Guides to Theology series. As a part of the same study, I'm planning to reread the parts of Kenneth Scott Latourette's (which I read nearly 50 years ago) that deal with the development of Christological and Trinitarian doctrines in the early Christian centuries; that should fit in with Olson and Hall's primarily historicist approach.

I recently read a Hardy Boys mystery, The Secret of the Old Mill. It was a fun read, and short.

Here are the books I'm currently reading:

Older
Henry and June - Anaïs Nin

The Shining - Stephen King

We of the Never Never - Jeannie Gunn

Newer
Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty

The Stationmaster's Cottage - Phillipa Nefri Clark

From a Paris Balcony - Ella Carey

Back when Barb and I were homeschooling our girls in the 90s, I watched a VHS edition of the 1989 American Playhouse production of Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and made it required viewing for American Literature class. Until now, though, I'd never read the play itself. I started reading it yesterday, and I'm finding that in some ways that's an even more rewarding way to experience it than simply watching it being performed.

40 Days in Musa Dagh

One of my other groups started a common read of Charles Dickens' Bleak House yesterday, and I'm joining in. Dickens is one of my favorite authors, but I still haven't read the majority of his novels, including this one (I hope to read them all eventually!); so I'm enthusiastic about this read!

My Goodreads friend (and independent author) Kana Wu's latest novel is A Warm Rainy Day in Tokyo. She kindly sent me a review copy in e-book format, and I started reading it today.

I'm rereading this first book of the series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency so I can begin reading the series in order.

Another author friend, Heather Day Gilbert, also recently gifted me (in print format, a generosity I greatly appreciate!) a review copy, in this case of the fourth and concluding book in her A Murder in the Mountains mystery series, False Pretense. The timing was perfect; Barb (who's also a fan of the series) and I were ready to start a new book to read together, so we began on it this morning!

Gia wrote: "I'm rereading this first book of the series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency so I can begin reading the series in order."

I have seen a lot of the books in that series in my library but have never read them. Maybe I should try it. :)

I am rereading The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Although for a long time I've listed Zane Grey's 1918 Western novel The U.P. Trail as read, based on an experience of it as a pre-teen kid, I'm not sure now that I actually finished it back then. Even if I did, my memory of it is too faulty to do it justice in a review without a fresh read. So, I started reading (or rereading) it this morning. As a kid, I definitely recall that I wasn't very impressed with it; so it will be interesting to see if my altered perspective as a adult lets me appreciate it more.

Gia wrote: "I'm rereading this first book of the series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency so I can begin reading the series in order."

I actually bought the first of this series a little while ago at my library's book sale. :)

I am almost finished reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and yesterday I started listening to The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.

Werner, that will be interesting for sure. Always fun to revisit a book from the past and see if you like it better as an adult. Let me know how it goes. I have a Zane Grey book on my shelf: The Call Of The Canyon that I'd like to read sometime. I like a good western now and then:)

Janice, cool! That's a great find! I think you will enjoy it. These books have a lot of heart. Let me know what you think! :) I love library book sales, so fun!

I am currently reading The Rose Code

Gia wrote: "Werner, that will be interesting for sure. Always fun to revisit a book from the past and see if you like it better as an adult. Let me know how it goes."

Whenever I finish it, Gia, I'll try to remember to link to my review here!

Thank you. It's okay if you forget. There's so much to remember these days, so no pressure at all:)

Thanks, Gia! :-)

Gia wrote: "Werner, that will be interesting for sure. Always fun to revisit a book from the past and see if you like it better as an adult. Let me know how it goes. I have a Zane Grey book on my shelf: The Ca..."

Thanks, Gia. :) I'm not sure when I will start reading the series but it seems it is very popular. :)

You're welcome! I agree, the series is very popular. Whenever I go to look for any of the books at my library they usually are always checked out and I have to wait my turn.

Gia wrote: "You're welcome! I agree, the series is very popular. Whenever I go to look for any of the books at my library they usually are always checked out and I have to wait my turn."

Well, I take that as a good sign the books are very popular. Not that that is important but I assume it means I will like the series. :)

Janice, I do too. I think you will:) Keep me posted.

Being a fan of historical fiction who's especially fond of tales set in medieval times, the book I've just started, To Love a Viking, a collaboration between my Goodreads friend Heather Day Gilbert and a new-to-me author, Jen Cudmore, should be right up my alley. :-) This is a trade paperback ARC which I received recently, so I've prioritized it as much as I could. (Heather previously wrote the outstanding duology The Vikings of the New World Saga.)

Gia wrote: "Werner, that will be interesting for sure. Always fun to revisit a book from the past and see if you like it better as an adult. Let me know how it goes."

Having finished The U.P. Trail a couple of days ago, I can now say for certain that as a kid I only skimmed it, rather than actually reading it. Of the parts that I did read, I significantly misunderstood several, and misremembered others. This read as an adult was my first real read, and gave me a much more positive impression of Grey's craftsmanship and achievement than I had before! My four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Werner wrote: "Gia wrote: "Werner, that will be interesting for sure. Always fun to revisit a book from the past and see if you like it better as an adult. Let me know how it goes."

Having finished The U.P. Trai..."

Wonderful review, Werner! I learned some things:) Thank you so much for posting and sharing this.

I'm reading The Jack Tales by Richard Chase.

Thank you, Gia!

Barb and I have just started reading a book I got her as a belated (long story!) Christmas present, Claiming Her Legacy by a new-to-us evangelical Christian author, Linda Goodnight. It's a western with a female protagonist, set in Oklahoma Territory in 1890, and comes recommended by Goodnight's fellow genre writer Mary Connealy, who's become a favorite of ours; so I have good hopes for it.

Although I officially count Mark Twain as one of my favorite authors, what I primarily like in his body of work is (most of) his fiction; I've been much less drawn to his nonfiction. Then too, I'm not a big fan of other people's accounts of their travels (I've read exactly two books in that vein during my life). But, a group I'm in is doing a read of his A Tramp Abroad, and I'm taking part in that. So it will be interesting (to me, anyway!) to see whether or not I'll like that one. :-)

Hope you like it, Werner! Man, I've got to get back to my classics, it's been a while.

Thanks, Vickie!

We'll be having another (voluntary) common read of a classic in this group in September. So that might give you your opportunity! :-)

Cool, but hopefully I can fit another in before then.😁

Sounds good, Vickie!

Although I started my third reading session with A Tramp Abroad this evening still intending to grit my teeth and finish it, by p.71 I decided there was no point in prolonging the waste of time on a book I simply wasn't enjoying. So, I unexpectedly found myself rummaging in the physical TBR piles here at my house, looking for a new read to suddenly push to the head of the queue. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to pick one!

Peter O'Donnell's iconic character Modesty Blaise is one of my favorite fictional action heroines. Although Last Day in Limbo is out of series order for me, I'd started reading it in a public library in another county back in the early 90s (long story!) and had always really wanted to read the whole thing. I'd hoped to work it in this year, and today was the perfect opportunity; so I've now started on it again (and read past the point where I'd earlier had to stop).

With a common read coming up next month in another group, I was looking for a short(ish) read to help fill up the intervening time. So, I picked a book that's been in my physical TBR piles for some time, Mr. and Mrs. Smith by a new-to-me writer, Cathy East Dubowski. It's the novelization of the movie of the same name, which I saw back in 2015; I'm hoping the book might clarify some plot points that aren't very clear (at least to me) in the film version. :-)

This month, I'm joining in another group's common read of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. (Though I'm actually reading a large-print edition, which is the only one the public library in Bluefield, West Virginia has.) This novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2011; so it's the sort of self-consciously "high-brow literature" I normally shun like the plague (I didn't vote for it). But on the plus side, it's quite short (just 150 pages in the normal-sized edition).

On our road trip earlier this week, Barb and I started a new "car book," The Stairway to Forever by Robert Adams, a new-to-us writer. It's a science fiction novel dealing with interdimensional travel through a mysterious portal. Barb had picked it up years ago at a flea market and given it to me for Christmas; I used to get a lot of gift books, so they've tended to sit in my TBR piles for ages. We figured it was high time we rescued this one! :-)

Kate Douglas Wiggin's short novel Polly Oliver's Problem: A Story For Girls (1893) unexpectedly turned out to be included as a bonus in the back of another book by the author that I picked up a few years ago in my favorite used book outlet. I finally got around to starting it today. (Although it has a 16-year-old female protagonist, and Wiggin or her publisher probably titled it as they did on the assumption that teen males wouldn't be interested, I would say the appeal actually isn't all that gender-specific.)

Ever since I was introduced to Willa Cather's work back in high school through her story "Neighbor Rossicky," I've wanted to read more of it. But after going on to read My Ántonia (which got five stars from me) soon after that, the project got pushed to the back burner for a lot of years, despite having my interest freshly whetted in the 90s by watching the wonderful Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of her novel O Pioneers!, starring Jessica Lange. Finally, earlier today, I started my read of the latter novel; so I'm pretty excited about that!