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The sequel sounds fantastic!

Hi Pat, thanks for watching! We're looking forward to many more fun reads in 2025 and have planned the first few titles now.

@ oh wonderful! I will look forward to your future videos. It really does my heart good to see how you and your mom interact. 🥰

Happy holidays to you too! He does have a very caring approach to representation in his writing.

Brilliant. It'll take some planning but I hope to do it in early 2025!

It must be a fairly short audiobook so I'd say good as a break between denser reads!

@@tillysshelf just over 12hrs :)

It wouldn't be for everyone but it is a sweet book

I struggle to understand how people could find it other than warm and delightful! But then, I struggle to understand people who ban books.

​@@tillysshelf This book should be banned but not for the reason you think. It is incredibly harmful to another marginalized group. Having heard stories about how my grandmother was ripped away from her family at gunpoint, watched two of her siblings beaten to death, multiple members of her tribe disappearing never to be heard from again, and losing her left eye because she didn't want to cut her hair. Using traumatic historical horrors that the indigenous people lived through, and the survivors still live through, is not warm or charming. No one should be making a profit from cultural events that are not theirs, especially when you admit to using it and refusing to do the bare minimum to raise awareness of the still on going genocide of indigenous people and culture.

​@@SaraOrmsby Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with this book. However, I think it is too strong to say that Klune is profiting from these cultural events when the book is very far from a direct retelling of those events, and I tend to disagree with banning books.

​​​@@tillysshelfIn HITCS, magical children are abducted and placed in a state-run orphanage. This plotline is based directly off The 60s Scoop and told through the lense of a feel-good story that ignores that for the indigenous families who were torn apart during this era, love did NOT conquer all. The messaging is that these children are able to be happy so long as they assimilate and find their place in the same society that removed them from their family and culture. Love is essentially enough to make up for the system that abused them. We know that was never the case for the indigenous children stolen by these systems. Dismissing indigenous voices as "points of view" when we are telling you that this book does us harm, especially since the author has outright said that he used us our culture and the genocide of close to 250,000 children as his inspiration for this "feel-good" story.

I had no idea there would be a sequel! Will have to read that. So glad you're enjoying this and that we've helped you find some favourites. Best wishes to you in the New Year!

@@tillysshelf yes, it’s called Somewhere Beyond the Sea and it is getting good reviews. Amanda from Spineless Books highly recommends the audiobook by Daniel Hennings, if you enjoy audio books. The hard cover came out in September here in the US.

Such heart indeed. It was a happy way to end the year.

The story wasn't imagined! It was stolen! The story is based on the real life genocide and stealing of indigenous children. Putting them into schools where they were forced to learn white culture and if they refused they were beaten, raped, murdered and dumped in mass graves. 5 years ago, almost 2,000 bodies were found in a mass grave in Canada associated with one of those schools. One of the things that disgusts me the most about this book, is the fact that the writer uses words like monster and creature for the children, which is the exact same words that white people used for the indigenous children. This author has admitted using "Scoop 60" as inspiration and that it was not his story to tell. Doesn't seem to have a problem profiting off it though

​@@SaraOrmsbyAgain, thank you for sharing your viewpoint. TJ Klune's fantasy story about a group of magical children who are happy to live together expressing their own personalities bears very limited resemblance to the events that you refer to, although the author did acknowledge his awareness of the 60s Scoop. The use of words like monster and creature was in the context of the characters arguing against such dehumanising language. As discussed in the video, this is a lighthearted story of tolerance.

Sara, I was unaware of this controversy when I read the book. I truly appreciate your reaction to my comments. I hope there’s a way to hold both the joy I experienced reading, and grappling with the terrible suffering that occurred.

@@tillysshelf In HITCS, magical children are abducted and placed in a state-run orphanage. This plotline is based directly off The 60s Scoop and told through the lense of a feel-good story that ignores that for the indigenous families who were torn apart during this era, love did NOT conquer all. The messaging is that these children are able to be happy so long as they assimilate and find their place in the same society that removed them from their family and culture. Love is essentially enough to make up for the system that abused them. We know that was never the case for the indigenous children stolen by these systems.

It's a great book!

Yes it was great fun

The Forbidden Notebook I do think you would enjoy. I'm going to work on the pregnancy books video for early 2025!

I can strongly recommend all of them!

Ooh now I need to look out for your favourites list to see where we overlap and get ideas!

Thanks for hosting it! I had so much fun. Yes Roger Ackroyd is the first good one and then I haven't read the couple just after it.

I would love to read Miracle Creek to see if I enjoy it as much as Happiness Falls.

I feel like since I started reading it, I've heard nothing but love for the series coming from everyone who's tried it. I'll look forward to Liveships then!

They are both beautiful books in different ways, glad you also enjoyed them. Good luck with Wilding! Yes I'm hoping we'll do another year. Merry Christmas to you too!

Clearly!

It was such a good book! I'll look out for your top ten. Seven Moons isn't quite as distressing though still has the war context so good to go in prepared.

Contemporary fiction is the better way to talk about it rather than modern. Why can I never think of these words? I'm fairly sure I'll only finish one more and it won't be stellar as you know.

I have a similar book prize bias but more toward longlists 😅

Oh you should absolutely read Seven Moons. I was trying to think of the whole series name for Elderlings but just couldn't pin it down! Thanks, looking forward to 2025.

Thanks for the recommendation, I've heard good things about her autobiography. I still love The Moving Finger without Miss Marple and think she couldn't have been in it from the start - she'd have solved it on the day of the first murder by seeing through the letters.

Maybe His Only Wife is worth a go then!

They are so quick and fun, and I think perfect for winter/Christmas!

It was!

Absolutely recommend that you do! Though they are fairly chunky as paper books.

I mean why wouldn't it be alien wasps? I did enjoy The ABC Murders but I think I'd heard it very highly spoken of and for me didn't quite have the wow factor. I might reread it in a few months anyway as Emily has it on the list. But I might not do five in a week until at least this time next year!

I've definitely read Crooked House but can't remember a thing about it - clearly time for a re-read! The Body in the Library is good but it's not the best Marple. Starting with the introduction of her in Murder at the Vicarage makes sense, or her first short stories The Thirteen Problems are so much better than the Poirot shorts.

@@tillysshelf I have read 3 Marples including Murder at the Vicarage, but just not in the correct order. I do want to read all of them eventually.

I'd be happy to! Always like to chat about Christie. I haven't read Five Little Pigs yet but sounds like I need to.

Thanks for watching! Yes he was rather keen to share his thoughts today.

Thanks. I'd like to try one at some point!

@@tillysshelf they are good but have a hanky.

Miss Marple is just uniquely Christie. No one else has pulled off a similar character so well.

It's funny because I was sure it finished on the 11th at the same time as thinking to myself "I'm sure she was missing for longer than that!" Such extreme brain fog!

@tillysshelf 🤣😮🤣🥰

It took me 8 attempts to film. In the end I decided that a degree of squeakiness was inevitable.

@@tillysshelf and adorable.

That said, I'll try to finish it in 2025 😅

Not compelling is a very good summary. I suppose not all books are meant to be compelling! But I think it could have grabbed me a lot more with some very minor changes. Good luck with finishing it.

Hope you get shopping with it better than I did!

Glad you liked this more. I think it was worth finishing as the second half does develop things a lot more, but the writing style just wasn't for me.

@@BookishTexan it did lift off significantly in the second half for me.

I'm looking forward to it!

@@Bessie-On-Wheels happy to hear that.

It was good to discuss it to try to understand why we responded as we did.

Dickens, sentimental? Never! I absolutely know what you mean. It's interesting that his endings are often similar in tone but sometimes I mind it less. Agree about Tattycoram - it oversimplifies that character after setting her up for doing something more complex.

I'd like to read some of her other work too.

I think a more alert brain could have come up with better reasoning! But thank you

How delightful to get to return to Jane Eyre! Was it different reading it with more mature eyes? I think it reads one way as an ardent, romantic teen but becomes a little darker as an adult. Had the same feeling about Little Dorrit - I do think he's at his best in and around London. I haven't read any of Braddon's sensation novels and I'm generally less keen on sensation novels as a genre, but I'm a little curious over how they differ.

When I read it the first time I was studying it so I thinks that makes you think about it differently rather than just reading for enjoyment. This time I knew all the criticisms of Rochester and his behavior, but was still rooting for him and was perhaps more interested in the peripheral characters than I would have been as a younger reader 🤔I had entirely forgotten St John and had strong feelings where he was concerned 😬. Sensation novels fill that kind of Victorian beach read role, plot heavy, easy to read, lots of twists and turns, often laughable but in a good way.

@josmith5992 Studying a book does have a huge impact - also on later rereads I think as the associations are still there. Brontë so clearly presents Rochester as someone to root for that it's easy to forgive or overlook his immoral conduct. Whereas St John I think she wanted to show as morally correct but emotionally void. Possibly I should try some more sensation reads - next Victober perhaps!