I really enjoyed Tyler Merritt‘s memoir, I Take My Coffee Black, and this? SAME. Tyler chronicles his cancer diagnosis and subsequent journey through treatment—from his initial major surgery to a hilarious level of TMI regarding subsequent recovery and other procedures. Woven throughout are his reflections and realizations, from the serious (faith, family, friendships, mortality, racial injustice) to the ridiculous (musical theater, pop culture ⤵️

This was SO MUCH FUN. I loved Miles & Abigail—their banter, humor, and romance, as well as the contrast & balance that becomes apparent between these two such well-matched characters. Heyer just gets everything right: Abigail‘s pitch-perfect near-caricature relatives—lovable and infuriating by turns—a surprising but thoroughly appealing male love interest, and comeuppance where it is due. ⤵️

“Proper gentleman‘s sport, hunting. When you see the fear in an animal‘s eyes, it‘s about superiority, *dominance*…”
“haha I would like to leave”
—
“I hope your disappointment will not be lasting, but nothing could be farther from my wishes. I can‘t imagine *ever* falling in love and have *no thoughts of ever getting married.*”
“…Oh-ho. I see. You‘re *testing* me.”
“Philip no”
“Young ladies love to be chased…”
“You are entirely mistaken”

😂😩🙄

This was a sweet Jane-Austen-inspired graphic novel with a queer/trans twist. I loved the characters and the artwork, and really appreciated the way the book acknowledges the reality of queer and BIPOC experiences in the Regency era, yet still maintains a delightfully lighthearted tone—with humor and a sweet romance. The historical notes at the end give great context and really ground the story in its Regency-era setting.

#DoorstopKristin check-in! How‘s your reading going? I‘m moving along steadily—I finished part 2 this week and am finding it so readable. I have to admit that although I feel for her, I‘ve been a little frustrated with Kristin. And I‘m not a fan of Erlend! What are your thoughts on Kristin and Erlend? And Simon? #KLBR

Quick #LMMJournals check-in! How‘s your journal-reading going this week? What are your thoughts on this section?

I‘m a bit behind (2 simultaneous Chunkster buddy reads, plus other reads😆), but I‘m enjoying being back into LMM‘s life. I was looking forward to the Muskoka section since it inspired the setting of Blue Castle, but I was a little disappointed! And like LMM, I‘m on edge about the Pickering lawsuit. #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

I live in LA County—this was a heavy week in which I‘ve needed to look for the joy! I‘m thankful for so many get-togethers with good friends that landed on my #5JoysFriday list this week.
1. Matinee of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life + Mediterranean dinner with friends
2. Brunch & coffee catch-ups with good friends
3. Bedtime yoga
4. Wednesday night dinner & games w/ friends around the corner
5. New Josh Ritter song: https://joshritter.ffm.to/ywdmg

“If you've never read Little Dorrit before, you might want to save this Introduction for an Afterword. There's no way to dance around all of Dickens's secrets and revelations and still make myself intelligible; three sentences from here, I'm going to start letting stuff slip, so if you want to bail, bail now.”

As a compulsively responsible reader who always feels obligated to read the intro, I SO appreciate this spoiler alert! #WhattheDickens

“Perhaps a hundred years from now my descendants may read over this diary and regard it as an interesting heir-loom. …I would like it to be published in full without omission, save for this very paragraph I have just written. Cut it out, descendants!”

Speaking of complete journals vs. selected journals… 😂 I wonder if this paragraph was omitted in the selected journals?
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMJournals

"It's good when you don't dare do something that doesn't seem right," said Fru Aashild with a little laugh. "But it's not so good if you think something isn't right because you don't dare do it."
—from Kristin Lavransdatter, The Wreath

#KLBR #DoorstopKristin

Quick check-in for #KLBR! How is your reading going? What do you think of the story so far?

I've read up through the end of Part 1. I found the first two chapters slow going (though I loved Kristin's interactions with Brother Edvin), but when I got to Chapter 3, I had a hard time putting it down!

And this is indeed #DoorstopKristin--I've been using my reading pillow to prop the huge thing up as I read 😆

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMJournals

We‘ll be starting Volume 5 of LMM‘s journals this week! Schedule is above. As usual, I‘ll post a check-in on Saturdays.

(And, Emily of New Moon is coming up next for our re-reads! We‘ll start reading Emily on June 22.)

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent

What did you enjoy (or not enjoy!) about the book?

If you read this as a child, does it still hold up for you as an adult?

Is there anything else you‘d like to discuss about Beautiful Joe?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent

Do you think Saunders‘ choice of Joe as a first person narrator is effective? What does this add to (or take away from) the story?

Joe meets several other animal friends during the story: the other pets at the Morris home, the performing animals he sees in Riverdale, and Dandy “the Tramp.” What did you think of these other animals and their stories?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent

Beautiful Joe is based on a true story & was written for a contest sponsored by the American Humane Education Society (Joe‘s real-life home of Meaford, Ontario was changed to Fairport, Maine). Its goal was to teach children to be kind to animals.

Do you think Beautiful Joe is effective in teaching this message? Why or why not?
What do you think in general about stories whose main goal is to teach a message?

#5JoysFriday!

💐 Thank you notes & flowers from my EfM group
🦖 A T-Rex shadow I saw on a walk
🪻 Larkspur from the garden
🐸 Frobbits by India Rose Crawford: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1885169772337248?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V&fs=e&mibextid=wwXIf...
🖋️ Reading through poems I‘d saved years ago & coming across “God Says Yes to Me” by Kaylin Haught (Poem ⤵️)

“I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.”

“…multinational companies have ensured that, on the one hand, users will not protest against being turned into consumers, since they are supposedly "in control" of cyberspace; and that, on the other hand, they will be prevented from learning anything profound, whether about themselves, their immediate surroundings or the rest of the world. Commenting in 2004 on the usefulness of the Web as a creative tool, the celebrated American comic-strip ⤵️

“There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that tradition has declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ours through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and… essentially become its first discoverers…”

My library copy of The Orb of Cairado is a signed special edition! 😮

Every so often I‘ll look for info on the publication of the final volume of L.M. Montgomery‘s Complete Journals. We‘re moving along with #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMJournals, and I have this nagging worry they won‘t publish the last volume—in time for our buddy read, or at all! I found an “Ask Us” option on the publisher‘s website, so I asked! It took a couple weeks, but I got this reply today. So—probably not in buddy-read time, but someday!

Relieved that June‘s #BookSpin numbers didn‘t add to my over-full June reading (too much 😂)—the #DoubleSpin pick is also my book club pick for the month. And the BookSpin landed on one of my #192025 spots, which I need to make a bit of progress on. I‘m hoping for a #BookSpinBingo right down the middle, with 3 free spots!

📘BookSpin: Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie (a book from the 1920s—40s)
📗DoubleSpin: The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten

🤖 Finished System Collapse yesterday, completing my Murderbot re-read
⚔️ Started Guards! Guards! for #OokBOokClub
🐶 Beautiful Joe is ongoing for #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent
📚 I‘ve been parceling out an essay per day of The Library at Night, which is my May #BookSpin and also a pick for my #50x50 challenge

This library hold arrived early for my #CampLitsy25 reading. I need to start it soon, since it‘s due back on June 11!

#SundayFunday

Another month without a bingo 😆 (even though one book ended up on the board twice 🤦🏻‍♀️)

🐏 I completed my #DoubleSpin: Black Sheep (a delight!)
📚 I‘m halfway through my #BookSpin: The Library at Night (also a delight!)

12 books completed
3 re-reads
6 library books
3 from my TBR

Favorites:
🐏 Black Sheep
☀️ Raybearer
🌳 A Timbered Choir

“…a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

📚💜📚

#OokBOokClub @julesG

I‘ve been wanting to read more by Percival Everett (having read James last year), so I took the #AuthoraMonth inspiration to squeeze this into my May reading. It‘s so good, and so different from James. The narrative shifts between Zach‘s family and his job as a professor, and his efforts to unravel the mysterious pleas for help he‘s found in clothes ordered from eBay—two very different plot lines, yet the book doesn‘t feel uneven. ⤵️

I have this blog where I don't post as often as I'd like. But here are some reflections on a scene from Rilla of Ingleside, with a little Pollyanna thrown in. #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead-ers may be interested. Also: it‘s Christian-y. 🙂

https://commonplacehope.wordpress.com/2025/05/30/burning-coals/

#LMMReread #LMMAdjacent

I added a third library card this week, just so I could get in a shorter holds line for Audition. 4 weeks is better than 18 (or 10 for the audiobook, or 37th place out of 51 people waiting for one of 18 print copies), but I may still be late arriving at camp. 😂 #CampLitsy25

Just a little check-in halfway through reading Beautiful Joe!

🐶 How's your reading going?
🐶 What are your thoughts so far?
🐶 What stands out to you from the first half of the book?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent

😂 😂

“We don't read books in the same way sitting inside a circle or inside a square, in a room with a low ceiling or in one with high rafters. And the mental atmosphere we create in the act of reading, the imaginary space we construct when we lose ourselves in the pages of a book, is confirmed or refuted by the physical space of the library, and is affected by the distance of the shelves, the crowding or paucity of books, ⤵️

June is almost here, so I‘ve pulled out #DoorstopKristin and am gearing up to dive in on Sunday for #KLBR. I‘ve got my emotional support dumpster fire on hand just in case. Looking forward to reading along with all of you! What editions are you all reading? Single volume or individual books?

“People, and by people I mean *them,* never look for truth, they look for satisfaction. There is nothing worse, certain painful and deadly diseases notwithstanding, than an unsatisfactory, piss-poor truth, whereas a satisfactory lie is all too easy to accept, even embrace, get cozy with.”

Now that‘s an opening line!!

What‘s that? Next week it will be JUNE?! I‘m not ready!!

I took some time this morning to plan out my entirely unrealistic summer reading list and assembled my June #BookSpin list accordingly. Here we go, summer!

This is a fascinating look at the practice of contemplation—a disentangling and a reframing that invites the reader to view contemplation through something other than a Western, patriarchal, heteronormative lens. Hall approaches contemplation from new directions and through new eyes for me, opening up new facets and angles I hadn‘t considered—or hadn‘t considered in just that way before. I kept thinking of Emily Dickinson‘s “tell it slant.” ⤵️

I was SUPER looking forward to this, and thought I was getting a conclusion to a trilogy, so the clearly-not-a-conclusion ending was frustrating. Add to that, this was definitely longer than it should have been and STILL didn‘t feel like it did much (other than a lot of stuff happening in the background but not on the page, and a couple of jaw-dropping revelations at the end). I enjoyed seeing Bree grow into her powers but ⤵️

Today starts our #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead of Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders. This is one of our #LMMAdjacent books—Saunders was a contemporary of LMM, and another author who published with the nefarious L.C. Page Co. I‘ll post a check-in on 5/31 and we‘ll have our discussion on June 7. All are welcome—please comment if you‘re not tagged and you‘d like to be!

I loved this delightful children‘s classic and found it hard to put down! Initially I was worried it would be too sweet or too cloying—and there were moments that could have veered into toxic positivity—but I feel like Porter balances those moments with others that acknowledge the reality of grief and hurt and disappointment. Pollyanna‘s determination to look for—and be glad in—the good in every situation doesn‘t dismiss the reality of hardship ⤵️

Dog Monday. Every single time. 😭😭😭

#SundayFunday
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMReread

“…for readers like myself, there are no ‘last‘ purchases this side of the grave.”

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent—Pollyanna discussion—4 of 4

👒 Did you see any similarities here to L.M. Montgomery‘s books?
👒 Is there anything else from Pollyanna that you‘d like to discuss?
👒 Any favorite scenes or quotes?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent—Pollyanna discussion—3 of 4

👒 Pollyanna comes to have such a strong influence on so many people in her town—which of these did you find most meaningful?
👒 Were there any that felt unrealistic?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent—Pollyanna discussion—2 of 4

😊 The term “Pollyanna” has come to mean someone who pretends everything is fine, someone who almost ignores reality in order to put a positive spin on things. Do you find that to be a fair characterization of Pollyanna, or an exaggeration?
😊 Do you LIKE Pollyanna, or do you think you‘d find her eternal optimism tiresome?

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMAdjacent—Pollyanna discussion—1 of 4

👒What did you think of Pollyanna‘s “glad game”?
👒How did you handle disappointments and difficult situations as a child?
👒Can you see the “glad game” being a helpful way to respond to difficulties as an adult?

#5JoysFriday!

1. Sunday jazz
2. Roses & larkspur from the garden
3. Making plans to print up Learned Slattern tote bags
4. Frogzwilliam Darcy: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1868740873949610
5. Listening at whim to my newly-restored music library and discovering that I still know every word to Lisa Loeb‘s “Stay” 😂

Another belated #OokBOokClub review…

I was excited to find Pratchett using chapters in the first two Moist Von Lipwig books, and sad he was back to no chapters here. My brain likes chapters. And while I do feel the earlier books are stronger, I did really enjoy this—chapters or no. It‘s dawning on me that I‘m a sucker for a train-ride setting!

Moist continues to discover new sides to himself here, and his interplay with Adora was fantastic, ⤵️

I need to start Guards! Guards! in the next few days, so I‘d better circle back and review a couple previous #OokBOokClub reads!

With the Post Office well in hand, Moist Von Lipwig now takes charge of the Royal Mint and the bank—naturally. New over-the-top characters are introduced here, but Pratchett manages to handle them deftly enough that it (mostly) felt like just the right amount of outlandish and ridiculous. I really enjoyed this ⤵️

“We… had a profound love of storytelling. But no automation, Al or machine, could create stories. Not truly. We could pull from existing datasets, detect patterns, then copy and paste them in a new order, and sometimes that seemed like creation. But this couldn't capture the narrative magic that humanity could wield…Stories were the greatest currency to us, greater than power, greater than control. Stories were our food, nourishment, enrichment.⤵️

#LibraryHaul—my holds came in! including both #CampLitsy25 books for July 🤦🏻‍♀️ I‘m off to reorganize my reading schedule… 😆