Heart Wants Books

One Page at a Time, or, How We Read So Much

May 18, 2020

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

We read so much we want you to read with us for virtual book club. Join us at 7:30pm Central Time on Friday 26 June as we discuss Deanna Raybourn’s A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1). If you’re ready to sign up, you can do so here.

As you may imagine, it’s not unusual for either of us to mention a book in a conversation, either one we’re reading or read in recent memory (or not so recent memory). Occasionally that turns into someone asking just how many books we read in a given time period, which generally leads to questions of how we fit that into our lives. So, combine that with folks (including a bookseller) saying that people are reading more these days, we thought you might be interested in a deep dive into how we squeeze in 100+ books a year, in a “normal” year. Oh, and a mom of the blog may have asked about this during book club, so we were ready to say there’d be a post all about it soon! Here goes! ::Ashley Waves HI, Mom!::

I guess today’s blog post is an author confessional. Because… I don’t know how else to explain how I read all the pages since I currently experience reading as both a joy and an anxiety. It’s not much of a shocker and I am going to happily dig a little deeper into the hot mess that is my brain just for you. Y’welcome.

When Adam and I were in California for a year and a half, I went through a very rough existential crisis. Adam spent 5 months out in L.A. without me as I worked on fixing up and staging our house in Tennessee. Then I listed it, packed it up, and coordinated the movement of 2,300 square feet, plus a basement and a two-car garage, worth of STUFF. Nikki and I had started trading titles again by this point, and I was reading a lot from my local library when I wasn’t doing all the necessary things to put a house on the market as an owner/agent while my spouse was living and working 2,000 miles away. I was not taking on any other clients as a Realtor and I didn’t know what I was going to do out in California since licensing laws are different and at that time California was only a jumping off point for us to move somewhere else in a few years for Adam’s career. [Obviously, now that we’re back in Tennessee, things didn’t work out as planned, we’re doing the best with what we’ve got.] Once I arrived in Whittier, I had a lot of time for reading because we were waiting on our final PODS to arrive for almost 2 months. This is when I learned the miracles of Overdrive on my kindle. My crisis came to a head after I was let go from a position I had thought was going to transition me into real estate in California, after only 6 weeks of working there. Adam and I decided it was good to just give myself a break from the need to find work. I went on a week-long girls’ vacay to Napa – thank god for girlfriends because I don’t know if I would have been able to handle the loss without their support and encouragement…and the wine. So. Much. Wine. Then the next month were the terrible wildfires in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. We hosted our friends and their puppers for almost a week. Then I had a visit from another friend for 10 glorious days of touristy things, like Disneyland and Universal Studios and beaches and holiday decorating. Then our only Christmas in Whittier came and went. Then my birthday, and a visit from my sister and mom, and another visit from a friend, and through all of this I couldn’t define myself by what I was doing in my career, because I didn’t have one. Holly Homemaker is not a career, at least for me, but was certainly my job. The house was clean, the groceries were bought, Adam and I went to personal training together twice a week and the gym a couple of times more each week. I only had one friend in the area, my roommate from freshman year of college, but she and her husband lived over an hour away close to Malibu so we only saw each other once a month or so. I became a professional reader. I read, and when I wasn’t reading or doing household things, I played games on my Kindle Fire. Reading became what I most associated with and if I wasn’t keeping track of that, if I wasn’t doing that, then really what WAS I? I was a miserable and sad wreck. Reading became my escape and my primary joy.

Now that I’m back to that #RealtorLife in Tennessee I am balancing my work and my reading, and my reading for work. [I took an online continuing education class this past Thursday. It was FIVE. HOURS. OF. READING. MY. COMPUTER. SCREEN. And a few videos.] I, too, enjoy quiet cups of coffee in the morning with my kindle books and kitteh cuddles. I randomly get to read throughout the day depending on what I have going on work-wise. And then after Adam goes to bed in the evenings, that’s prime reading time. I stay up later than even Nikki does, but I sleep later, too, because my monsters love to cuddle in bed in the morning, not demand food and bathroom walks. [Also, Adam feeds them.] However, there are some days that I don’t read more than a few pages in any book because I am still in the habit of needing to be able to sit down and focus for a solid stretch of time in order to read a book. I like to be able to check my book completions off my list and yes, even now, reading is a competition. I don’t get those personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut anymore, but I get a whole lot of life satisfaction from having read certain books and a certain amount of books. The blog, however, does give me deadlines to have completed lots of reading, and I work well with the deadline up until it becomes a bundle of anxiety. It was the same in college with paper writing. I researched a lot in college with my history classes, and yes it does bleed over into what and how I write for you, dear readers. I try to give you the background and facts you might not know you need. I sometimes do that for myself about books and authors even if I’m not writing about it on the blog. That’s extra time away from the book reading time, which is why I don’t usually read as many books as Nikki does in a year. Overall, I’d say I spend reading the average amount of time a typical American used to spend watching TV, 2-3 hours a day. Obviously, I also watch TV, binging shows is oh so good, but I try to spend that time with Adam or ‘watching’ and doing housework. Reading, unless I’m eating, is always done without any attempt at multitasking, but I’m usually always reading while I eat, which is another way to get those pages in. Quit scrolling your phone and pick up your book, friends!

Imma challenge you to stretch your reading life this year, especially with Safer at Home orders still in place all over. If you’re not keeping a record of your reading, try to do that. Paper and pen works just fine, you see how I do mine at the end of every month with our Reading Life Review posts. If you prefer digital, GoodReads is an excellent place to start, and if you read on a kindle it automatically connects to your Amazon account! Be warned, GoodReads is a much better experience on a computer browser than it is in the app, either on your phone or on a tablet. If you’re already keeping track, try to pay attention to when you get your most quality reading done, and stick to that every day if you can. If you’re doing that too, well, gosh almighty, you’re a professional reader and I hope to see that your end of year stats are higher than mine. Challenge Issued, will you accept it?

~Ashley

First, some background- I grew up in a house with a mom who read daily, and as such went to the library regularly growing up. I vaguely remember getting my first library card, and definitely remember perusing the stacks looking for my own books while mom went to see about her own titles. Years later, I remember being grounded and bored, and my solution was to ask to go to the library. What mom could say no to that? Not mine! (That’s when I read Anna Karenina, among other things.) So, all that to say, I was raised by a reader, so it was easy to become a reader (and now easier to raise my own reader). Fast forward to college and I didn’t read much for pleasure because there was too much to read for class, but I asked a favorite professor for some recommendations when I started graduate school. Because of him, I read some classics including Bleak House (which I love in spite of Tarkington and Tarkington) and Tess of the d’Ubervilles (which I didn’t love because it’s gut-wrenching, see also I love romance novels). Yes, in graduate school I read Dickens and Hardy for pleasure. That should tell you a lot about me friends. Even with all this, it still took several more years for me to get back into books, like really into them like I am now. Fast forward a bit more, and I’m spending the week at home with my boys so we can all attend our church’s Vacation Bible School which is amazing and at night – well after bedtime (meaning we can’t handle all day at daycare/camp and then VBS too). This combined with my (then) recent discovery of ebooks, the electronic library, and my new Kindle Fire led me to jump back into reading in a way I hadn’t since I was in middle school, consuming books for class and for pleasure both. My aforementioned desire to deep dive (hi, yes, that’s my #enneagram5wing) and love of period drama led me to Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart, which was new to Netflix at the time, which led me to the Canadian West Series by Janette Oke (they’re both amazing, but I do prefer the books, especially the Return to the Canadian West books). And from then, it was ON. I tracked my reading in a hardback book journal, which only lasted for six months until I found Goodreads and started a firm record of my level of reading. All that to say, my routine has been more or less the same for a few years now.

But wait, how do you read that much? Well dear readers, one page at a time. I’m not the reader who reads waiting in line (back when there were lines, other than for groceries), but I did (and somewhat still do) get up earlier than my little people for some quiet time with a book. I don’t wake up well, so reading with my first cup (or two) of coffee is a treasured routine for me to use to enter into being a person for the day. This time is built into my morning routine because it helps me to have a better day than without (yes friends, that means reading is part of my self care). I don’t read much during a usual week day (and I’m not big on audiobooks for me – but I adore them with and for my boys), but once bedtime starts, I start reading some again. I can only do so much during the running around to get baths, but after the boys are settled in bed, they both like to be cuddled for a bit after the lights go off (judge all you want, but I’m taking it while I can get it), and if I cuddle without reading, then I’m asleep too, so I read during cuddles. After the boys go to bed, we’re usually beat, so if Ashley and I don’t have blog business to tend to, I’ll watch TV with my Adam or head to the couch or bed with my book. Even if we watch TV, I’ll pick up my book when I do go to bed and usually read until I fall asleep (or determine it’s late enough I have to put the kindle away). This routine led me to an average of about 100 pages a day. On the weekends (and during Safer at Home), we have quiet time in the afternoons for our whole family. The boys (8 and 5 years) go to their rooms with books and quiet toys (this is what we transitioned each of them to as they began struggling with naps at 3). For my husband and I this may mean working on a project together if we have something pending, but it usually means alone time of some sort, either working on a project, watching TV, or reading a book. Sometimes we have calls or chores scheduled then (this is my prime call/meeting time on weekdays now), but in general we try to enjoy being alone (we’re all introverts so this is more necessary now than before). None of that is really affected by Safer at Home.

The part that is affected by Safer at Home is how I spend the weekends. Because of my and my husband’s job, I manage the children during the day, while also working. This means by Friday afternoon, I am fried and he’s only seen our children for a few hours in the evening, plus in passing during the workday (we’ve kept our usual bedtime and they’re sleeping in, as am I, so the evening commute is the extra time we have all together, unless I’m still working). I usually spend a decent portion of the weekend with a book, alone, to recover and reset. This means instead of the one romance novel Ashley and I would breeze through over the weekend has turned into two, and I’m not sad about that at all. I still spend time with my family, but the boys have seen me all week (all. week.) and miss their dad and want to focus on him more (which has recently turned into boys dinners with the girls – me and the dog – in the other room, with a book – they’re asking for what they need, so I’m encouraging it). I still use the weekends to do some chores and get groceries, but we do more chores during the week than previously and there’s nowhere for us to go unless we’re going on a hike, so it all works out.

Here’s the part I want you to remember dear readers, especially now: you need to do what works for you and your people in your home. Whatever that is. Communicate with your people about what you need and why it’s good for you and find ways to make it happen. This means I get up earlier than my boys, but as I’m more of a night owl and my husband’s more of a morning person, I stay up later than he does and he’s up earlier than me. We’re both introverts, so he’s off doing his own thing first thing in the morning and I’m in bed with a book and coffee. It took us a while to work this out, but now that we have, it’s glorious. When it stops being so amazing, we’ll shift until we figure out what works in that season. What’s helping you feel more like a person these days?

~Nikki

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Travels with Tony and Fred

May 14, 2020

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

Before beginning our regularly scheduled post, we interrupt to remind you about book club. Join us at 7:30pm Central Time on Friday 26 June as we discuss Deanna Raybourn’s A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1). If you’re ready to sign up, you can do so here.

I have so many feelings about Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz and much of this is colored by my lense. First, I have always lived in Tennessee and grew up watching whatever my parents were watching, which included the North and South miniseries (John Jakes rather than Elizabeth Gaskell – which I have a very different love for), Walker, Texas Ranger, and Roots. I’m not unaware of the cruel history of my part of the world (and most parts have one, let’s be honest), nor was I surprised by that depiction in this text.

I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me backup. My expectation of Spying on the South was that the reader was going to be guided through Frederick L. Olmsted’s exploration of the pre-civil war South. What I did not expect was the author to follow in Fred’s footsteps and dig into the political realities of the rural South in 2016 – during the presidential primary. Whose fault is this? 100% my own. It’s in the marketing copy folks, so I’ll try not to hold this particular failed expectation against the author.

Now, back on track: I enjoyed the lengths Tony went to in pursuit of recreating Fred’s journey. His experiences traveling by river were especially interesting. Having been on the General Jackson Showboat a few times, I was familiar with the style of steamboat Tony traveled on from Memphis to New Orleans, however I had no idea that was a modern option for anything more than a short trip. The tow boat travel in Kentucky was very intriguing, growing up near the Cumberland River, there is regular barge traffic and I didn’t realize how little I knew about how that operates until reading this book.

I also enjoyed some familiar names in Tony’s exploration of Natchez, MS. During the late 1990s, my mother and I went on a trip to Natchez and Vicksburg exploring antebellum homes and civil war sites and visited some of the same places, including Magnolia Hall and Longwood. Our experiences were…less enlightened than Tony’s, and I remember having a discussion during some of the long hours in the car as to the missing pieces of the experiences of slaves and the tragedies during reconstruction. I was glad to hear of the improvements, but I still wonder, is it enough? I think back to two separate conversations with friends around not attending weddings at former plantations as a practice because they do not wish to have any part in celebrating the bondage used to create the wealth of that life. During one conversation I asked what is the right answer for those properties, during the other I just observed because social media can be a challenging place to have such conversations. I don’t have any answers on this, just questions, but I know we have not reached the point of “enough” yet. We may not know when we get there, but we can continue to take the next right step as individuals and as a society.

One shining light demonstrating what more can be is a group of African American medical students from Tulane posing in front of the slave quarter at Whitney Plantation, which Tony also visited. These medical students are working to become what they couldn’t see growing up, minority physicians, and to inspire and help others through their new organization The 15 White Coats. Their organization demonstrates what can be achieved, and I hope we can all ponder how we can be a part of improvements in our society as these future doctors show us quite plainly what happens when we dream and work hard, even when we have no example to follow.

Frederick L. Olmsted
from the New York Times

For the less appealing piece of Spying on the South: To me, a Nashville native, Tony didn’t explore much of my city. He saw Broadway, and judged that portion accurately. He spoke with local legend John Jay Hooker, and that feels on point for a lot of local and state politics. We have so much more to offer than honky tonks and politics, even in the 1850s, but I digress. I also did not enjoy much of Tony’s trek through Texas. It was repetitive of much of the attitudes and atmosphere of the rural South, with more varied food and more firearms. When he gets the idea to go on a days-long ride through the area around Sisterdale, I just wanted to ask sweet Tony what he thought was going to happen! I understand he was “roughing it” but for a rider with little experience to spend five days in the saddle seems like an incredibly sore idea! I’ve been in the saddle maybe three times ever, and I realize this. While I have sympathy for some of the woes he experiences on this misadventure, his saddlesorness is not among them.

German Texas was fascinating, as was the discussion of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras. I am a huge fan of Shiner beer and have had the privilege of experiencing delicacies from the Czech Stop in West, Texas courtesy of a colleague returning from a visit to family in Waco, TX, but in true literary fashion, Tony drew me in and painted a gorgeous, lively picture of what he and Fred experienced in their travels, which brought new life to the stories I’d heard for years from my dear friend.

The bottom line, dear readers, is Spying on the South is a journey, well if we’re being literal, it’s about two journeys, but the reader’s journey, for me had it’s bumps and detours along the road, but the promise Tony kept delivering on time and time again was gorgeous, descriptive prose and the honest depictions of his experiences and perspectives on those travels. I didn’t love every portion and considered putting the book down multiple times, but I’m glad I didn’t. I knew Frederick L. Olmsted from The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan [included in Kindle Unlimited] and the Serafina Series by Robert Beatty (yes, it’s middle grade fiction, I know, and I love it), but this was a whole different perspective that I’m glad to add with the rest. I give it a solid 3 stars, mostly because I did have to push through parts of it, but I struggle with nonfiction, so take that into account. I won’t reread this, but I will be looking into Tony’s other titles.

~Nikki

Per the usual, between myself and Nikki, I am drawn to the research end of the blog post, talking about the author and where the book fits in the context of his oeuvre, but this time I also wanted to dig a little deeper into the later work of Frederick Law Olmsted, our secondary protagonist, if you will allow. However, as this book is written in first person, I think it imperative to talk about Tony Horwitz first. Especially in the case of nonfiction, I think it’s important to know what else an author has embarked upon during their career, and Tony Horwitz had an exciting one. A graduate of both Brown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Tony was the 1995 Pulitzer Prize winner for National Reporting for his stories on conditions in low-wage America. He was also a renowned foreign correspondent for The New Yorker on conflicts in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. An author of eight nonfiction books, three of which focused on the American Civil War, the first and most famous of those titles being Confederates in the Attic. He was married to Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author in fiction for her 2005 release March. Regrettably, Tony died of a heart attack in May 2019 while on a walk in Washington D.C. He was on book tour for Spying on the South.

Frederick L. Olmsted
from Architecture.org

As for Olmsted, PBS came to the rescue. If you’re an Amazon prime member, you can watch the hour long 2014 documentary Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape to really get to know the (in)famous creator of landscape architecture. It gives an excellent overview of both his family life and the work he did: as the Yeoman journalist before the civil war, his work on Central Park and other public parks, and the formation of the first landscape architecture firm. I’m honestly glad I watched it in preparation for this blog post, as it gave me quite a bit more insight into Fred’s life AFTER his journeys to the South, and how his love of nature and the outdoors guided his entire career. I was especially intrigued to know that he headed the first groups to preserve natural wonders, beginning with Yosemite in California and including Niagara Falls. Interesting to think that the architect of Central Park is also to credit for our being able to experience the wonder of the falls without impediment of human buildings and industry. Having never been to New York City [yeah, I know…], I have to my knowledge only appreciated his work at Biltmore Estate and at Audubon Park in New Orleans, designed by his son Frederick Charles Olmsted for the firm after his retirement. Audubon Park is particularly poignant, as I can remember a classmate falling from one of the ancient oak trees and breaking his arm while we were on a picnic lunch when on a school field trip at the Zoo. I was probably in first grade.

Spying on the South is a little heartbreaking for me. I’m not talking about the writing style, because Tony recounts both his and Fred’s respective journeys with honesty and wit. He called himself the “red-shirted ‘expendable’ [from] Star Trek” when filling out his name under ‘spare’ on the tow boat’s crew list. I lol’d. I agree with Nikki that the journey in Texas was stale, but the Louisiana high point was filled with monster trucks, mud, and inherently racist slang. There were parts where I, too, wanted to close the book, but Tony kept pushing me along on his journey with Fred. I was shocked at how not shocked I was at the way Tony’s interviews with people and his research and experience of life in the South proves that we haven’t made the progress we should have in the 160-plus years since Yeoman Olmsted wrote his articles for the New York Daily Times. Once Tony made it to the Mexican border, as Fred had made it many years before, I was reminded of my recent read of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and the harrowing journey many immigrants make to arrive in el Norte, when in Fred’s time escaped slaves wanted to arrive south of the Rio Grande, into Mexico and freedom from slavery. I am ultimately glad I went on these travels with Tony and Fred, because it reminds me that we can all do better for each other, but we must also remember everyone’s inherent humanity, respecting each other with patience and grace. I will be picking up more of Tony’s titles later on, and I will probably end up doing a nonfiction deep dive into Olmsted’s work as a landscape architect, but that’s the art historian/preservationist in me.

~Ashley

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Virtual Book Club Part the Second

May 11, 2020

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

We really enjoyed seeing everyone’s faces through the power of the internet for our first ever Virtual Book Club event on May Day! We had friends of many years and some of not as many years for both of us, and even Ashley’s mom! ::waves hi mom:: We came together from four states and three time zones to discuss Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. It was a solid mix of half re-readers and half first-timers of this beloved classic novel of growing up on Prince Edward Island in the 1870’s. What really hit home for the participants was with which characters we each felt the most kinship. Especially the re-readers, it was about how when they read the book as a youth they felt kinship with Anne, but now feel a new and deep empathy with Marilla, who raises the gregarious redhead. There was also much appreciation for Matthew’s ability to notice what made Anne stand out from the other little girls in Avonlea and his process for making her feel less like an outsider. Nikki wrote an entire post on Sarah McCoy’s Marilla of Green Gables last week because we had such a great discussion during book club about Marilla and how she had been raised, grew up, and how that would determine the ways in which she brings up Anne Shirley. Everyone wants to continue with Anne’s story in Anne of Avonlea and will probably also pick up Marilla’s story in the future as well. However, we will not be continuing to read them together…

It was a pretty unanimous request as we were closing up our Anne of Green Gables virtual book club that we have another meeting. We anticipated this request but we did not have any real idea of what our second book club pick should be. We also needed a little more time to put together a plan, look at our schedules for dates that would work, and really dig deep into what we would like to read and then discuss with fellow readers that was a little more narrowed down than ALL THE THINGS. We gave ourselves a week to percolate. Ok, I’ll admit that Nikki gave me a week to percolate because I needed some time to make sure things were going to work out for Kindle Unlimited plans and balancing out our other reading, our lives, the time we work on the blog, and scheduling the best Friday night for Virtual Book Club #2. [Nikki here, we both needed to percolate, and y’all are awesome for wanting more bookish conversation!] I had a gut feeling that I truly wanted to bring something more diverse to talk about than what Nikki and I normally read, or what we post about on the blog. We admittedly read a lot of books written for, by, and about white women. [We read a lot of romance novels and we are not ashamed because we love them.] But, we do like to be conscientious about broadening our horizons in genre, location, theme, and author. In addition to trying to expand our own reading lives, we feel a heavy burden that the book we suggest for book club be something our broad range of readers will feel comfortable reading and then talking about in a semi-public way with people they may or may not know before the discussion starts. Lastly, we want our book club picks at this time to be easy to access for those who read either digitally or on a dead tree, and we don’t want anyone to feel a pinch in the pocketbook in order to do so. (This is the main reason we do not particularly like the idea of choosing a brand new release, no matter the hype.)

Now that you know our process in choosing our second Book Club pick, without further ado, we invite you to join us at 7:30pm Central Time on Friday 26 June as we discuss Deanna Raybourn’s A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1). I was first introduced to this title from, surprise of surprises, Anne Bogel’s Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club last summer. I did not, however, read it, so this will be a brand new book for both of us here at Heart.Wants.Books. Neither Nikki nor I choose mysteries as a go-to genre, it actually takes a lot for me to commit to one (like how I purchased the kindle book to read for the book club last year but never did). Below is the marketing copy from the 2015 release:

London, 1887. After burying her spinster aunt, orphaned Veronica Speedwell is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as with fending off admirers, Veronica intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime. But fate has other plans when Veronica thwarts her own attempted abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron, who offers her sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker, a reclusive and bad-tempered natural historian. But before the baron can reveal what he knows of the plot against her, he is found murdered—leaving Veronica and Stoker on the run from an elusive assailant as wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

You can purchase the Amazon Kindle version right now for $2.99, the paperback from Amazon for $12.89, from IndieBound to support your local independent bookstores, or hopefully get it from your local library either digitally or in physical book form. You have a little more than 6 weeks to find a copy and read the 350+ page mystery. For more information on the author and her other works, you can visit her website at www.deannaraybourn.com.

If you’re ready to sign up, you can do so here. You’ll receive a link to join the conversation a week before, with automatic reminder emails, but can register as late as 6pm Central Time on the day of (hint – don’t do this, register now and go ahead and put it on your calendar even!). We had a great time with the group discussing Anne and the residents of Avonlea and hope you’ll join us for a conversation about Veronica Speedwell and her travels and drama.

~Ashley

P.S. We do make the request that if you are going to purchase from Amazon that you use our links above so that we get credit for the purchase through Amazon’s affiliate program. Nikki goes into detail about why in this post from last week.

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Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy

May 7, 2020

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

Dear readers, if you’ve been around here for long, you know that I always want more from a title. More epilogue, more backstory, just more time and pages with the characters that I’ve grown to adore throughout their stories. It’s why I adore a series, and one of my favorite parts about romance series, because the spot light may not be on those two characters anymore, but they’re still in the story. I first read Anne of Green Gables as an adult, in the fall of 2016 and knew that Anne and I are kindred spirits. In a fashion true to myself, I didn’t stop with just one book, as I’ve shared, I had an anthology that included all 8 books (they’re not all Anne technically – one is about her family and one about her daughter, Rilla) and I went through them all. And then I read Chronicles of Avonlea, Further Chronicles of Avonlea, The Story Girl, and The Golden Road, and some of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s other titles. Another thing I love about a series, I don’t have to stop to think about what to read next, I just get the next book, or in the case of this set, turn the page again. Anne is probably the reason I ended up getting a Kindle Fire (as my phone didn’t have a blue light setting, way back in the dark ages of 2016), which has greatly contributed to my reading life.

When I heard there was a new book coming about Marilla growing up, I was HERE. FOR. IT. Partially because I adore Anne and wanted more of her world, but also because I wanted to know more about Marilla Cuthbert and the experiences that shaped her into the woman we know and love (especially if you kept going after Anne of Green Gables). Marilla of Green Gables is almost everything I wanted it to be. About ⅔ of the text takes place in 1837-1838, with the last portion in 1860. I’m writing this before rereading Anne (which I have since done) but the feeling, right now, feels right. Marilla is 13 when this book opens, and Matthew is 21, so we get to see the background of Marilla and Matthew’s relationship (some at least), and perhaps best of all, Marilla and Rachel’s relationship! Based on the book, the formative years of Marllia are definitely 1837-1838, so we get a lot of the situations, relationships, and conversations that formed her, but we also get a glimpse of life between teenage Marilla and Marllia in her 50s in 1860 which helps to set the stage for Avonlea and Green Gables as we move back into Anne’s story.

Now that I’ve also re-read Anne, I will say there’s a bit of a disconnect between the Marilla we know growing up and the Marilla we get when Anne’s growing up. Perhaps I’m being an optimist and I just want to like this book, but I think that disconnect is because for 72% of the book, Marilla is a teenager, legit 13 and 14 years old. When Anne opens, she’s 52, so we have less than 100 pages for Marilla to age almost 40 years, and I don’t know about you, but me at 13 is dramatically different than I was at 33, which I imagine will be pretty different than me at 53. There are a couple of specific nuances of Marilla that McCoy explains, and one thing she misses the mark on, or perhaps just didn’t explain the cause of the change. I can overlook that miss because, like Anne would, I want to see the best in this book that is otherwise a beautiful addition.

The most beautiful piece, especially in retrospect, is the voice of the writing. Anne of Green Gables is happy and bubbly just like I would expect Anne to be if she walked in my door later today (don’t I wish someone could, ugh). Marilla of Green Gables has more of a grounded, level voice and style to it that seems to suit Marilla better. Voice and the feeling the prose portrays in its tempo doesn’t seem to be intentional to me usually (although it likely is) but in these two books it stood out as representation of their leading ladies and I am HERE. FOR. IT.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it’s not tragic, just real. There’s death and heartbreak (and I’ll grudgingly, privately spoil for readers who need to be forewarned), but also there’s hope and contentment. I don’t want readers to go into this thinking Marilla has an easy time of it or that she’s going to find her HEA, because, as we know, her life isn’t easy and she doesn’t marry, neither does Matthew. It’s why they need Anne, because neither has children to help and they both wanted that when they were younger. Why did neither of them marry? Why is the Gables so far off the road? What “bit of romance” has Marllia forgotten (yes, that’s a reference to a conversation between Marilla and Anne in Anne of Green Gables Chapter 37)?

There is one bit that I struggled with, and it’s likely me and historically accurate, however, as modern readers, you may struggle to, so I want to bring it up. When the book opens Marillia is 13 years old and Matthew is 21. There is so much talk of love and marriage for Marllia at 13 and 14. I realize it happened, and I hope that, like Rachel was made to, Marilla would have waited until she was 18 to get married, but still, to become engaged at 14?! Rachel did and it just baffles me! Life was dramatically different over 150 years ago, but I still struggle to imagine that as a 14 year old I would have been able to decide who I would partner with for the rest of my life. I say that, yet in the 1920s, my great-grandmother married at 16, so maybe it wouldn’t be that different, especially with a long engagement. I don’t know, but I struggled, so I wanted to bring it up as a point of contention for this reader.

The bottom line: I have borrowed and read this book, purchased this book, and read it again and I will read it again still. It’s not a comfort read, at least not yet, but it’s a hopeful, familiar book and I’m SO excited to jump into Anne of Green Gables now (as of this writing) and see how the correlation works with the two (as mentioned, pretty well). I strongly encourage readers that have not read Anne’s story to start there. Experience the original first, and then circle back to Marilla’s backstory later on, maybe even go through at least Anne’s eight books first, if you don’t read the short stories of Avonlea and the Story Girl.

~Nikki