The L. M. Montgomery Tag

This fun tag is part of Hamlette's We Love L. M. Montgomery Week. ♥

1. Who introduced you to L. M. Montgomery's writing?  Tell us the story!

I honestly think it was me. I grew up with the Megan Follows miniseries so when I reached my late teens I just decided to try some of her Anne books. I'm not sure when I first saw the miniseries, only that it's always been there, just like the Road to Avonlea miniseries that I adore.

2. What LMM books have you read?

I have an awful confession. I know that I've read some of the Anne books when I was a teenager, but I have no idea which ones or how far into the series I got. But I read at least 3 and I have also, now, read Emily of New Moon.

3. What movies or shows based on her books have you watched?

I swear someone showed me something about Jane of Lantern  Hill at some point, although I might be misremembering. I've also watched the classic Anne series with Megan Follows, all 3 of them. I've seen a few other Anne movies along the way and, yes, I did watch 2 seasons of Anne with an E although I cannot recommend it other than the first season which I found rather brilliant.

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We ♥ L. M. Montgomery Week - Emily of New Moon (a review)

Emily of New Moon was read for Hamlette's We Love L. M. Montgomery Week. ♥

This was my first time reading Montgomery's Emily of New Moon. It's incredible how fast I read it. It was hard to put it down when I had to do other things, like, oh work or sleep or go run errands. It's a very enchanting, melancholy sort of story, and I was completely pulled into it.

Creative souls are hard to come by sometimes and Emily Byrd Starr is, if at all possible, even more creative and imaginative than Anne Shirley. She's a wild thing, born of the fey, on so many levels.

For the unfamiliar, like I was, Emily is orphaned early in the book and, through no other alternative, goes to live with her mother's family. She was raised wild by a father much like herself in personality, and her mother's family despised him. So it's a struggle for her, going to live with an aged aunt who appears to find her troublesome at best and hateful at worst. Aunt Elizabeth Murray is the matriarch of New Moon farm. Aunt Laura is the sweeter, meeker younger sister, and Cousin Jimmy is kind, but also appears to have some sort of interesting mental defect that might make him slightly dangerous. Or at least, there are times when Emily feels slightly fearful of him, although she's not entirely sure why.

I won't go in depth into the darker side of the book here, or the elements that troubled me, but it's impossible to read Emily of New Moon without realizing and appreciating that Montgomery herself must have felt things very, very keenly. I looked a bit into her life, not much, but just a bit, and realized she was much like her heroines in a variety of ways. I had no idea that her use of "the flash" for Emily's brilliant and spiritual inspirations came from her own experiences with it.

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Great Expectations: Time Marches On

Time is cruelty for Miss Havisham, the eccentric owner of Satis House in Charles Dickens’ fine novel Great Expectations. The progression of time drives her mad; to protect what little sanity she has left she must stop time’s progression. It’s impossible to do so. Time is powerful and in its willful determination to do as God dictates, Miss Havisham leads a fantasy life where she protects herself from the hurt of abandonment.

Wronged by her fiancé, Miss Havisham locks her doors, leaves the wedding feast on the table, and commands that all her clocks be stopped. Time is not permitted to work. Yet there is something in the saying that time is the great healer. It allows wounds to scab over and scar. The memory of the hurt remains, but the pain is gone. Time heals those wounds, but when Miss Havisham stops time for herself, she stops the healing process. There is no progression for Miss Havisham. Instead, she locks herself into the memory of the wrong done her, scraping off the healing scab every single day in order to feel the pain afresh.

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First Classics Club Read of 2023 - Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen

I'm sitting at my laptop with my cup of delicious Blackcurrent Breeze tea from Twinings and my fingers freezing due to the dip in temperatures outside. I am so immensely grateful today. I'm grateful for my cup of tea. For my space heater that is working its little tail off to warm my home office space. For my cozy slippers and wool socks. And I'm grateful for Jane Austen.

I first encountered Austen probably 19 or so years ago now. My father is a huge Laurence Olivier fan, so when I was in my late teens, we watched the 1940 Pride and Prejudice as a family, with Olivier in the starring role as Mr. Darcy, naturally (read my review, if you wish). It's still my favorite film adaptation, despite its historic and literary inaccuracies.

But I hadn't picked up Pride and Prejudice to read until at least a decade later. And it certainly wasn't my favorite of Austen's novels. I always thought my dislike is because I'm quite stubborn about joining a fandom with a high rate of support.

I'm not sure what's changed in 2023, but something clearly has because I loved re-reading Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps my outlook has softened somewhat where this novel is concerned. But really, I think that my propensity to be like Lizzy is what annoyed me most about the novel, because the tendency annoys myself. We are not even remotely the same personality type, but we do both leap to judgements and criticisms, especially when our feelings and personal pride have been offended. 

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Japanese Movie Review: We Love (2018)

Rin (Hirano Sho) and Yuu (Sakurai Hinako) have been childhood friends forever, but their relationship has always been rocky due to Rin's bullying techniques and Yuu's extreme anxiety disorder. They happen to live next door to one another in the same apartment complex, go to the same high school, and even share the same set of friends in Koyomi and Keita. Yuu lacks confidence in herself in spades and any confidence she might develop is constantly undercut by Rin's biting remarks. Privately, Rin worships the ground Yuu walks on, but he can't tell her that because he doesn't know any other way to interact with her because they've been toxic for so long.

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Looking Back at January 2023 Reads

One goal/non-goal I have for 2023 is to set aside time to read. It's so easy to get caught up in scrolling on your phone randomly and before you know it, you've fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole for hours with nothing to show for it. Other than baking recipes you'll never make or debunking videos for things you would never try in the first place. If you get my drift.

So for me, reading five books in January is monumental! And not a single one of them was manga! Not that there's anything wrong with reading manga. I personally love reading it. But it's usually a pretty quick read and not very challenging. So I'm proud of myself for reading five non-manga books in January.

My favorite read in January was actually The Woodcarver's Daughter, followed closely by Pride and Prejudice.

How about you? What was your reading accomplishment in January? Did you have a favorite read?

Enjoy scanning my list of reads and my thoughts on each of them. You can also see my February 2023 Reading Goals. I would love to know if you've set any reading goals for yourself this year!

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Setting February 2023 Reading Goals

I don't usually set reading goals for myself since I technically fail at them. But I sense that setting them here and in my bujo rather than on Goodreads will have a positive impact. I would like to complete 5 books in February, just like I did in January (yay!).

Finish reading Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery, for the We ♥ L. M. Montgomery Week that starts on February 20th, hosted by Hamlette. I'm already pretty much addicted to the book and am suffering when I have to put it down to do other things. So finishing it won't be difficult.

Read The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. Now, I haven't even started it so if I get a little ways in and find myself hating it, then I likely will stop. And I won't feel guilty about stopping if that happens. 

Read My Story! His Song! Blessed! by Sherman Andrus (a member of the gospel singing group The Imperials).  I bought the book at the end of January and I'm very excited to give it a read and learn his story. My parents raised me on gospel music so The Imperials played regularly in our home.

Read a kid's fiction or YA novel, my choice, whatever strikes my fancy.

Read a Christian fiction novel, whatever strikes my fancy. Maybe one by Camy Tang because she's a Japanese American Christian novelist and she wrote an entire Christian series featuring Asian leads. That's right up my alley, and I already love her style because she's written Regency Christian fiction under the name Camille Elliot.

How about you? What reading goals do you have in mind for February?

You can find my January 2023 List of Reads here!

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