Beautiful Joe

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead @BarbaraJean
I just saw you are reading this. A friend of mine gave this to me…she lived to be 108. When I saw your post I remembered I had this!

BarbaraJean Oh, what a lovely old edition! 💜 1d

MemoirsForMe 😍😍😍 1d

TheBookHippie ♥️♥️♥️♥️ 1d

BooksandCoffee4Me Oh! I remember reading this as a child!!! My book looked something like this — my mom had shared it with me. Beautiful memory. 💛💛💛 1d

AnnCrystal 💝💝💝. 1d

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BarbaraJean

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

Just a little check-in halfway through reading Beautiful Joe!

🐶 How's your reading going?
🐶 What are your thoughts so far?
🐶 What stands out to you from the first half of the book?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent

rubyslippersreads, JenlovesJT47, TheAromaofBooks

BarbaraJean I read an extra chapter this week when I discovered I broke up the reading kind of in the middle of something. 😆 I'm enjoying this, but finding it a leeeetle too preachy. Well, maybe not so much preachy as light on both plot and character development. It feels like little vignettes strung together in order to fill in the gaps between its “don't be cruel to animals“ message. Which is a fine message. I just want more of a story! 1d

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BarbaraJean

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

Today starts our #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead of Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders. This is one of our #LMMAdjacent books—Saunders was a contemporary of LMM, and another author who published with the nefarious L.C. Page Co. I‘ll post a check-in on 5/31 and we‘ll have our discussion on June 7. All are welcome—please comment if you‘re not tagged and you‘d like to be!

rubyslippersreads, JenlovesJT47, TheAromaofBooks

TheAromaofBooks Looking forward to this reread - it's very Black Beauty ish 7d

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks I‘m looking forward to reading it for the first time! (I haven‘t read Black Beauty either 🤦🏻‍♀️ or at least I don‘t remember reading it as a kid! Another gap to fill in my reading of classic children‘s literature!) 7d

TheAromaofBooks Oh dear! You really should read Black Beauty; it's genuinely a classic haha But, like Beautiful Joe, it's also a book written with a message/purpose in mind. To me, neither book is so polemic that it detracts from the story, but you also never quite forget that the author is trying to make a point about the way animals are treated. 7d

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks I've been expecting that “moral of the story“ with Beautiful Joe, but I didn't realize Black Beauty was that way as well! I feel like so many classic children's books have a “message,“ but when they're done well I don't mind it. Like Pollyanna! 7d

TheAromaofBooks Exactly!! As long as there is still an engaging story and characters I care about, I don't mind getting a little moralizing as we go 😂 7d

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LitsyEvents

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

repost for @BarbaraJean

Hello, Kindred Spirits!

Here‘s the schedule for the next few months of the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead—including a couple of #LMMAdjacent books, Vol. 5 of the #LMMJournals, and for #LMMReread, the beginning of the Emily books.

I‘ll include the tag list for each book in the comments below. All are welcome—let me know if you want to be added to (or removed from!) any of the tag lists.

25 likes

BarbaraJean

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

Hello, Kindred Spirits!

Here‘s the schedule for the next few months of the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead—including a couple of #LMMAdjacent books, Vol. 5 of the #LMMJournals, and for #LMMReread, the beginning of the Emily books.

I‘ll include the tag list for each book in the comments below. All are welcome—let me know if you want to be added to (or removed from!) any of the tag lists.

LitsyEvents

BarbaraJean Beautiful Joe: @TheAromaofBooks, @rubyslippersreads, @julieclair, @lauraisntwilder, @JenLovesJT47

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography

BarbaraJean Journals: @TheAromaofBooks, @lauraisntwilder, @JenLovesJT47 2w

BarbaraJean Emily of New Moon: @kwmg40, @TheAromaofBooks, @rubyslippersreads, @JenLovesJT47

Emily of New Moon

See All 11 Comments

BarbaraJean Story of an African Farm: @TheAromaofBooks, @julieclair, @lauraisntwilder

The story of an African farm: a novel

TheAromaofBooks I bought this volume of journals before we moved and now I can't find it!! Three weeks to do some serious crate rummaging 😂 2w

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks Oh nooooo! Hope you unearth it quickly! 2w

lauraisntwilder I don't think I'm going to end up reading Beautiful Joe. I'll be traveling right then and I already have my books for the trip picked out! 😄 Yes to all the others though, including Emily of New Moon, if you could add me to that one? I love Emily. Thank you!! 2w

julieclair I‘m going to bow out of Beautiful Joe. I didn‘t realize part of the story was about animal abuse, and don‘t think I‘m up for that right now. 💙 1w

BarbaraJean @julieclair Oof—I understand! I‘ll tag you back in when we get to Story of an African Farm. 1w

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder Got it! I‘ll tag you for everything except Beautiful Joe. 1w

julieclair @BarbaraJean Thanks! 😘 1w

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BarbaraJean

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

Hello #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead-ers! I‘m looking at a tentative schedule for the next few months:

Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders (2 weeks)
Journals Vol. 5 (2 weeks)
Emily of New Moon (3 weeks)
Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner (3 weeks)
Journals Vol. 5 (3 weeks)
Emily Climbs (3 weeks)
“The Lay of the Brown Rosary” & Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (4 weeks)

THAT takes us to mid-October & finishes Vol. 5 of the journals.⤵️

rubyslippersreads, Daisey, LeahBergen, JenlovesJT47, CogsOfEncouragement, lauraisntwilder, kwmg40, TheAromaofBooks, Roary47, julieclair

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) Take a look and let me know where you‘d like to join in. I added Beautiful Joe right after Pollyanna, so we‘ll be reading two of LMM‘s fellow L.C. Page & Co. authors back to back.

Note: I added two books I forgot to put into our voting a couple months ago. LMM mentions Story of an African Farm multiple times in her journals (it‘s considered a feminist classic) and there‘s another reference to it in Vol. 5, so I added it here. ⬇

The story of an African farm: a novel

(edited) 3w

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) Aurora Leigh is referenced in Vol. 2 of the journals and in Emily Climbs. It‘s also really long (350-400 pages) AND it‘s a novel in verse, which may not be everyone‘s cup of tea. If nobody‘s interested in either of those, I can pull them out and reconfigure things.

FINALLY: a preview of other potential adjacent books:
Ivanhoe—Sir Walter Scott
Life of Charlotte Bronte—Elizabeth Gaskell
More Tramps Abroad—Mark Twain ⬇

Aurora Leigh

(edited) 3w

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) People voted for the above three books in our poll but they‘re each 400-600 pages, so I‘m going to parcel them out more sparingly. I might add Gaskell‘s Charlotte Bronte bio after we finish the Emily books, since there are a lot of parallel vibes between Emily & Jane Eyre.

After all of THAT… 😂 Let me know what you‘d like to be tagged for, and I‘ll post a finalized schedule soon!

The Life of Charlotte Bronte

(edited) 3w

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rubyslippersreads I had that copy of Beautiful Joe as a child. I read it over and over. 🐶 3w

kwmg40 I‘d definitely like to continue with the #LMMReread books (the Emily ones from this list). Thanks! 3w

TheAromaofBooks Yay!! I'm down for any/all of these. Like @rubyslippersreads I had a copy of Beautiful Joe that I read so many time growing up. It has very Black Beauty vibes. I'm a little scared of Aurora Leigh but am willing to give it a try if everyone else wants to read it 😂 3w

BarbaraJean @rubyslippersreads It's such a sweet cover! @kwmg40 I'll make sure to tag you for the Emily books! @TheAromaofBooks Knowing your feelings about poetry, I was definitely thinking of you when I said Aurora might not be everyone's cup of tea 😂 I'll give it a few more days to see who else weighs in, but I think I'll start with a schedule for the summer and we can revisit interest in Aurora when we get to August and Emily Climbs! 3w

rubyslippersreads Ivanhoe is also a #BetsyTacy adjacent book. 🙂 3w

julieclair I‘d like to read all of these except the journals. I‘m a bit hesitant about Aurora Leigh, but I‘d like to give it a try! Thanks so much for organizing all of this for us, @BarbaraJean ! 💙 3w

BarbaraJean @rubyslippersreads I have never read Betsy-Tacy! 😱 Maybe I need to read it when we get to Ivanhoe 😄 @julieclair I'll put you on all the lists except the journals! I'm thinking I might pre-read some of Aurora Leigh, see what it's like, and report back. I love the “Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God“ quote, but that's really the extent of my familiarity. @TheAromaofBooks 3w

TheAromaofBooks Ohhh you would probably really like Betsy-Tacy!! It's a series that starts out for and about younger readers, and the books get more advanced as the characters get older - Betsy is married by the end of the series!! They're super cute. 3w

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LibraryCin

Beautiful Joe (Summit Classic Collector Editions) | Marshall Saunders

so-so

The book was told from Beautiful Joe‘s point of view. I enjoyed this, but it did get preachy at times. I agree with it all, but even so, it still felt a bit preachy. Many of the characters in the story were almost too good to be true, but at the same time, I think the book (originally published in 1893) was trying to teach kids not to be cruel to animals, they have feelings and feel pain, too. Interesting that it is actually a woman who wrote this

5 likes

TheAromaofBooks

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography | Marshall Saunders

Thanks for the tag @TheSpineView !!

1. Storing book someplace where they are going to get musty!
2. I do enjoy them sometimes, but I think it's because I LOVED them when I was growing up, so many titles (like the tagged book) are intermingled with nostalgia!

#Two4Tuesday

Wanna play @AmyK1 @wideeyedreader @emilymdxn @AsYouWish ??

Emilymdxn Yes I do! Will post in a min 5y

Lcsmcat Loved Beautiful Joe! Both as a kid and reading it to my kids. 5y

TheAromaofBooks @Lcsmcat - Yes, like the dog version of Black Beauty! I reread it just a few years ago & enjoyed even now. Such an excellent book about the importance of being kind to animals. 5y

44 likes3 comments