"Grits and Glamor" by B. R. Goodwin

Because I enjoy cooking and love to bake, I always like reading books where the main character's job involves the kitchen.  B. R. Goodwin writes quite a few characters who have mad culinary skillz, and Grits and Glamor fully lives up to my expectations in this department.

Chloe Garland is a professional private chef.  As in, went to fancy cooking schools and everything.  She's also awkward, funny, kind, helpful, and a strong Christian woman.

Roman Rivers is a famous movie star who is famous for playing a pirate hottie, but prefers to keep his personal life very cool indeed.  Particularly because that helps keep his young half-sister protected and out of the spotlight.  

Chloe becomes Roman's chef.  Sorta.  Sparks fly.  His best friend doesn't like her.  His half-sister adores her.  Bunnies erupt everywhere.  (Not even joking -- there are a lot of bunnies in this book.)  Grits and ice cream and latte art abound.  It's a jolly time.

Also, this is SPOILAGE, but there is NO third-act break-up.  I repeat: zero breaking up over nonsensical and contrived "problems" occurs.  So refreshing.  I want to hug B. R. Goodwin super tightly for that one.  END OF SPOILERS.

Grits and Glamor kind of ties together Goodwin's two Christian romcom series, Sugartree Romance and Happy in Honey Hill.  I loved that.  I've read a book or two from each series, so it was really fun to see characters from them pop up in this.

I really appreciate how Goodwin doesn't write perfect characters or cliched ones.  Her Christians walk the good walk and fight the good fight, and they know how to talk the good talk, too.  But they aren't perfect.  Nor do they stew in their own sinfulness and say it's just "human nature."  They make mistakes, and they learn from them.  They sin and stumble and stray, repent, forgive and are forgiven, and move forward in redemption.  That's too hard to find in Christian fiction.  That's what makes Goodwin's books must-reads for me, even though romcoms are not a genre I routinely gravitate toward.

Particularly Good Bits:

Being loved fully by the people in your little world who matter most has a way of erasing the background noise of voices suggesting you deserve otherwise (p. 213).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a lot of kissing and lightly described makeouts, talk of needing to set physical boundaries so they can keep their bodies and minds pure, and discussions of appreciating people of the opposite sex.  It's tasteful, but not something I would hand a tween.

"The Adventures of Elizabeth in Ruegen" by Elizabeth von Arnim

This is the third and final "Elizabeth" book from which Elizabeth von Arnim took her pen name.  I love Elizabeth and her German Garden the most, and then I think I like the sequels The Solitary Summer and The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen about equally -- not quite so well as the first book, but it was still lots and lots of fun!

Elizabeth decides she wants to take a little vacation by herself to the quaint and charming island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.  She would like to walk all the way around the island, but none of her friends are willing to undertake walking all the way around a fairly large island, and her husband says that wouldn't be practical OR proper, so instead, she takes a cart and driver and her faithful maidservant Gertrud and determines to drive all the way around the island.

Like in the previous two books, people and circumstances conspire to prevent her from wholly and completely accomplishing her goal.  Elizabeth perseveres.  She sometimes loses her natural good spirits just a little, but recovers them before long.  And her writing made me laugh aloud repeatedly, just as I hoped it would.

I liked the first part best, when it's just Elizabeth and Gertrud and the driver, and the only things that spoil Elizabeth's plans are things like hotels having no vacancies.  Once she met up with her odd cousin Charlotte, things turned almost a little screwball here and there, with the mishaps and misunderstandings piling up a bit too quickly for my taste.  Also, there were a lot fewer passages describing and appreciating the beauty of the world around her, which are something I absolutely love in von Arnim's books.

Overall, I'll totally read it again, but not as often as Elizabeth and Her German Garden.

Particularly Good Bits:

If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside (p. 3).

Admirable virtue of silence, most precious, because most rare, jewel in the crown of female excellences (p. 5).

Every instant of happiness is a priceless possession for ever (p. 20).

As soon as there are no trains to catch a journey becomes magnificently simple (p. 35).

Why not take the beauty and be grateful? (p. 36).

What had I been doing with my life?  Looking back into it in search of an answer it seemed very spacious, and sunny, and quiet.  There were children in it, and there was a garden, and a spouse in whose eyes I was precious; but I had not done anything.  And if I could point to no pamphlets or lectures, neither need I point to a furrow between my eyebrows (p. 42).

You need not, after all, let your vision be blocked entirely by the person with whom you chance to live; however vast his intellectual bulk may be, you can look round him and see that the stars and the sky are still there, and you need not run away from him to do that (p. 44).

I know no surer way of shaking off the dreary crust formed about the soul by the trying to do one's duty or the patient enduring of having somebody else's duty done to one, than going out alone, either at the bright beginning of the day, when the earth is still unsoiled by the feet of the strenuous and only God is abroad; or in the evening, when the hush has come, out to the blessed stars, and looking up at them wonder at the meanness of the day just pat, at the worthlessness of the things one has struggled for, at the folly of having been so angry, and so restless, and so much afraid.  Nothing focusses life more exactly than a little while alone at night with the stars (p. 59).

...the forest was so exquisite that way, the afternoon so serene, so mellow with lovely light, that I could not look round me without being happy. Oh blessed state, when mere quiet weather, trees and grass, sea and clouds, can make you forget that life has anything in it but rapture, can make you drink in heaven with every breath!  How long will it last, this joy of living, this splendid ecstasy of the soul?  I am more afraid of losing this, of losing even a little of this, of having so much as the edge of its radiance dimmed, than of parting with any other earthly possession.  And I think of Wordsworth, its divine singer, who yet lost it so soon and could no longer see the splendour in the grass, the glory in in the flower, and I ask myself with a sinking heart if it faded so quickly for him who saw it and sang it by God's grace to such perfection, how long, oh how long does the common soul, half blind, half dead, half dumb, keep its little, precious share? (p. 72).

How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one's eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!  Motionless we stood before this sudden unrolling of the beauty of God's earth.  The place seemed full of a serene and mighty Presence (p. 109).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  Completely clean in every way.

This is my 43rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"The Code of the Woosters" by P. G. Wodehouse

My teens and I listened to The Code of the Woosters while on a family road trip this summer, and howled our way through the whole thing. Jonathan Cecil is an absolute delight when it comes to reading the Jeeves and Wooster books.

If you are curious, this is the book involving an antique cow creamer.  Someone buys it.  Someone else wants it.  Bertie agrees to steal it.  Bertie decides not to steal it.  Various friends of Bertie's get engaged, break of engagements, attempt to steal the cow creamer... it's extremely convoluted.  And hilarious.  But not in a way I can explain.  Wodehouse really is one of those authors that you just have to read yourself -- and if you find him funny, you find him very funny, but if you don't... you probably think people who are laughing over the antics and hijinks in his books are very odd.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a sprinkling of old-fashioned cuss words here and there.

This is my 42nd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"Forget Me Knot" by B. R. Goodwin

Sometimes, when I have a very busy and stressful week or so, I want to read something short, bright, and perky.  This past week was overstuffed, and so I read Forget Me Knot because I knew it would make me smile and keep me interested, but not stress me out by being really suspenseful or anything.  It delivered everything I wanted: nice characters I'd like to be friends with, a cute little town I'd like to live in, and a sweet-but-not-sappy romance.  

There aren't a lot of authors that can get me really invested in a book that has a romance-driven plot, simply because I prefer plot-driven romances, on a whole.  B. R. Goodwin pulls it off handily, and I totally trust her to strike the right balance between romantic and realistic.

Forget Me Knot is about a young woman named Dinah who moves to a small Georgia town to be closer to her widowed sister and niece.  Dinah opens a pretzel shop and starts to fall for Jack, the guy who owns and operates a flower shop next door.  But Jack has a very complicated life because he has (SPOILER ALERT!!!) a split personality thanks to a traumatic head injury.  B. R. Goodwin doesn't offer any simplistic or unrealistic solutions to the inherent difficulties that presents, and I really appreciated her balanced and open-eyed look at that.

Particularly Good Bits:

Sometimes, when someone grieves, just allowing them to talk about their loved ones in their own time is the best offering (p. 61).

"No, Dinah, it sucks.  It's okay to say it sucks.  Grief isn't measured with time.  There aren't rules for how long you're permitted to miss someone, and pretending that you don't will only hurt more in the end" (p. 170).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a LOT of gushing about how attractive a man is, women talking about their ovaries reacting to a man, some kissing and caressing, and just generally being more romantic than a younger teen is going to enjoy anyway.  Nothing smutty -- you can't even call it "closed-door" because Dinah and Jacks are both committed to waiting for marriage before having sex.  But I also wouldn't hand this to my young teen daughters.

"What Comes of Attending the Commoners Ball" by Elisabeth Aimee Brown

This book is an absolute hoot!  Also, it made me hungry, particularly for cheese.  Repeatedly.  I already eat a lot of cheese, but I definitely was craving it more often than usual while reading this.  I hear this is a common side-effect of reading this book.  Brown probably should get a subsidy from the American Dairy Association for it or something.

This is basically a screwball Cinderella story.  Hester doesn't want to go to the Commoner's Ball to dance with one of the princes, she just wants to go so she can attend the banquet and get a really solid meal for once.  She's loving life in her country's capitol city, aside from the way everything costs way more than it did back home on her family's pig farm, how many rude and unpleasant people are around, and the fact that her only job prospects tend to involve sewing for hours and hours and hours.  But she's gradually saving up enough money to move her aging parents to the big city so they can stop working hard on their pig farm and start enjoying city life too.

But, of course, she ends up running into both Prince Hughbert and Prince Lucas at the ball.  And being pursued by both of them, though she's really not interested in either one.  At least, not at first.  It's pretty obvious which one she does like, and who she will end up with, but the fun comes in getting there.  

And it definitely is fun.  This is a quirky book that made me laugh aloud repeatedly, sometimes in public.  

However... I hated Prince Hughbert.  Loathed him.  It took me rather a long time to finish this book because, every time he showed up, I would have to put the book down.  Hugh is a trickster character, and I do not do well with tricksters.  Loki in the MCU?  It took me 5 movies to stop hating him, and then his Disney+ show ruined everything and made me hate him again.  Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation?  I avoid his episodes like the plague.  Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream?  I would gladly fast-forward through all his scenes.  I Do Not Like Characters Who Make Things Difficult For Other People Just Because They Think It Is Funny.

This is not a judgment on Brown's writing!  This is purely a personal bugaboo that I have with a character archetype.  Most people do not have this issue with tricksters, judging by Loki's legions of fangirls.  So most people will probably gobble this book up in like 5 hours instead of taking more than a week to read it.  Despite me wanting to slap Hugh, throttle him, and duck tape his mouth shut, this will still get 5 stars from me.

Particularly Good Bits:

"People were meant to rely on each other.  Life is more than bargains" (p. 193).

"How did you fit all of those in one pocket?" I ask.  That's the sort of coat I need.  My cloak's pockets are irritatingly small (p. 252).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some innuendo involving repeated jokes and mentions of the fact that Hester's landlady thinks she intends to seduce one of the princes at the boarding house.  No actual smut, no bad language, no gore, no real violence.  But that running gag makes me not rate this totally family friendly.

"The Solitary Summer" by Elizabeth von Arnim

I didn't realize until I started reading it that this is a sequel to Elizabeth and Her German Garden.  Imagine my delight when I discovered that was the case!  It was published a year after Garden and has a similar playful, refreshing feel.  And it shares the fact that it's written as if it is nonfiction, but is actually highly fictionalized.  

Elizabeth decides she wants to spend a summer in solitude, which her husband (always referred to as the Man of Wrath even though he comes off as fairly genial in a stoic German sort of way) thinks will be a disaster.  By "solitary," she doesn't mean she wants to be entirely alone all summer.  She just means she doesn't want to invite people out to stay at their German manor all the time.  She wants one summer with only her husband and children and servants around, to enjoy their home life, basically.  

The bulk of the book is her funny and insightful musings throughout the summer (and into the fall) about books, solitude, nature, gardening, and family life.  I didn't love this quite as much as Garden thanks to an extended section about the immorality of village young people, which felt more snide than funny.  But it's definitely a book I'll be rereading.  It did make me laugh aloud repeatedly.  I tried to read it entirely outside, mostly on my swing in our back yard, though I also read it on a bench outside my daughter's ballet studio a few times.

Elizabeth von Arnim was the pen name of Countess Mary Annette von Arnim-Schlagenthin, an Australian who married into the German aristocracy and used a pen name so as not to scandalize her in-laws.  While the character of Elizabeth is loosely based on herself, just as Elizabeth's husband the Man of Wrath is loosely based on Count von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and the children described here are presumably based on their children.  But what she recounts in the book is pretty much fiction presented as fact.

Particularly Good Bits:

...how can you make a person happy against his will?  You can knock a great deal into him in the way of learning and what the schools call extras, but if you try forever you will not knock any happiness into a being who has not got it in him to be happy.

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

What a blessing it is to love books.  Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

I believe a week of steady drizzle in summer is enough to make the stoutest heart depressed.  It is to be borne in winter by the simple expedient of turning your face to the fire, but when you have no fire, and very long days, your cheerfulness slowly slips away, and a dreariness prevailing out of doors comes in and broods in the blank corners of your heart.

And was there every such a hopeful beginning to a day, and so full of promise for the subsequent right passing of its hours, as breakfast in the garden, alone with your teapot and your book!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10, mainly for the aforementioned part about immoral villagers who go around getting pregnant out of wedlock and getting married later and seem to think this is fine.  It's not salacious at all.

This has been my 31st book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and my 23rd from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"The Annotated Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapard)

I'm halfway through my ongoing quest to read all these annotated Austen editions!  The #JaneAustenDeepDive reading group on Instagram has been a continual delight, and the two-months-per-book pace has been perfect for me to read these detailed and informative editions.  

I think I learned more from The Annotated Northanger Abbey than from the Pride and Prejudice or the Sense and Sensibility, largely because this one explained alllllll the allusions to popular novels that Austen makes throughout the book.  One day, I will read some of the books she talks about, just to more fully understand this one.

Northanger Abbey remains tied with Pride and Prejudice as my second-favorite Jane Austen.  Up next for our group read-along is Mansfield Park, which is my least-favorite Austen.  I'm hoping that reading the annotated edition will help me appreciate it better.

If you don't know, this book is about a young woman who loves to read Gothic romance books, that era's version of romantic suspense, basically.  She travels to a resort town with some friends of her family, where she makes new friends and forms an attachment with a charming man with a great sense of humor.  But she lets her imagination start to run away from her sometimes, and has to learn to differentiate between fact and fiction.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild bad language in the text, and PG-13 for the annotations, which talk about sexual mores and attitudes at the time.

"Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse (audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil)

I happened upon the audiobook version of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse at a used book store this spring.  When I saw it was read by Jonathan Cecil, I snapped it up because I was pretty sure this would be a fun book for our family vacation.  My kids know who Jonathan Cecil is because he played Captain Hastings in several Poirot mysteries opposite Peter Ustinov, and we are definite fans of that particular iteration of Poirot.

Anyway, we had a jolly time listening to this book over a couple of days on our drive home last week!  We got a lot of laughs out of it, and we've acquired a few new favorite things to quote to each other (especially, "In that case, I shall now eat a ham sandwich!").

In this book, Bertie Wooster tries very hard not to get invited to a big manor house, not to get tangled up in his friends' problems, and not to get rid of the jaunty blue alpine hat with a pink feather that he loves and Jeeves hates.  As you can expect, he fails on all three counts, with hilarious and delightful results.  

I find it very heartening that Wodehouse published this book when he was 82.  And published two more Jeeves books after it!  Makes me hope I could have another 40ish years of writing ahead of me yet.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a smattering of mild cussing here and there.

This is my 26th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list and my 17th from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.  I'm counting it for the latter because, although I bought the audiobook this year, the paperback has been on my TBR shelves since 2023.

"Meant to Bee" by Storm Shultz

This is the sweetest rom-com kind of book I have read in a long time.  Yet it also has a lot of serious and meaningful things going on!  I think that's what makes it so delightful.

Single mom Cordy spends everything she has on a cute little cottage in a small English village, sight unseen.  When she and her toddler arrive there, that cottage turns out to be full of leaks, creaks, and grime.  But Cordy has nowhere else to go, so she rolls up her sleeves, blows her nose and dries her eyes, and gets to work figuring out how to make a life there for herself and her daughter.

Enter a surprise delivery of beehives.  And Ronan, a young man who's only in town for a few days to convince his younger brother to go back to veterinary school.  And an older gentleman with lots of advice on how to care for bees.  Next thing you know, Cordy and Ronan have the house fixed up, and Cordy has opened a small shop in her front room.  She sells honey and baked goods and cute gifts, and she manages to make enough to keep herself and her daughter fed and clothed and housed.

And then, her ex shows up.  The father of her child who had no interest in their baby's existence until now.  Oh, and he has the power to shut down Cordy's shop.

But it all turns out okay!

I really love books about setting up a store and managing a store, as well as books about fixing up a house and decorating it and getting settled.  So that whole aspect of the book really drew me in.  But what I loved best about this book was how Cordy's friends encouraged her to look outside herself for help.  There's a wonderful discussion of why Cordy doesn't attend worship services that doesn't dismiss her struggles or her reasons why she hasn't attended services in a long time, but also doesn't brush off attending worship services as unnecessary if someone doesn't "feel like it."  That is a really important conversation within the book, but also one that resonated with me.  This line hit me especially strongly:

"People shouldn't keep you away from God.  People may be rude from time to time, and there are some in the church who can be unkind, but those people do not represent Christ."

I lost a friend in recent years who felt insulted by something someone in our congregation said to her, and she decided that meant she wasn't welcome in our church anymore.  I'm not even sure who said it, or if they meant it as an insult, but that's how she took it, and I wish so hard I could have read this book a couple of years ago (except it hadn't been written yet when all that went down) because maybe I could have quoted that line up there to her, and maybe it would have helped.

Anyway, this is a really enjoyable book, and quite funny!

(More) Particularly Good Bits:

"Forgiving him doesn't mean you drop all your boundaries.  Just because you forgive someone, doesn't mean you let them back to do the same thing they did before."

"I knew that his not liking French fries was a sign."

"Falling in love is easy, but sometimes you have to choose to love someone.  Not all the time, because if you have to choose all the time that's forcing it, but in the hard moments.  In the 'we have no money' moments or the 'someone is trying to pull us apart' moments, that's when you choose to love, and Malcolm didn't."

I generally prefer life without spectators.

"You make everything feel like home."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of unwed motherhood and some kissing.  No smut, no cussing, not much violence (someone does get punched in the face...).

This is my 54th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"By the Great Horn Spoon!" by Sid Fleischman

Way back when I was ten or so, By the Great Horn Spoon! was the first Sid Fleischman book I ever encountered.  My mom read it aloud to my brother and I, and we laughed and laughed and laughed over it.  (My brother and I also picked up using "Blast!" like an expletive, like a ship's captain does in this book, which our mom eventually got very tired of.  I still say it when something goes wrong, thirty-some years later.  Very handy word, really.)

A few years ago, I read this aloud to my own kids.  We also laughed a lot over it.  I reread it again this week because I'm using it in a literature class for 3rd-5th grades that I'm teaching at our homeschool-coop.  And I laughed again.  What a rollicking good adventure this is!

Twelve-year-old Jack and his family's butler, Praiseworthy, stow away on a ship headed for the California gold fields.  The Gold Rush of 1849 is on, and our heroes are anxious to make their fortunes in gold, not because they want to be rich, but so they can save Jack's Aunt Arabella from losing her home.  Aunt Arabella has raised Jack and his sisters, who are orphans, and Jack can't bear the thought of her losing the house that has sheltered them all for so long.  Praiseworthy would do anything to help Aunt Arabella too, so the plucky heroes are off to make a fortune for her.  

Along the way, they encounter an array of peculiar and hilarious characters, from an irascible and competitive ship's captain to a gold miner who mixes his coffee beans with ground up acorns.  It's a tall tale in the grand tradition of American storytelling, and I love it very much.  It not only made me laugh aloud while reading it over again this week, it even made me get tears in my eyes when I hit the very last three lines.  Wonderful stuff.

Particularly Good Bits:

The stagecoach climbed as if it were part mountain goat.  It lurched, it halted, it bucked, it leaped, and it clung (p. 110).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  There's no bad language, but there's a bit of violence involving a boxing match, a scene where a man is nearly lynched, a stagecoach robbery, and several times when the main characters are in great peril.  Nothing actually bad really happens to them, ever, but very young readers might worry a lot about them at times.

"Carry On, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse

Earlier this summer, a friend shared this news article that stated that Penguin Random House has started censoring P. G. Wodehouse's books.  Incensed by this kind of Nazi-esque behavior, I went to various used book sites and bought up a complete collection of the Jeeves books, all in one cool, older paperback edition that I really liked the looks of.  While the CEO of Penguin Random House later released this statement saying that the whole issue has been blown way out of proportion, I still prefer to censor books myself rather than have someone else try to tell me what or how to be offended.  

I am an intelligent person who is well aware of the continual shifting of societal mores over the few thousand years of human history, and I am able to read books written in the past and know whether or not there are words or ideas there that I disagree with, find distasteful, or would not espouse/use myself because they would be hurtful to others.  I also find books written in the past with differing attitudes to ours to be a help in teaching my own kids about how ideas and attitudes change over time.  I find it very dangerous to try to erase those differences by pretending they never existed, whether it's by censoring fiction or burning history books under a swastika flag.  You can't change the fact that people thought differently from you in the past, but you can prevent yourself from learning by blinding yourself to the past.

None of which tells you anything about how funny this book is.  It's downright hilarious.  I laughed aloud multiple times while I read this.  From Bertie Wooster hiring Jeeves because he cured his hangover to the way that Jeeves pulled so many of Bertie's friends out of terrible scrapes, every story here was ridiculously nonsensical and adorable and funny.  So funny!  

I'm not sure I've ever read a full Jeeves book before, though I have read quite a few of Wodehouse's stories in anthologies and so on.  Of course, this is more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but that made it great to pick up and read a bit, and then go do something else.  I am so happy to have the whole series now!  This was an absolutely perfect book for me to read at the tail end of summer when I was feeling blue and gray and unhappy with the world.  I am going to try really hard to remember how well these stories work for me at the end of summer.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG because I don't think it's allowable to rate a P. G. Wodehouse book anything different.  Also because there is a little mild cussing, but nothing else objectionable.

This is my 18th book read for my fourth Classics Club list, my 46th read off my TBR shelf for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023, and the last book I completed for #20BooksOfSummer23.

"Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones

I've been meaning to read Howl's Moving Castle for probably a decade now.  I even got it out of the library once, but took it back unread because I just ran out of time for it.  My son discovered this series recently, and he loves it so much I said I would read the first book so he had someone to discuss it with.

Happily, I liked it a whole lot!  It had the sort of quirky, absurdist humor that makes me laugh aloud.  And the characters were quite loveable.  

Sophie is the oldest of three daughters.  Alas, in the world where she lives, eldest daughters never have any adventures or good luck of any sort.  They always fail.  They are never special.  Since she's doomed to a boring life, Sophie figures she should just stay in her tiny village and sell hats while her younger sisters of have all the adventures and find all the fortunes.  

Except, of course, Sophie ends up having to go out and have an adventure in spite of her own expectations.  After she falls afoul of the Wicked Witch of the Waste, she finds a new job keeping house for the Wizard Howl in his moving castle.  Sophie befriends Howl's apprentice, Howl's fire demon, and (eventually) Howl himself, and she discovers some pretty surprising things about herself too.  And, of course, she ends up helping save the day even though she doesn't think she's meant to.

Particularly Good Bits:

"It's just a tantrum," Sophie said.  Martha and Lettie were good at having tantrums too.  She knew how to deal with those.  On the other hand, it is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.  Anyway, Sophie's experience told her that tantrums are seldom about the thing they appear to be about (p. 122).

"Nobody's safe in a wizard's house," Calcifer said feelingly (p. 323).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some perilous and mildly scary parts and lots of (obviously pretend) magic.

"Cranford" by Elizabeth Gaskell

What a lovely, gentle book!  I've seen both seasons of the 2007-10 BBC series based on this, so I felt like I knew the characters already a bit, and that only added to my delight.  I chuckled aloud many times over the foibles of the people in this book, and then the last two chapters brought tears to my eyes.  Happy tears, as I tend to cry over joyful things more than sad ones.

A young woman named Mary Smith visits the small English town of Cranford repeatedly over the course of several years.  Through her, we get to know the people of the town reasonably well.  Most of them are women, and most of the women are aging and a bit poor.  Some become quite poor over the course of the story.  But they all behave, dress, and talk in the most genteel way they can manage -- sometimes that becomes ridiculous and laughable, and sometimes that becomes endearing.

The whole point, obviously, is to poke a little fun at societal conventions and those who adhere strictly to them, as well as to make plain the very narrow world women were forced to inhabit in the mid-1800s.  It's at once a bit satirical, a bit ironic, and very sympathetic.

Particularly Good Bits:

Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions (p. 5).

"Ah!" he said, "we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet somehow one can't help it" (p. 42).

"I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!" (p. 43)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G for being good, wholesome, lovely, and genuinely charming.

This has been my fourth book read for my fourth Classics Club list, and also my 51st book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"The Silent Gondoliers" by William Goldman

I'm vexed with myself that it's taken me this long to read this book.  Because it is an absolute gem.  It's a tall tale told by a master satirist.  It sparkles, it swoops, it shines in all the right places.  I read the whole thing in one sitting, chuckling with glee over and over.  Well, silently chuckling because I was at my daughter's gymnastics lesson and I didn't want to distract the gymnasts.  Probably some of the other parents thought I was having quiet little coughing fits or something.  But I wasn't, I was laughing and laughing.  

And then?  The very last line brought tears to my eyes.

It's all about a young man named Luigi who is the finest gondolier in all of Venice.  But poor Luigi has a terrible secret.  He also has one great dream -- the one thing he wants with all his heart.  And he can never have it, because of his secret.  But then comes a fateful day when only Luigi can save everything he holds dear, and in the process, he might just get a chance to live out his dream.

Particularly Good Bits:

I'm old now, or at least that's what my eyes tell me when they greet my face in the morning mirror.

Quietly, George of the Gritti replied: "We are gondoliers and we make our own decisions; explanations are not a part of our vocabulary."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a few mild cuss words.

This has been my 18th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.  I'm halfway to my goal of 36!  This certainly does bode well.

"Lost in a Good Book" by Jasper Fforde

After rereading The Eyre Affair last month, I simply had to continue with the series.  These books are so much nerdy, bookish, readerly fun!  I must admit I haven't laughed aloud as much over them as I did when I first read them, years and years ago, but that's okay.  I still love them.   And I did laugh now and then.

Thursday Next has a lot on her plate in this one.  Her dad's being hunted, her husband's in danger, her boss keeps yelling at her, her aunt and uncle disappear on purpose, and she discovers she has a major life change on the way.  Also, Goliath Corp. decides to blackmail her.  And then she gets apprenticed to Miss Havisham.  And has to stop the world from ending.

I can't even begin to make this book make sense in a review.  I promise it makes a kind of cool and surreal sense while you read it, okay?  The ending has a cliffhanger, so I'm really going to have to reread the next book, The Well of Lost Plots.  And then I expect I'll reread Something Rotten too, because it's got lots of Hamlet in it :-D

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some quite bad language, some innuendo and suggestive dialog, bits of violence here and there -- the bad language isn't pervasive, but I still wouldn't let a young teen read it.

"Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories" by Anthony Trollope

I got this book because the first story, "A Christmas at Thompson Hall," was one of the selections for the  #DickensDecember2021 reading group this year.  And I went ahead and read the whole thing because... Christmas!  I'm not sure that I've read anything by Trollope before, but I really want to read something else of his now because he has a very engaging and conversational style, and I like that.

Anyway, here's what I thought of each story in this collection:

+ "Christmas at Thompson Hall" was hilarious.  I was laughing and laughing aloud over this story.  So much so that my kids asked me what was so funny, so I tried to summarize it, but it's so ridiculously complicated that I only confused them.  They'll just have to read it themselves.  It all revolves around a woman who is dragging her husband back home to England to have Christmas with her family.  And then he catches a cold, and she tries to get mustard to make a mustard plaster for him, and Victorian hijinks ensue.  I really don't want to explain more than that because it would spoil the fun for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but wants to.

+ "Christmas Day at Kirkby Cottage" was kind of a let-down after the bouncing fun of the previous story. Young lovers have an argument about the importance of Christmas and then make up.

+ "The Mistletoe Bough" is about a girl who thinks she shouldn't marry the man she loves because she thinks she's being a better person by denying herself happiness.  If that sounds like a downer to you, well, that's because it is.  It ends happily, at least.

+ "The Two Generals" was interesting because I haven't read any other stories about the American Civil War written by an Englishman.  His perspective of what people on either side of the conflict might be thinking was very interesting, and pretty even-handed.  The story is about two brothers from Kentucky who each become generals during the war... but one in the Union Army and one in the Confederate.  And they both love the same girl.  And they both sneak home for Christmas, and conflict ensues.

+ "Not If I Know It" revolves around a verbal misunderstanding between two friends, one of whom takes terrible offense to the way the other answers a request.  They spend Christmas glaring and grumbling, and it's just kind of a grumpy story all around.

So, clearly, "Christmas at Thompson Hall" was my favorite, and I really liked "The Two Generals" too, but I doubt I'll reread the other three stories.  Still, the first was so funny that I'll keep my copy just to reread it for laughs some future Christmas.

(Mine from my Instagram account)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Clean and unobjectionable stories.  But you may never look at mustard pots the same way again, or handkerchiefs, or hotel corridors.

This is my 33rd book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and my 50th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021!!!

"Elizabeth and her German Garden" by Elizabeth von Arnim

I loved this book!  Oh, it was so refreshing and fun.  I am well on my way to being a firm fan of Elizabeth von Arnim -- in fact, I have bought a couple more of her books already.  I love how she makes me laugh!

This is really a journal in which she talks about her efforts to create the perfect garden in the home she shares with her German husband and their children.  Her garden is her retreat, her pet project, and her creative oasis for several years.  She has grand plans for it, but her series of German gardeners never quite seem to either approve of or understand those plans.  Still, she loves her garden.  I love to garden myself, and even though I don't have to deal with intractable gardeners, my little flower garden never quite does what I want it to either.  Gardens foster patience, I think.

But don't think that this book is boring because it's about an Australian who likes flowers and is married to a German.  It is hilarious.  Witty, wry, friendly, salty -- just altogether marvelous.  It reads like a series of letters from a sarcastic and yet kind friend, and I loved getting to read it in the springtime when my own flower gardening is underway.

Particularly Good Bits:

Sometimes I feel as if were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily (p. 15).

A woman's tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep in order, and things slip off it with a facility nothing short of appalling at the very moment when it ought to be most quiet (p. 25).

Well, trials are the portion of mankind, and gardeners have their share, and in any case it is better to be tried by plants than persons, seeing that with plants you know that it is you who are in the wrong, and with persons it is always the other way about (p. 57).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some very pointed wit indeed.

This was my 20th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list, and my 23rd book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021

"The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes" by Wade Albert White

One of the joys of raising kids who read is that, eventually, they'll start recommending books to you!  Which is what happened with this book.  My kids read it, and the two sequels, and laughed sooooo hard over them.  They began to quote them constantly.  A couple of weeks ago, my son said to me, "Maybe you should just read the first book, Mom.  Then you'd know what we're talking about."  I think he was surprised when I said, "Okay!"  You should have seen how ridiculously pleased all three of them were whenever they'd see me reading this book.  They'd ask me what part I was at, and if I'd met such-and-such a character yet, and so on.  It was pretty adorable.

This book is really funny.  It has unexpected, quirky humor, which is my favorite kind.  Too many books for kids this age rely on potty humor or rudeness to be funny, but this has genuine, clever humor to it.  It made me laugh aloud too!

It's all about a couple of orphan girls who go on a Quest thanks to a magic gauntlet one of them gets stuck on their hand.  With the aid of a somewhat inept young wizard and an unpredictable instructor, they set off to find out where they belong and fulfill their Quest before time runs out.  They encounter everything from a giant robot to wolves made of sand on the way, and have a series of more or less successful escapes, thanks in part to a magical book that sometimes tells them what they need to know.

Particularly Good Bits:

The man smiled the smile of someone who didn't much care for smiling, felt smiling generally to be a nuisance, and whose facial muscles were so out of practice they seemed to have forgotten most of the required movements (p. 84).

"An archaeologist tried to kill us," said Hiro.
Jocelyn nodded.  "They can get like that sometimes" (p. 229).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for adventurous peril and lots of dangerous situations, including fending off zombie sharks.  No bad language.

Top Ten Tuesday: I Dearly Love a Laugh

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "books that made me laugh out loud."  I dearly love a laugh, much like Elizabeth Bennet, and so a book that can make me laugh aloud is one I will probably like a lot.  Here are my top ten, with all titles linked to my reviews:

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery -- An orphan girl with a big imagination is adopted by an aging brother and sister and spreads sunshine and bemusement wherever she goes.

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster -- An orphan girl with a big vocabulary is sent to college by an anonymous donor and must write him letters detailing her progress.  The sequel, Dear Enemy, is also very funny.

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis -- Lots of fairy tales get mixed all up together in this story about a woodcutter's daughter, a frog, and a heap of fairy tale antics.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim -- Three middle-aged London ladies pool their resources and rent a villa in Italy, where they rediscover what it means to be alive.

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart -- Three eccentric sisters are harassed by a bootlegger until one of them takes the law into her own hands.  Based on the real-life adventures of one of New Jersey's first female police officers, Constance Kopp.  The whole series is a delight.

Greenwillow by B. J. Chute -- People living in rural England in the early 1900s have gentle and funny adventures.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen -- Country girl Catherine Morland goes to the big city of Bath, reads too many novels and starts thinking she's living in one, and eventually opens her eyes to the truth about love.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen -- Girl meets boy.  Girl hates boy for being a snob.  Boy secretly thinks girl has fine eyes.  Boy insults girl.  Girl insults boy.  Girl gradually learns it was she who was being a snob.  Boy continues to think girl has fine eyes.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman -- True love, pirates, princes, princesses, giants, sword fights, and the Pit of Despair.  What's not to love?

A Sidekick's Tale by Elisabeth Grace Foley -- A ranch hand tries to stop a family feud, help a young couple realize they love each other, and figure out who rightfully owns an heirloom.

Have you read any of these?  Did you do a TTT list this week?  Do share!

"If Only They Could Talk" by James Herriot

 If, like me, you see the title of this book and gasp, "Wait, there's another James Herriot book I haven't read yet?!?!?" let me allay your questions.  When the Herriot books were originally published in the UK, publishers in America thought they were too short to be a hit over here, so they combined short books into bigger ones and retitled them.  So If Only They Could Talk and the next UK book, It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, were combined into All Creatures Great and Small in the US, basically.

Anyway, I've read all of Herriot's books, but long ago.  Like, more than twenty years ago.  I'm teaching high school lit to another niece this year, and she likes animals, so I thought this might be a fun author for her to read.  But I didn't want to intimidate her with a big, thick book, so I got her this smaller one instead.  And got one myself, while I was at it, since I semi-collect these MacMillan Collector's Library editions.  They're so cute and pretty and fun to read and... yeah. 

Well, naturally I had to reread this book before I could teach it.  And I am happy to say that I loved it all over again.  Herriot had me laughing at least once a chapter.  Sometimes, I laughed so much, I had to put my book down and wipe my eyes.  I adore his humor, so dry and absurdity-based and British.  My goodness, what writing.

If you've never read these, I suppose you might want to know what they're about.  James Herriot (actually James Wight) was a veterinarian in Yorkshire, England.  In this book, he first arrives there, fresh out of veterinary school, and encounters many unusual people and many interesting veterinary cases.  Some of which are fairly serious, and others of which are simply funny.  (And some of which are pretty icky, so don't read it if you think animal poop is too gross to ever be mentioned in print.)

I always thought that these were strictly non-fiction, told in a funny way, but I learned recently that Herriot did fictionalize some of his stories.  And many of the ones that supposedly occur in the 1930s and '40s are based on things that actually happened in the '60s and '70s, when he was writing.  You know what?  I don't even care.  It's Herriot's writing that delights me, after all, not whether or not these things actually happened exactly as he sets them down.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for a lot more cussing than I remember.  Maybe they cleaned it up some for the American edition?

This is my 4th book read and reviewed for my third go-'round with the Classics Club.