This week, we read the first part of volume 4 of the complete journals, where perhaps most significantly, LMM records her response to the end of WWI.
📚What are your thoughts on this week‘s section of the journals?
📚What sections or quotes stand out to you?
#LMMJournals #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead
“…think of all the fun you miss if you are non-excitable. There's nothing quite so wonderful as dancing around a blazing fire. What matter if it end only in gray ashes? And while walking is a sure and safe mode of locomotion it isn't half as exhilarating as flying, even if you do come down with a thud.”
This reminds me SO much of Anne! Doesn‘t Marilla use the same reasoning in reverse?!
#LMMJournals #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead
“This is part of Montgomery‘s great gift as a story teller—she actually relived the moments as her pen traced them on the page… It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the journals as living text. Her life is literally in these pages and in the pages of her novels.”
#LMMJournals #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead
I started Vol. 4 last night and really enjoyed the intro, as well as getting back into Maud‘s life. How‘s your reading coming?
Bonus info I somehow missed before:
There are four short stories related to Pointed Firs (I guess those are the “and other stories” in some editions!). I haven‘t read them yet, but I‘m planning to track them down to read in the next week or two. If you‘ve read them, or want to check them out & report back, please chime in with your thoughts! The stories are:
"The Foreigner"
"The Queen's Twin"
"A Dunnet Shepherdess"
"William's Wedding"
Which scenes or chapters stand out in your reading? What made them memorable or meaningful?
Is there anything else you‘d like to discuss from your reading of this book, or quotes you‘d like to share?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent
Reading this as an #LMMAdjacent book, I had my eye out for paralells with LMM‘s other work. What similarities or differences do you see between Pointed Firs and Anne‘s House of Dreams (setting, characters, narrative style, etc.)?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent
Pointed Firs largely focuses on female characters—and only a few of these women are pictured in relation to a male character. Did you notice this emphasis on female experience in the text? Do you read this as a matter of perspective (“write what you know”) or a conscious choice to center female experience?
Which characters were most vivid to you?
I‘m sorry this is so late! Busy week + a long class today = late discussion questions! #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent
How did you feel about the 1st-person narrator? Did you wonder about her context & who she was? For you, did the lack of info about the narrator contribute to or take away from the story?
Why do you think Jewett chose to tell the story through the perspective of (what I assume is) a semi-autobiographical main character? ⤵️
“In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.”
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent
And I LOVED that the story in Rilla where Rilla yells at the movie theater for the girl to pull the knife out of her stocking - is a true story! That made me so happy because that story has always cracked me up. 6d