KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

lauraisntwilder

The Blue Castle | L. M. Montgomery

pick

I saw the ending coming a mile off, but it's a sweet story and the humor is perfect. #kindredspiritsbuddyread

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LitsyBirthdays

Happy Birthday!: A Birthday Party Book | Sesame Workshop

Please join the #birthdayfairies as we wish our lovely @TheAromaofBooks a very Happy Birthday today! 🩷

Sarah, we hope your day is filled with all you love most, and we‘re sending along our #birthdaylove as the cherry on top. 🍒😊

Enjoy your day!!

🥳🧁🥳🧁🥳🧁🥳🧁🥳🧁

KarenUK, Crazeedi, CarolynM, julesG, robinb, squirrelbrain

robinb Happy, Happy Birthday Sarah! 🎉🎉 Wishing you a wonderful day. 💜 2d

Jerdencon Happy Birthday Sarah!!! Enjoy the day! 🎉🥳 2d

BarkingMadRead Happy happy birthday 🎁🎂🎊🎈🎉 2d

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rubyslippersreads Happy 🎂🎂🎂 @TheAromaofBooks 🎉📚🎉📚🎉 2d

NatalieR Happy Birthday @TheAromaofBooks Wishing you a wonderful day filled with books and cake! 🍰 📚📖🎈🎉 2d

Bookwormjillk Happy birthday 🍎🎂🍎🎂 2d

AmyG Wishing you a Happy Birthday and a wonderful year ahead! 🎂🎈🎁🥳 2d

Karisa Hope your day is wonderful! 🎉💐😊 2d

julesG Happy Birthday @TheAromaofBooks 🎉🎂📚🎊 2d

Yuki_Onna Happy happy Birthday Sarah ❣️🎂❣️ 2d

squirrelbrain Happy Birthday @TheAromaofBooks - have a lovely day! 🍰📚🎉🍰📚🎉 2d

kezzlou85 Happy birthday @TheAromaofBooks hope you have a fabulous day 🎁 📚 🎂 2d

ElizaMarie Ooo happy happy birthday!! @TheAromaOfBooks 2d

mrp27 Happy Birthday! 📚🎉🎂 2d

BarbaraJean Happy Birthday, Sarah!!! I‘m so glad to be your Litsy-friend, from #BookSpin to #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead!! Hope you have a wonderful bookish birthday 🤗🥳📚💜 2d

kelli7990 Happy birthday! 2d

AnneCecilie Happy birthday 🎉🎁🎂📚 @TheAromaofBooks 2d

JessClark78 Happy Birthday! @TheAromaofBooks 🎊🎂🎉✨ 2d

BarbaraBB Happy birthday! 2d

dabbe HB! 🤩🤩🤩 2d

Ddzmini Happy birthday 🎁🎈🎊🎉🎂🥳📚 2d

CarolynM Happy birthday @TheAromaofBooks 🎂🎈🥳 2d

MaureenMc Happy birthday! 🎈 23h

TheAromaofBooks Oh my gosh, I made a comment thanking all of you for your kind birthday wishes, and saying that I got to spend the whole day reorganizing my bookshelves, which was magical and AMAZING!! And then... I think Litsy ate it?? Sometimes it doesn't like it when I tag too many people in one comment. SO I am going to try again, tagging everyone across two comments. And if the original one shows up eventually... just feel extra thanked for the birthday⬇ 11h

TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) wishes 😂 You all are the best!!! 💕 11h

TheAromaofBooks @robinb @Jerdencon @BarkingMadRead @rubyslippersread @NatalieR @Bookwormjillk @AmyG @Karisa @julesG @Yuki_Onna @squirrelbrain @kezzlou85 11h

TheAromaofBooks @ElizaMarie @mrp27 @BarbaraJean @kelli7990 @AnneCecilie @JessClark78 @BarbaraBB @dabbe @Ddzmini @CarolynM @MaureenMc 11h

31 likes27 comments

BarbaraJean

The Blue Castle | L. M. Montgomery

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMReread

Just a little check-in here halfway through Blue Castle… (although I know some of you couldn‘t resist finishing it already!)

What edition are you reading?
How is your reading going?
What have you enjoyed the most in the first half of the book?
What favorite scenes, quotes, or other elements stand out to you?

rubyslippersreads, DrSabrinaMoldenReads, JenlovesJT47, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, Sparklemn, julieclair

BarbaraJean My copy is the cover on the lower right… which I only like because of nostalgia value! Someday I‘ll get a copy with the Elly MacKay cover (top center). 😍 On this read, Valancy‘s pursuit of what she wants feels so satisfying. I mean, it always does, but somehow it feels deeper for me right now. I think I‘m in a more “appearances can go hang” phase of life than ever before! I keep thinking how Valancy would fit right in with #WDNCW 😂 4d

rubyslippersreads Valancy‘s relatives always remind me of Emily‘s, when Emily is hiding under the table, waiting to find out who will take her. (I‘m reading the ebook, but I have a pretty copy from the 1930s with a girl‘s portrait on the dust jacket.) 4d

JenlovesJT47 I just love this whole dang book! Once Valancy‘s craps have flown the coop, it is absolutely hysterical how she tells her family like it is. So liberating lol. 4d

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JenlovesJT47 I ready an ereader copy like the ones on Hoopla. Need to get a physical copy! 4d

lauraisntwilder I have the Sourcebooks edition (second from the right on the bottom). So far, Valancy's family feels like a cross between Emily's and the family from Tangled Web. LMM is so funny! 4d

rubyslippersreads I also feel like Valancy is saying out loud the kinds of observations Emily made in her Jimmy-books. 4d

TheAromaofBooks I just finished the section with the family dinner party where Valancy is a bit “dippy“ 😂 I still snort-laugh about being bitten “a little below the Catholic church“ every time haha 3d

DrSabrinaMoldenReads I‘m behind but plan to catch up. I got it on Kindle but that‘s probably not a good idea. 3d

30 likes8 comments

BarbaraJean

Story of an African Farm | Olive Schreiner

pick

A low pick on this much-belated review (the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead read it in July!)—although this is mostly pulled from my comments in our discussions, I still wanted to finally get a review posted!

I read this solely because L.M. Montgomery references it multiple times in her journals & her comments about it piqued my curiosity. And while there was a lot about the book that was frustrating, I‘m glad I read it because of the LMM connection.⤵️

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) Overall, the story felt disjointed & uneven—Parts 1 & 2 are vastly different, and the book is filled with almost forced philosophizing. A couple chapters felt like they were just setup for long one-sided conversations on philosophy, religion, and feminism. I kept pondering how Schreiner might have conveyed the same ideas more naturally within the story instead of using long monologues. It was fascinating how progressive ⤵️ 7d

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) …so much of the philosophizing felt, for its time, but the story‘s feminist views felt ironic against its backdrop of colonialism and casual racism.

The ending was quite bleak & hopeless—this certainly wasn‘t an uplifting read—but reading it in the context of LMM‘s journals was fascinating. Many of the ideas reflect her spiritual and religious views as articulated in her journals, and I noticed lots of passages that echoed her writing. 7d

rubyslippersreads Great review! This is another one I think I‘ll pass on. 6d

38 likes3 comments

JenlovesJT47

The Blue Castle | L. M. Montgomery

I just finished rereading The Blue Castle for the #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead and Valancy might just be my favorite book character after Phryne Fisher. Oh how I wish I had read this book when I was in my 20s!

isn‘t it better
to have your heart broken than
let it wither up?

#haikuhive #haikuaday #poetry #LMMontgomery #Valancy #thebluecastle

JenlovesJT47 @dabbe @TheBookHippie @DebInHawaii @lil1inblue @Kristy_K @julieclair @BooksandCoffee4Me @bellabella @AnnCrystal @Reggie @jdiehr @vivastory @CBee @Mimi28 @Jari-chan @Itchyfeetreader @Susanita @kelly7990 @ImperfectCJ @The_Book_Ninja 1w

dabbe Truer words were never spoken. 💛💜🧡 1w

AnnCrystal 👏🏼🐝💘🥲💖🐝💝. 1w

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jdiehr This has been on my TBR. I might have to move it up 1w

JenlovesJT47 @jdiehr it‘s so good! Cozy like all of LMM‘s books and perfect for this time of year 🧡💛🧡 1w

JenlovesJT47 @BarbaraJean 1w

lil1inblue Love this! ❤️❤️❤️ 7d

bookandbedandtea This is one of my all-time favorite books! 💜 7d

BarbaraJean I love Valancy SO MUCH!! This is my favorite LMM book. @jdiehr The #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead is reading this right now if you want to join in! Discussion on Oct. 25 😊 7d

41 likes9 comments

BarbaraJean

The Blue Castle | L. M. Montgomery

“…she opened the window and hurled the jar of potpourri over into the next lot. It smashed gloriously against the schoolgirl complexion on the old carriage-shop. ‘I‘m sick of the fragrance of dead things,‘ said Valancy.”

💙💙💙

Oh, I love this book so much. Here we go! #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMReread

rubyslippersreads, DrSabrinaMoldenReads, JenlovesJT47, lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks, Sparklemn, julieclair

JenlovesJT47 I freaking LOVE this book, I had forgotten how much. Already finished it! Gonna post a couple of Blue Castle haikus soon. 💙🩵💙 1w

TheAromaofBooks I love Valancy!!!! 1w

BarbaraJean @JenLovesJT47 Hahaha... I love that you've already finished it!! @TheAromaofBooks Meeeee toooo!! 1w

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BarbaraJean

L. M. Montgomery's Complete Journals, the Ontario Years: 1926-1929 | Jen Rubio

“The cover design of the Swedish Green Gables has always been one of the joys of my life. Anne is depicted as an exceedingly weird creature, carrying an enormous carpet bag with hair of a literal scarlet—not red or auburn or carrot but a bright glaring scarlet.”
—Nov. 21, 1926

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMJournals

I tracked down the Swedish cover LMM describes. Its rendition of Anne is indeed “exceedingly weird”—but for me the weirdness is ⤵️

lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks

BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) … more in the middle-aged face than it is the hair! Although the hair is certainly scarlet!! What stood out to you from LMM‘s account of 1926? The drama with Elsie had me riveted!! Along with the continuing Pickering saga… (edited) 2w

BarbaraJean Also, here‘s an interesting article about the aforementioned Swedish Anne of Green Gables: https://annemanuscript.ca/stories/swedish-anne-of-green-gables/ 2w

Ruthiella She looks like she is 30 years old and pissed off! 🤣 2w

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lauraisntwilder That is a particularly awful cover. 2w

lauraisntwilder A couple of things stood out to me this week. There's something funny about reading a journal from the 1920s. When LMM looks back at her old scrapbooks, she still likes the fashions of '93...and so do I! But 1993, in my case 2w

lauraisntwilder I also noticed an uptick in exclamation points. Not sure if it means anything, just seemed like a lot more sentences ended with!!! I hope LMM gets to take a few naps in 1927. She's entirely too tired. 2w

BarbaraJean @Ruthiella Right?! This is NOT Anne! @lauraisntwilder It's SO awful. It's such a testament to LMM's sense of humor that she says it's “always been one of the joys of my life“ 😂 😂 I'd love to see her reaction to these: https://teaandinksociety.com/bad-book-covers-anne-of-green-gables/ 2w

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder Reading this 100 years on really is fascinating...I'm enjoying how easy it is to calculate years like that. LMM's reaction to the fashion plates struck me as snobby...but you're spot on with how relatable it is when I think back to “our“ 90s! Also: just think about what LMM would say about the fashions of 1993. 😆 Re: her exhaustion—it was so sweet and also sad when Stuart noticed how tired she was. Sometimes I want to shake Ewan! 2w

TheAromaofBooks I really connected with LMM's thoughts on her big move! We just moved this year out of our house where we had lived for 11 years and when she said something along the lines of basically “my old house had a lot of problems but at least they were familiar problems“ - like FOR REAL 😂 Our new place is objectively better, but I still sometimes find myself a little homesick for the old routines, too. 2w

TheAromaofBooks Reading these journals entries was making ME feel tired! Good grief, does she EVER get a break!? Like you and @lauraisntwilder mentioned, it's SO fun to me to be reading these almost exactly 100 years after they were written. Somehow it's made me feel more connected - maybe because it's easier to think of myself as LMM's age/stage of life? 2w

TheAromaofBooks I also found myself feeling worried for LMM. She talks about how Ewan gets when he is going into one of his depressive stages - disconnected, unwilling to work, headachy, not like himself, etc. But then she talks about HERSELF feeling all of those things - almost like she's also depressed...??? I just feel super bad for her. Although it does seem like she has more (congenial) people to talk with in her new neighborhood. 2w

lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean I flagged that part about Stuart saying she was tired, too. She had really never been cared for affectionately, even as a child, except by friends (Frede!) and they're all dying or far away. @TheAromaofBooks Yes, the stuff about moving was so relatable. And you're right, she was clearly depressed. Every time something threatened Lucky the cat, it became so obvious how much she relied on him 2w

lauraisntwilder And, of course, it makes sense to love your pets, but sometimes that cat feels like the only member of "the race of Joseph" she has left. 2w

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks I spent 4 volumes of the journals trying to figure out how old LMM is at any given point by looking up her birth year and calculating it that way. I feel silly not having realized until volume FIVE—once we got to the 1920s—how much easier it would have been to use my OWN age relative to the year we‘re reading. She‘s 104 years older than me. Now that the dates are in the 20s, the math finally makes sense to my English major brain😆 1w

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks @lauraisntwilder Yep, her own depression is becoming really apparent, and you can see Ewan's mental health issues exacerbating it. It's so hard to read, because I still believe if she'd had a better support system all along (or had married someone who wasn't a minister, which limited what she felt she could share/who she could go to for support), her depression wouldn't have ramped up the way we see it doing here. ⬇ 1w

BarbaraJean (Cont'd) It's also becoming SO apparent why she will feel such deep grief when Lucky the cat dies, and will need to pour it out in a 20-page journal entry! It's not that she feels that loss more than Frede's death, it's that her grief for that dear cat brings up not just that loss, but also the loss of Frede and ALL of her losses and griefs, compounded over the years. 1w

TheAromaofBooks 100% on the Lucky thing - as I am getting older and starting to accumulate deaths of loved ones, you start to realize that grief isn't just the person you have most recently lost, it's compounded by everyone you already miss. I feel like we're already seeing LMM express that more frequently as she's lost her dearest friend, family, Park Corner, even the basic stability of her husband. And like you said, she's in a position where she feels like ⬇ 1w

TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) she can't share/unload with anyone - which means I think she's putting a lot of emotional pressure on a little cat that simply can't live forever! He's also a final connection to Park Corner that is going to be lost as well and it's SO sad. 1w

TheAromaofBooks I forgot to say earlier, I was so relieved at how things came out with the whole Pickering thing! I can't remember his name, but kudos to the treasurer guy who, despite knowing the Pickerings well (BECAUSE he knew the Pickerings well???) saw through the whole thing and worked it all out! I could not BELIEVE that whole thing was following them to their new home! 1w

BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks YES with how things landed re: the Pickerings! I had such a fellow feeling of dread when they found out the man they were worried about was the treasurer 😫 Then it turns out he's already on their side!! There were also the other little incidents: where they end up parked next to the Pickerings—and LMM is “introduced“ to the Pickerings' lawyer—it felt like John Mustard all over again. They CANNOT seem to escape the Pickerings! 1w

27 likes20 comments

BarbaraJean

L. M. Montgomery's Complete Journals, the Ontario Years: 1926-1929 | Jen Rubio

I‘m starting to read my used copy of Volume 6 of LMM‘s complete journals today, and I found this on the title page! Is it just me, or does it strike anyone else as odd for the editor to sign a book of someone else‘s collected journals?! #LMMJournals #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

lauraisntwilder, TheAromaofBooks

Ruthiella Maybe Carolyn asked her to sign? 2w

BarbaraJean @Ruthiella That would make sense! I was kind of picturing a book-signing event, which seemed really weird for a work like this. 2w

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder BTW, I'd recommend skipping the intro if you haven't started this already! It has a ton of spoilers for Blue Castle (and most of the rest of it seems to be repeated in the footnotes in the first few entries). 2w

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lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean Oh! I'm glad I checked Litsy -- I was just about to start it this evening. Thanks for the warning! 2w

lauraisntwilder It does seem a little odd to have the editor sign a journal. 2w

AnnCrystal Interesting Discovery 📚💝. 2w

TheAromaofBooks For real a bit random haha 2w

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder I‘m so glad you saw it before you started!! I was indignant on your behalf when I saw the spoilers! 😂 2w

lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean 😂 To be fair though, I don't think many people are reading these that haven't read all the novels first. I'm doing this a weird way! 2w

BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder You're right, it's absolutely a fair assumption by the editor: most people embarking upon volume SIX of LMM's complete journals won't need a spoiler warning 😂 2w

30 likes10 comments

julieclair

Tales of the Alhambra | Washington Irving

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Irving‘s prose is beautiful, and he evokes a wonderful sense of time and place. The tales he relates are enchanting, but all very similar. The history he tells is interesting, but too detailed. Personally, I think I would have preferred a condensed version of this book. It just felt like a bit of a slog. A soft pick for me, but I‘m glad I read it, thanks to @BarbaraJean and #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead .

julieclair #OneSnackToRuleThemAll #CandyCornies @Bookwormjillk 2w

Bookwormjillk 🌽🌽🌽 2w

44 likes2 comments

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