"Magic for Marigold" by L. M. Montgomery

I read Magic for Marigold for our final Mother-Daughter Book Club meeting of the school year.  It was my first time reading this particular L. M. Montgomery book, and a first time for nearly everyone else in the book club, too, which was really fun.

Marigold is born into the type of large and eccentric family Montgomery excelled at writing.  Her father dies before she is born, and her mother names her daughter after the woman doctor who saves her newborn's life.  Marigold grows up in her family's large old home, with her grandmother and her great-grandmother and an aunt, as well as her mother.  And a bounty of aunts and uncles and the occasional cousin scattered across Prince Edward Island to give advice on how Marigold should be raised.

Marigold is not as dreamy and fanciful as, say, Anne Shirley or Emily Starr, probably because she grows up in a loving home with her own mother still alive.  She isn't as mousy as Jane Stuart, either, probably because her grandmothers are not tyrants and her mother is not an absolute milksop.  And maybe that's part of why I didn't love Marigold as much as Anne or Jane -- because she isn't as extreme.  She's sweet and kind and whimsical, and I did find that endearing, but she didn't lodge herself in my heart.

(from my Bookstagram account)

I also found the book as a whole whimsical and fun, but not a pure delight.  I blame that on how often things just go disappointingly wrong and unpleasant for poor Marigold.  Instead of mishaps coming out all right repeatedly, events that start out well go sour.  Over and over.  I got to feeling very sorry for Marigold over that, for sure.

Is this an unpleasant book?  Not in the slightest!  If you're an L. M. Montgomery fan, you're going to have fun with it.  Even if you aren't, you probably will find plenty to enjoy if you like gentle books about children growing up in bygone days.

Particularly Good Bits:

"If you don't believe things you'll never have any fun.  The more things you can believe the more interesting life is, as you say yourself.  Too much incredulity makes it a poor thing" (p. 86).

"I can't help liking things and I'm glad I do," said Marigold in a sudden accession of common sense.  "It makes life so much more int'resting" (p. 261).

"Keep your dream, little Marigold, as long as you can.  A dream is an immortal thing.  Time cannot kill it or age wither it.  You may tire of reality but never of dreams" (p. 319).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's good and wholesome and uplifting stuff, no doubt about it.

This has been my fourth book read and reviewed for my fifth Classics Club list!

"The Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief" by Maurice LeBlanc

What fun!  I had honestly never heard of Arsène Lupin before I bought this book.  I bought it because I really love the MacMillan Collector's Edition books, which are elegant pocket-sized hardcovers with delightful dust jackets.  I check every now and then to see what books they have released lately in case any are of interest to me, and this one looked like fun.  Sort of a precursor to The Saint books by Leslie Charteris, in a way. 

Arsène Lupin steals expensive things from rich people. Along the way, he often solves a crime or clears up a mystery.  Sometimes, though, the story is really just all about a clever heist he pulls of.  He's a gentleman thief, after all, not a detective.

Of the nine short stories in this collection, my top favorites were:

"The Seven of Hearts," in which Lupin not only executes a daring burglary, but solves an old crime.

"The Escape of Arsène Lupin" because I always enjoy prison-escape stories.

"Holmlock Shears Arrives Too Late" because it was really funny, and didn't so much poke fun at Sherlock Holmes as play with his character like this was a fanfic story (which it basically is).

I liked this book so much, I have asked my mom for a boxed set of the complete collection (there are like 8 or 9 more books, though not all in these editions, alas) for my birthday.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a little violence here and there, plus obviously themes of theft and robbery.  No cussing; no smut.

This has been my third classic book read and reviewed for my fifth Classic Club list.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" by Agatha Christie

My sister-in-law sent me a copy of The Mysterious Affair at Styles as part of a little book box last year.  She sent it to me to cheer me up when I was having a really stressful time, and it definitely worked!  Even though it took me a few months to read the book itself, having it to look forward to was a definite morale booster, as were the neat goodies that came with it.

This is not only the first book featuring the great detective Hercule Poirot, it's Agatha Christie's debut novel.  It's full of all the elements you would expect from a Poirot mystery:  a seemingly unsolvable crime, lots of suspects, some red herrings, and a solution that eventually makes sense.  Plus, we get to see Poirot and Hastings become friends, which is so fun!  

Is this my favorite Poirot mystery?  Don't think so, but it doesn't have to be.  I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm glad I've finally read it!

Particularly Good Bits:

"You gave too much rein to your imagination.  Imagination is a good servant, and a bad mater.  The simplest explanation is always the most likely" (p. 84).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder and the tiniest bit of strong language.

This is my second book read and reviewed for my fifth Classics Club list.

"The Murder on the Links" by Agatha Christie

My mom gave me the gorgeous Chiltern Classics edition of The Murder on the Links for Christmas, and I promptly started reading it on Christmas Day.  And finished it a few days after New Year's.  And took almost a month to get around to reviewing it.

I swear this isn't because I didn't enjoy this mystery!  I definitely did -- it had some lovely twists I didn't see coming, plus a couple that I thought I saw coming but was not quite correct about.  Hanging out with Poirot and Hastings was delightful.  Watching Hastings fall in love without noticing was adorable.  

I don't have anything particularly long-winded to say about this book.  That's partly because it simply is a good mystery, and I have no bones to pick with it.  And it's partly because I did read this almost a month ago and then fell prey to the busyness of January and failed to review it until now.

I would like to mention that I do rather like Hastings, and I know a lot of Poirot fans don't.  My affection for him stems pretty much entirely from his portrayal by Jonathan Cecil in several of the 1980s Hercule Poirot films starring Peter Ustinov.  Cecil plays Hastings as so sweet and likeable, albeit definitely not bright, and I shall probably always be fond of him as a result.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murder, insinuations about people having extramarital affairs, and a sprinkling of old-fashioned cuss words.

This is my 49th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list!  One more to go, and I'll have read and reviewed 200 classics since 2014!

"The Golden Road" by L. M. Montgomery

My kids and I enjoyed The Story Girl so very much when I read it aloud to them last year that we decided to read the sequel together this year.  Happily, I still remembered all the voices I had given the characters, even though I had read a couple of other books aloud to them in between.

This was a lot of fun, and we laughed a great deal over the little magazine that the kids put together periodically, simply called Our Magazine.  We all looked forward to those chapters because they were sure to set us howling with laughter.  But there were poignant things here too, like the repeated foreshadowing that one character would not live long past childhood.  Happily, none of them died during the story, but you knew that one of them was going to in the next few years.

The ending is also bittersweet, as the gang of friends breaks up and goes their separate ways.

We need more children's books like this where it's just a lot of fun adventures had by a group of kids who are friends.  Nothing truly awful happens to them, or anything unbelievable.  They just get into and out of a bit of mischief here and there, have some adventures, have quarrels and make up, and so on.  I love slice-of-life books like this, and you never know, I might write one someday.

Particularly Good Bits: "Nothing is ever lost to us as long as we remember it" (p. 257).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Good, clean, wholesome fun.

This has been my 46th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.  Getting so close to finishing off another set of fifty classics!!!

"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.

"Midsummer Mysteries" by Agatha Christie

I did it!  I read all four of these season-themed Christie collections in four consecutive seasons!

It's the little things in life, amiright?

The short stories in this volume include stories about Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Mr. Quin, Tommy and Tuppence, and Mr. Parker Pyne.  Plus a story or two with none of them.  I've grown so fond of Pyne and Quin that I have actually picked up collections of stories about only them, because I'd like to read more!

I'd say my favorite stories in this are "Jane in Search of a Job" and "The Rajah's Emerald," which happen to be two of the stories with no famous detectives in them.  I also really liked "The Oracle at Delphi" and "The Incredible Theft."

I most definitely did NOT like "The Idol House of Astarte," which was creepy.

I just learned that Harper Collins is doing two more collections similar to this: Capital Christie and Country Christie, and now I want those too.  So far, it seems like you can only buy the former in the UK, and the latter won't be released until September.  I will probably wait until September and then see if I can't order them both from someplace like Waterstones that ships to the US.  Or maybe they'll have them in the US by then too.

Particularly Good Bits:

The book she took with her to read was not the excellent one on Grecian Art recommended to her by her son but was, on the contrary, entitles The River Launch Mystery.  It had four murders in it, three abductions, and a large and varied gang of dangerous criminals  Mrs. Peters found herself both invigorated and soothed by the perusal of it (p. 165, "The Oracle at Delphi")(I love that last line because that's what good mysteries do for me, too.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for crimes such as murder and abduction and theft, and the sorts of violence you might expect Agatha Christie to write about.  No rubbing gore in the reader's face, in other words.  There are a handful of mild curse words, and some very polite dialog mentions about people having romantic affairs, etc.

This has been my 41st book read and reviewed for my 4th Classics Club list.

"Sinister Spring" by Agatha Christie

Like Autumn Chills and Midwinter Murder, this is a collection of short mysteries by Agatha Christie that all take place in a particular season.

Hands down, my favorite short story in here was "The Girl in the Train," which was funny, quirky, and exciting all at the same time.  It made me think alternately of P. G. Wodehouse and F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is no mean feat!

I also very much enjoyed "Have You Got Everything You Want?" (I'm becoming a Parker Pyne fan) and "The Soul of the Croupier" (I'm also becoming a Mr. Quin fan).  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for various crimes such as murder and theft, and attendant mild violence.

This is my 37th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"Midwinter Murder" by Agatha Christie

Like Autumn Chills, this is a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie that are all set in a specific season.

I'd previously read only one story in this, "Christmas Adventure," which stars Hercule Poirot.  He's in several other stories, and there are also some with Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, and some other semi-regular characters of Christie's.

Aside from that one, which I like a lot, my favorite stories were "The Manhood of Edward Robinson," which had a lovely twist, and "The World's End," which delighted me with the way it ended.

The subtitle to this book is "Fireside Mysteries from the Queen of Crime," and these stories are absolutely as cozy as that implies.  I'm really glad I picked up all four of these seasonal Christie collections, and I'm looking forward to the spring and summer editions!

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

This is my 35th book read for my fourth Classics Club list.

"Autumn Chills" by Agatha Christie

Over the past few years, HarperCollins has put out four seasonal collections of Agatha Christie short stories.  I've collected them all up, and I decided to try to read them all over the coming months, each during the season where they take place.  I began with Autumn Chills because I wanted to read it for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.  I didn't finish it before November, so it didn't count for that challenge, but that's okay!  I had a lot of fun reading one of these short mysteries every couple of days.

And then this review sat in my drafts for a month.  Because my life has just been so blasted busy!  That means I don't actually remember which stories were my favorites anymore, except that I wholeheartedly loved "The Case of the Rich Woman."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder, mild innuendo here and there, and I think maybe a couple instances of mild cussing?

This was my 28th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge and my 33rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"The Story Girl" by L. M. Montgomery

I think my kids enjoyed this book even more than I did when I read it aloud to them this summer.  That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, because I definitely did!  But I think they loved it even more.  Sometimes, with read-alouds, I am the one to say, "Hey, want me to read a bit?" but with this one, it was more often one of the kids saying, "Do you have time to read to us?"  Which was really delightful.

This is all about a group of kids on Prince Edward Island.  It's narrated by a guy named Beverly as an adult, looking back to a delightful summer from his childhood when he and his brother spent several months with an aunt and uncle and had fun with their cousins and friends.  The kids have all sorts of adventures together, get into mischief, learn some lessons, solve some problems for one another and others, and spend a lot of time listening to the Story Girl tell stories.

The title character's real name is Sara Stanley, but everyone calls her the Story Girl because she is so wonderful at telling stories.  She's fourteen and is blessed with both a vivid imagination and gift for storytelling.  She's the center of the group of kids -- not the leader, but the one their adventures always end up revolving around.  

This is one of those "slice of life" books I love that has a string of adventures and escapades and incidents in the lives of its characters, rather than one all-encompassing plot.  L. M. Montgomery excelled at both kinds of books, which is pretty amazing! 

Particularly Good Bits:

It is always safe to dream of spring.  For it is sure to come, and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter (p. 320).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Good, clean, wholesome fun!

This is my 28th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and my 21st read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"The L. M. Montgomery Christmas Collection"

I love L. M. Montgomery's writing, and I love Christmas, so I am naturally drawn to her festive stories and poetry.  The Christmas with Anne collection is one of my favorite Christmastime reads, so I am excited to add this new collection to my shelf.  It does have some overlap with that other volume -- both contain the "Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves" from Anne of Green Gables, as well as several of the same short stories.  This collection has a couple of different Anne chapters too, and six Christmas/winter poems that are paired with appropriate classic paintings.  There are paintings to go with the short stories and Anne chapters as well, and I love all the thought that obviously went into the pairings.

I bought the paperback edition of this book, but I wish I had gotten the hardcover instead.  I see there is now a pocket-sized hardcover edition available, as well as the full-sized one, and I might get that for myself and put this paperback copy into my kids' box of Christmas books that we haul out every year.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's everything sweet, wholesome, and lovely.

This is my 57th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"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.

"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett

I have no memory of this book.  I KNOW I read all of Hammett's novels about twenty years ago.  But the title is the only familiar part about it.  I didn't even remember that the main character is the Continental Op.  Weird.  Or maybe not weird -- I read all of Hammett's novels in a row, in a big anthology I got from the library, and they did kinda smush together in my brain.  So that's probably why it didn't feel familiar.

Anyway!  I thought at first this book was going to be about fighting Communists because it actually involves a Communist agitator at the beginning, but it turns out to be about a whole lot of gangsters battling it out over control of a town.  So the titular "red harvest" really refers to all the blood that's spilled by the end, not harvesting Commies.  Or being harvested by Commies.

The Continental Op shows up in Personville for a meeting with a man who wants to hire the Continental Detective Agency for an unnamed job.  That man then dies, and it turns out he was basically the last decent, law-abiding citizen of Personville, which is nicknamed Poisonville for a good reason.  The bulk of the book is about the Op setting various gangsters and crime bosses against each other so they will take each other down and he won't have to get his hands dirty.  Except, by the end, he has to anyway.

An unpleasant book about unpleasant people?  Yes, but also... wow, so satisfying by the end when all the baddies have come to bad ends.  It was just the sort of hard, no-nonsense, smooth read I have been craving in these last, unending days of summer.  I don't love Hammett's prose the way I love Chandler's, but he has a straight-forward and slyly humorous style I enjoy anyway.

Particularly Good Bits:

"Plans are all right sometimes," I said.  "And sometimes just stirring things up is all right -- if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top" (p. 85).

The machine-gun settled down to business, grinding out metal like the busy little death factory it was (p. 122).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a lot of violence and blood that somehow manages not to get excessively gory, plus some cussing, lots of alcohol and tobacco use, some laudanum use, and a lot of innuendo about why one woman is so terribly popular around town.

This is my 43rd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth von Arnim (again)

This is the third time I have read this book.  I simply adore it.  I'm beginning to think that no actual holiday in Italy could compare to the pure delight of reading about these remarkable ladies spending April there!

Four British ladies who do not know each other pool their resources and rent a villa in Italy for the whole month of April.  Lotty wants to escape her weary life for a bit and breathe some new and different air.  Rose wants to get away from the fact that she is sure her husband no longer loves her.  Mrs. Fisher wants to sit alone in the sunshine and think.  Lady Caroline wants to figure out what to do with her life.

They are all trying to escape their ordinary lives and get some rest in a new environment.  But they discover that they carry their lives with them.  In fact, although all four ladies had grown tired of being who they were, when they reach their Italian villa, they gradually become more their true selves than ever before.  And it's that peeling back of artificiality and exposure of the real, honest people inside themselves that transforms each of them, not the beauty of an Italian spring or the sunshine or the (comparative) solitude.

And, once the ladies have been able to reveal their true selves to themselves and to each other, they can meet other people with poise, balance, confidence, and charm.  Lotty's and Rose's husbands arrive and discover their wives are as dear and sweet and whole as they had been years ago when they were wooing.  A third male arrival benefits from both Mrs. Fisher's and Lady Caroline's transformations as well, though he doesn't know this because he had not met them before.

All in all, this book makes me smile, laugh, and rejoice.  I'm sure I'll continue to read it every couple of Aprils for the foreseeable future.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's wholesome and sweet and uplifting.

"Emily of New Moon" by L. M. Montgomery

One of the things I love about L. M. Montgomery's writing is how vividly she remembers what things feel and seem when you are a child.  I also have very clear recollections of my childhood, particularly of my inner self as a child, and so much of what she writes rings so true.  When Emily cries, "I am important to myself" (p. 25), I wanted to cheer because that is how I felt too when I was in single digits and being dismissed by adults.  And, when "Elizabeth Murray had learned an important lesson -- that there was not one law of fairness for children and another for grown-ups" (p. 375), I set down my book and clapped.  I was very sensitive to injustice, slights, and being treated condescendingly when I was a kid, and I try really hard not to treat kids that way now that I'm an adult.

Anyway, I read all three Emily books twenty years ago, when I was in my early twenties, and thought they were okay.  I don't know if I loved Emily of New Moon when I read it just now, but I definitely liked it a lot more than I did before.  I chuckled often, smiled oftener, and am eager to read the next book in the trilogy.

Emily Starr's father dies, and she is taken in by some of her mother's relatives.  Cousin Jimmy and Aunt Laura are kind and loving to her, but Aunt Elizabeth bosses both of them and is less welcoming to Emily.  Still, they give Emily a home at New Moon farm on Prince Edward Island, and if Aunt Elizabeth is not kind, she is at least honorable.

Emily makes friends with some kids and some adults.  She starts out a lonesome, grief-stricken, pale child with a good deal of grit and spirit hidden under her puny exterior.  She blossoms into a loveable, healthy, friendly girl over the course of the book.  Always imaginative, Emily is determined to become a published author, and she spends a lot of time writing poetry, stories, and letters to her dead parents.  

And, while terribly ill with a fever, Emily solves long-ago mystery.  Her subconscious pieces together clues about a woman who disappeared and figures out what really happened to her, and brings joy and comfort to her best friend as a result.  This is presented a little bit mystically, but I know how powerful a person's subconscious and imagination can be, and I find it wholly believable that a person could put together a few seemingly disparate facts and reach the logical and correct conclusion without consciously trying to do so.

I really loved Emily's concept of "the flash."  I also have moments of such clear and unadulterated joy that they seem like ecstatic glimpses of a different world.  Mine usually are brought about by bits of music, silhouettes, or something wonderful happening against all expectation -- they can all transport me with a jolt of ecstasy.  I don't have a name for it like Emily does, but I think the concept is the same.

Particularly Good Bits:

And always when the flash came to her, Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty (p. 8).

Aunt Elizabeth was one of those people who never understand anything unless it is told them in plain language and hammered into their heads.  And then they understand it only with their brains and not with their hearts (p. 54-55).

"Poets are so scarce in Blair Water folks don't understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you're not right if you don't worry" (p. 80).

Spring is such a happyfying time isn't it, father" (p. 215).

She was filled to her fingertips with a rapture of living (p. 269).

Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process (p. 361).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for grief, mild mistreatment of a child, gossip about a woman leaving her husband for another man, and oblique descriptions of a sad and lonely death.

This is my 13th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and my second for the Classic Children's Literature Party.

"Peter Pan" by J. M. Barrie

It's been years and years since I read Peter Pan, and I was overdue for a reread.  In fact, I've never read it as an adult. That made it rather a different experience, I must say.

As a kid, I saw this as a story about the wonders of staying young forever and the meanness of adults who force kids to grow up.  But I don't think that's Barrie's point at all.  I think his point is that, as we mature into adulthood, we start to see the world as it really is, and we discover that the real world isn't nearly as scary or perilous as we imagined it as a child.

Neverland is the combined imaginations of Wendy, John, and Michael, and everything is fairly frightening there.  Roving bands of pirates try to kidnap you, roving bands of Indians try to kill you, beasts are always trying to eat you up, mermaids laugh at you behind your back, and pixies irritate you whenever they can.  Doesn't that sound like a child's idea of the hardships of adulthood?

The thing is, when Wendy grows up, she discovers adulthood is sweet, rewarding, and enjoyable.  But Peter Pan is perpetually afraid of adulthood, so he remains perpetually a child... but he never learns the truth and never learns his fears are baseless.  

(From my Instagram)

I think Barrie is also reminding us that we need to let kids be kids and not try to force them to be little adults.  They'll imitate adults for fun, and that's great, but if you try to push them into maturity before they're ready for it, you'll scare them.

In the end, I liked this book a LOT better than I was expecting to.  I thought it was going to make me sad because I've had to become an adult despite my best intentions... but instead, it made me happy I'm no longer a fearful child.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for killing, fighting, danger, and suspense.

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

"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie

My favorite part of this book was figuring out that Hercule Poirot was in it before he was actually mentioned by name.

My least-favorite part of this book was figuring out who the killer was about two-thirds of the way through the book, and being right.  I really hate that.  I pretty much demand that the detective and the villain in a mystery book or show or movie should be smarter than I am.  If I figure things out before the big reveal, I feel cheated.  I don't try to figure them out -- I even actively try NOT to.  But sometimes, it happens, and then I'm kinda bummed.  Especially since several people told me to avoid spoilage on this, and that I was going to really enjoy the reveal.  Oh well, it was still a fun Hercule Poirot mystery :-)

This one is kind of a locked-room mystery and kind of a house-party mystery, and also a cozy-village mystery.  A rich guy gets murdered, lots of people who were at his big estate for a party are suspects, and so are lots of people in the village.  There are some obvious suspects and some not-so-obvious ones, and Poirot's little grey cells get quite a workout before the end.

Particularly Good Bits:

It is odd, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial (p. 225).

"It is completely unimportant," said Poirot.  "That is why it is so interesting," he added softly (p. 288).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murder, some innuendo and talk about unwed mothers, and a smattering of mild bad language.

This has been my fifth book read from my fourth Classics Club list, and also my 53rd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Among the Shadows" by L. M. Montgomery

This was just the right thing to read the week before Halloween, for me.  A few slightly spooky stories, some eerie ones, and the rest just with a tinge of darkness around the edges.  I do NOT enjoy horror stories, in print or on the screen, but I trusted Montgomery not to scare me, just give me a little thrill here and there.  And she definitely delivered!

This is a collection of her short stories, and I think I had read at least one of them before, possibly in an e-book collection of a dozen or so of her stories that I read a while ago.  Anyway, the stories I enjoyed most were:

+ "Detected by the Camera" -- an amateur photographer inadvertently solves a crime.

+ "From Out the Silence" -- a woman misses her best friend, who died suddenly after they had a silly quarrel, but learns her friend forgave her after all.

+ "The House Party on Smoky Island" -- a supernatural visitor saves a marriage.

+ "Miss Calista's Peppermint Bottle" -- forgiveness and peppermint extract solve a crime and save a soul.

+ "A Redeeming Sacrifice" -- eavesdropping convinces a bad boy to leave a good girl alone.

+ "The Redemption of John Churchill" -- eavesdropping convinces a pardoned felon that his life can have meaning again.  Absolutely my favorite story here.

(From my Instagram account.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of killing, death, theft, ghosts, hauntings, and unwed mothers. Not really a book for kids, although there's nothing actually bad here.

This has been my third book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and also my 50th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022 !!!!

"The Light of Western Stars" by Zane Grey (again)

Yup, this is now officially a favorite western novel for me.

Now, the funny thing is, the first time I read this book, I got really mad at the ending because I seem to have missed one very key sentence toward the end.  (SPOILERS in the rest of this paragraph only.)  And I still think that a showdown between Gene Stewart and Don Carlos is called for, and I'm mad that we didn't get one.  BUT.  Grey does tell us that Don Carlos got captured and thrown in jail.  He's not left on the loose, waiting to ambush Stewart and Madeline on their way home.  (End of SPOILERS.)

I learned recently that Grey wrote a sequel to this, called Majesty's Rancho.  When I was at the Zane Grey Museum in Zanesville, Ohio, last week, I picked up gorgeous vintage 1940s editions of both books, and promptly started rereading this.  I've watched the 1940 movie version several times since the first time I read the book, so I wanted to get the book back in my head before reading the sequel.  Which I hope/plan to read this summer still, after I finish up a few other things I am currently reading.  I'm really excited to see where Stewart and Madeline's lives take them!  Fingers crossed that it's a happy book and not full of them getting angry at each other over misunderstandings all the time, or something lame like that.

In this book, Madeline "Majesty" Hammond comes west to visit her brother and runs afoul of drunken cowboy Gene Stewart before she's even left the train station.  What ensues?  Only a secret and unconsummated marriage, a lot of dramatic scenery, really crazy car driving, a Mexican revolution, and a rugged camping trip just to add some spice.

Parts of this book kind of demand the readers leave modern sensibilities behind, but that's not something I personally have difficulty doing because I read a LOT of old books, and I know enough about history to understand when things are a product of the era they were written in, and when they're something I'm just not going to be okay with no matter what.  If you can't do that without it ruining your enjoyment of this book, you probably aren't going to like it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for western violence and a little bad language here and there.