Tell me all about your love of L.M. Montgomery!

i could MARRY you for asking me this question

it's honestly difficult to nail it down to one reason--at its heart, I simply love slice of life novels, but if I had to list things I loved about LM Montgomery, it would be (1) a remarkable sense for characterization (2) a sly sense of humor and, (3) an overarching theme of recognizing the beauty in everyday things and everyday living.

Starting with (1) [and yes, I'm blatantly using this as an excuse to write a full essay], we all know Anne and Marilla and Gilbert, but LM Montgomery's ability to create a lived in character within a few sentences is incredible to me. Within a few throwaway words, she'll establish a realistic character with motivations, values, and a back story. She often does this to add perspective to the main character--for example, when Jane from Jane of Lantern Hill travels to meet her father for the first time, her companion thinks how she had never met such a dull child. This gives us insight into Jane, but it also gives us insight into Jane's world and the people who inhabit it. A better example would be one of the statements from Mrs. Lynde or Miss Cornelia--a lot of times, a single line of theirs will sum a drama that, just like with Jane's companion, fleshes out the world that our heroines live in quite effectively. For example, my absolute favorite moment of this is the following line of Miss Cornelia's from Anne's House of Dreams:

"He was one of those wicked, fascinating men. After he got married, he left off being fascinating and just kept on being wicked. "

Within those two sentences, you learn everything you need to know about Fred Proctor and his family. You know what his wife valued, how he romanced his wife, why she married him, and how it ended up. There's also just the general paragraphs that tell anecdotes from the village life. Like in Anne of Ingleside when Anne is hosting a party at Ingleside and poor child Walter doesn't understand:

""Did you hear what happened to Big Jim MacAllister last Saturday night in Milt Cooper's store at the Harbour Head?" asked Mrs. Simon, thinking it time somebody introduced a more cheerful topic than ghosts and jiltings. "He had got into the habit of setting on the stove all summer. But Saturday night was cold and Milt had lit a fire. So when poor Big Jim sat down...well, he scorched his..."

Mrs. Simon would not say what he had scorched but she patted a portion of her anatomy silently.

"His bottom," said Walter gravely, poking his head through the creeper screen. He honestly thought that Mrs. Simon could not remember the right word.

An appalled silence descended on the quilters. Had Walter Blythe been there all the time?"

Even beyond the side characters seeming very real, the main heroines are girls/women who seem like real people to me. LM Montgomery's women are flawed. They get angry, make mistakes, can be flibbertigibbets, brood over silly things, have their head in the clouds, allow themselves to be run over instead of standing up for themselves--but also--and this is what I really love--they grow. This is best seen in Rilla (something I've talked about before), but it also applies writ large. The men are also usually likeable--I say usual because in a few of the lesser known books, they can irritate me (*cough cough teddy and emily*), but Gilbert Blythe is the ideal man, and Barney Snaith is too, and Andrew Stuart is a heartwarmingly loving father. They have flaws too--short in temper and too blunt for example--but once again, it just makes them all the more likeable. Walter Blythe is also a great example here, but that's deserving of its post because his situation is more complex (I will never forget how he wrote that he was glad he would die in WWI because he didn't want to live in the world after the horrors he'd seen).

Lastly, and very importantly--LM Montgomery's characters are different. They're distinct from each other. It's not the same generic woman copy and pasted into different books. Marilla is very different from Anne, who is very different from Jane, who is very different from Rilla. Admittedly, Emily and Anne and I'll just throw Pat in there get to be more similar, but it's not to the point where I'd fault anyone for it. Each of those woman has their own voice, which is just a treasure trove for me.

Okay, (2)-- the sense of humor. The passages I've already shared do an excellent job demonstrating this, but LM Montgomery does a fantastic job of slyly (but usually not meanly!) making fun of people and their quirks. See Jane as she leads the escaped lion through the neighborhood--each of the reactions are hilarious, and also a callback to the earlier point of a well fleshed out character in just a few words. Beyond the amused commentary on human nature, she also just has really funny situations. My favorite short story of hers is where a spinster woman who notoriously hates men and dogs but loves cats, and a man who notoriously hates women and cats but loves dogs have to quarantine together and end up falling in love. It's ridiculous (and to be blunt, definitely sexist in some ways) but hilarious, and it also gave us this amazing quote: "The more I saw of men, the more I liked cats." Back to point 1, I also love how the spinster woman, while extremely practical and sufficient, is terrified of teaching a child Anne Shirley in Sunday School because the questions that child asks! An interesting wrinkle to have a character we're supposed to root for be intimidated by a character we also love.

LM Montgomery poking fun at humans leads me to the last point, (3)--she's not afraid to celebrate the little joys of life. The best example of this is Anne's famous quote about being so happy to live in a world with Octobers in it. It makes her writing warm, and cozy, and more than that--hopeful, even when she deals with darker storylines like WWI. I know LM Montgomery gets accused of being saccharine, and it's fair--she does have long passages describing the glories of sunshine haha--but she doesn't shy away from the darker elements of life. It's only implied in Anne, with her orphan backstory, but it's more explicitly stated in her later books, probably best in Rilla and The Blue Castle. There are characters who were neglected and abused; characters who have sex outside marriage in scandals; characters who are deeply depressed; characters who miss out on their happy ending; characters who are just plain narcissists (looking at you, Jane's Grandmother); characters who have miscarriages; characters who are literally groomed (see Emily and Dean, although LM Montgomery doesn't critically examine it). I don't really give much credence to the claims of being saccharine beyond a few books, because the grittiness is there if you look for it, and often times it's in a form that's all too real to life. Sure, everything gets wrapped up a happily ever after bow at the end the vast majority of the time, but that's just the genre haha. LM Montgomery tells the stories of characters who experience things most of us do in our everyday life, both the joys and sorrows, and it's enough. It doesn't need to be anything more. It recognizes the quiet dignity and joy in everyday living, and I love, love, love when stories do that. It's a refreshing response in a world in which a lot media that can either be boomingly fast paced or boringly cynical.

anyway, thanks again for your question and letting me ramble to my heart's content (you're talking to someone who just wrote a nearly 30k word fanfic based on Jane of Lantern hill), i could literally write a thesis on my love for LM mongtomery lmao

Im sick with flu so naturally I picked up my newly bought copy of Howl's Moving Castle which includes DWJ interviews in the back.

And im in love with the way she tells these stories feels like a part of her books.

And my favorite:

The magic in the mundane :)

edit: I'm copying the ID by @princess-of-purple-prose below, thank you!

[ID: Excerpts of printed text which read:

I suppose there's also a biographical element in that Sophie is the eldest of three sisters, and so am I. The idea for Sophie grew out of the time I discovered I had a very severe milk allergy. I almost lost the use of my legs and had to walk with the aid of a stick. I was moderately young, but because of this I suddenly became old.

I had to wait until I knew what Wizard Howl was like. I began to discover Howl about the time when one of my sons took to spending several hours in the bathroom every morning and I got really, really, really annoyed with him.

Where were you when you wrote it? I wrote the book the way I write everything, stretched out on the big sofa in my sitting room, in everyone's way. This often annoys my husband rather a lot.

which made me burst out laughing. I laughed and laughed at the seven league boot, and when I came to the bit where Sophie accidentally makes Howl's suit twenty times too big for him, I laughed so much that I fell off the sofa. My husband was really irritated by this time. He snapped, "You can't be making yourself laugh!" And I gasped, "But I am, I am!" and rolled about on the floor.

Are any of your relatives or friends included in the book? Yes, well the thing that started me off writing the book was a friend of mine who never does her laundry. She has it around the place in huge bags for often as much as a year. When she does tip it all out and try to wash it, she discovers all sorts of clothes that she has forgotten she had.

Which is your favourite part of the book and why? I like the book all over, but I suppose if I had to choose a bit, I'd choose the place where Howl gets a cold. It so happened that when I was writing this bit, my husband caught a bad cold. He is the world's most histrionic cold catcher. He moans, he coughs, he piles on the pathos, he makes strange noises, he blows his nose exactly like a bassoon in a tunnel, he demands bacon sandwiches at all hours, and he is liable to appear (usually wrapped in someone else's dressing gown) at any time, announcing that he is dying of neglect and boredom. So all I had to do was write it down. End ID]

oh book 1 gaang....... my silly rabbits <333

Give me a Percy Jackson who hates swim team. Who went to a public pool for swim lessons once when he was five and started to sob the second his skin hit the water

give me a Percy Jackson who is always just the slightest bit unsettled at pools because water is never meant to have the life sucked out of it and be divided into lanes or put in boxes in the ground

Water isn’t meant to be contained.

a percy jackson whose skin feels like it’s slowly beginning to burn when he tries to swim in chlorinated water, who hates any set swim stroke with a passion and can’t stick to one for the life of him

who doesn’t understand why you’d want to keep only to the surface of the water, when being cradled under the surface is everything

because swimming is supposed to be like the tides, maybe patterned, but never identical, it’s supposed to be flowing with the world around you as you please

Give me a Percy Jackson who loves the sheer nature of water so much that he can’t help but quietly despise our “pools” and their dead water with their constricted sides and restrictions on what it means to change with the world around you

A Percy Jackson who is the child of water in its most natural state, and who can hardly bear to see the way society has attempted to contain it and sterilize it and strip away its power

He hates swim team, but that’s only the half of it

Leader and deputy

[Image description: a digital painting of Squirrelstar and Ivypool from Warriors. Squirrelstar is a small dark red cat with green eyes, standing in front of the much taller Ivypool, a gray tabby-and-white cat with blue eyes and many battle scars. The background is dark blue. end ID]

I will entrench myself in literature this year no matter what the fuck it takes

The sillies

some smaller bookstores, presses, and museum shops to browse and know about! Most support smaller presses, diverse authors and authors in translation, or fund museums and arts research)

(disclaimer: the only three I’ve personally used are the Yiddish book center, native books, and izzun books! Reccomend all three. Also roughly *U.S. centric & anglophone if people have others from around the world please feel free to add on

birchbark books - Louise Erdrich’s book shop, many indigenous and First Nations books of a wide variety of genres including children’s books, literature, nonfiction, sustainability and foodways, language revitalization, Great Lakes area focus (https://birchbarkbooks.com/)

American Swedish institute museum store - range of Scandinavian and Scandinavian-American/midwestern literature, including modern literature in translation, historical documents, knitters guides, cookbooks, children’s books https://shop.asimn.org/collections/books-1

Native books - Hawai’i based bookstore with a focus on native Hawaiian literature, scholarly works about Hawai’i, the pacific, and decolonial theory, ‘ōlelo Hawai’i, and children’s books Collections | Native Books (nativebookshawaii.org)

the Yiddish book center - sales arm of the national Yiddish book center, books on Yiddish learning, books translated from Yiddish, as well as broader selection of books on Jewish history, literature, culture, and coooking https://shop.yiddishbookcenter.org/

ayin press - independent press with a small but growing selection of modern judaica https://shop.ayinpress.org/collections/all?_gl=1kkj2oo_gaMTk4NDI3Mzc1Mi4xNzE1Mzk5ODk3_ga_VSERRBBT6X*MTcxNTM5OTg5Ny4xLjEuMTcxNTM5OTk0NC4wLjAuMA..

Izzun books - printers of modern progressive AND masorti/trad-egal leaning siddurim including a gorgeous egalitarian Sephardic siddur with full Hebrew, English translation, and transliteration

tenement center museum -https://shop.tenement.org/product-category/books/page/11/ range of books on a dizzying range of subjects mostly united by New York City, including the history literature cookbooks and cultures of Black, Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, First Nations, and Irish communities

restless books - nonprofit, independent small press focused on books on translation, inter and multicultural exchange, and books by immigrant writers from around the world. Particularly excellent range of translated Latin American literature https://restlessbooks.org/

olniansky press - modern Yiddish language press based in Sweden, translators and publishers esp of modern Yiddish children’s literature https://www.etsy.com/shop/OlnianskyBooks

https://yiddishchildrensbooks.com/ - kinder lokshen, Yiddish children’s books (not so many at the moment but a very cute one about a puffin from faroese!)

inhabit books - Inuit-owned publishing company in Nunavut with an “aim to preserve and promote the stories, knowledge, and talent of Inuit and Northern Canada.” Particularly gorgeous range of children’s books, many available in Inuktitut, English, French, or bilingual editions https://inhabitbooks.com/collections/inhabit-media-books-1

rust belt books - for your Midwest and rust belt bookish needs! Leaning towards academic and progressive political tomes but there are some cookbooks devoted to the art of the Midwest cookie table as well https://beltpublishing.com/

Villain pages from the My Hero Academia: The Official Easy Illustration Guide Paperback (2023)

Concept: the justice league finds out that Blaze and Satanus, the rulers of hell, are kids of their ‘even more of a boy scout than Superman’ coworker’s “boss” and think Shazam is the Christian God. They ask Billy really vague questions that lead Billy into confusing them even more and they become convinced that Marvel’s Wizard guy is God with a capital G and Marvel’s either an angel or the second coming of Jesus.

Meanwhile Shazam doesn’t even know what the Bible is and his knowledge about religion is so outdated he still thinks Solomon’s Judaism is new age and not worth his time to research such a ‘fad’ religion, but he knows humans will make a religion out of anything as well as bastardize existing ones and very well could have mixed up actual tales that involve him, his allies, and his children into some sort of melting pot of a religion.

So when someone finally asks Marvel outright if his “boss” is God, Billy goes ‘wait… old guy in white robes and sandals, with long white hair and a beard… lives in space… aka the “heavens”, whose a ghost(Holy Spirit), and knows everything(historama)??? I need to dig deeper into this hold on guys’ and goes off to ask the wizard.

So when Billy asks the Wizard he just tells Billy “well, my boy, if so many things match up, maybe it is so and the tales of myself and my champions grew so estranged from their origins or mixed in with other beliefs that it can explain the things that aren’t true to our reality.”

Then The Canonical Character To The DC Universe, Jesus of Nazareth, shows up.

Only Friends (2023) as Clueless Quotes ✧･ﾟ

Curve study, Origami, one piece of paper

Lonely earth-bound monarch figures whose existences and legacies extend past the bounds of time and space.

Have some Toof memes that i can't remember if I posted already or not :p

"topmew don't like each other," "topmew only tolerate each other because they're in love," "topmew were never happy together"

meanwhile, topmew throughout their relationship:

seriously, are you all robots? do you not know what smiles are? what laughter is? fun? y'all are weird

I'm moving and was going through my books today and found the Book of Mormon script book I bought in like 2016 so I could illustrate Kevin Price's coffee monologue and opened it up to the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream section and this line has no right to be so funny