Book Review

In My Lady Danbury Era

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Yesterday, on my Instagram, I posted one of my favorite cos-bound outfits from this year: Lady Danbury from Bridgerton in one of my favorite color palettes of peony pink and plum. I noticed, with some measure of joy, that my silver streak at the front of my hair is becoming even more noticeable, too, which one thing that I adore about Lady Danbury’s style. In the caption for my post, I noted that I am still very much in my Bridgerton/Lady Danbury era and that has stuck with me over the last 24 hours. The way I described Lady Danbury was classy, smart, sharp, and heart for days. She is undoubtedly my favorite character in the Bridgerton series and that may easily be attributed to my own “advancing age”. As I have entered my forties, I have been finding myself less and less concerned with outside forces, as it were.

I want to look and feel good, but I care less about how my body and personal style stack up against social beauty standards.

I want to be respected, but I care less about pleasing people just so they will like me, even my students.

I want to be around people who feel like home to me, so I care less about being seen as “antisocial” because I get to pick with whom I expend my energy.

I want to live my life in a way that is true to my faith, and I don’t care if my love for and welcoming of others make people uncomfortable. (I mean, when was the establishment ever comfortable with Jesus, after all?)

The older I get the more I realize that I want to be a combination of Lady Agatha Danbury and Lady Violet Bridgerton: sharp, smart, classy, and heart-full. I want to be fierce in my defense of those who need it, gentle and generous when souls are weary or hurting, sharp in my dress and comfortable in my own beauty, and strong to shore up loved and dear ones when they need it.

As a former people-pleaser, this personal transformation is proving to be nothing short of foundation-rocking. Growing up, I cared so much about what people thought of me and how that reflected on my family that I drove myself to distraction to be perfect, to live up to expectations…to be the diamond of my community as it were. It has taken me the majority of my life to reach a point where I am now concerned with my own happiness with my life and the truth and integrity of my own being. Am I being true to God and what I feel He is saying to me? Am I being true to myself and the woman in whose skin I always want to feel desperately at home? Am I doing what is not only good for others but good for myself?

In my 41 years, I have won, I have lost, I have worked, I have achieved, I have loved, and I have been hurt and disappointed, just like everyone else around me. But, as Lady Danbury says, the benefit of having lived a life is that “I have earned the right to do whatever I please, whenever I please and however I please to do it.” I know that I am far from done with living my life, but I do like the fact that I am getting to this point of doing what I enjoy and what is good for me without the same debilitating fear that was my companion in my first few decades. Are there things that I still need to be mindful of? Of course! But I am enjoying solidifying my core while still softening my edges.

When Reading Equals Sheer Joy

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Book Review: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

There are days (sooooo many days) when all you need is a bit of something fun. Whether that is a game, a movie, a show, or whatever. For me…that is often (frequently, usually) books. And I have been in desperate need of something riotously fun lately. Not that the books I have read so far this year haven’t been awesome; they absolutely have. But there are some books that are just plain, laugh-out-loud fun. Kimberly Lemming’s Mead Mishap series is definitely in that category. In fact, it might be its current Queen.

I mean, let’s start off with just the titles: Book #1 is entitled That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, continued with That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, and finally culminating in That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human. On that basis alone, how could you NOT want to know more of what these stories are about?? Not to even mention the gorgeous covers. Oh, so to die for! Each shows a perfectly adorable and hilarious spin on the classic romance novel cover, including handsome men in shirts that are either suspiciously deep-cut around the chesticle area or just falling off due to the garment’s lack of will to stay put on its wearer.

What next and definitely attracted me about these covers was this: all of the main women are women of color. And we aren’t talking about just your willowy, woodbine, fiery-haired damsels either. These are short, strong heroines with skin that warms and glows, bodies that range the gorgeous variety between svelte and thicc with generous busts and hips, adorned with pink hair, braids, and wild curls. Women who love food and coziness, with strong hearts, sharp minds, and tongues to match. In short, all of them look like me! In a fantasy-romance novel! Oh, my stars! I had no chance of saving myself.

Beyond these already-tempting details, these books are bonafide geeky. There are little Easter eggs and pithy references that will make your inner D&D party member giggle gleefully. Yes, they are romances so there are indeed spicy scenes but, on the whole, the selling point of these books is that they are just FUN! I laughed more than anything, re-reading particular paragraphs or whole scenes just because they made me smile and giggle.

Let me tell you this: a book like that is a treasure. Not only a good read but fun to read. A book that gives you unmitigated joy is an absolute jewel. Lemming does not claim her books to be tomes of the highest literary order, not a chance (Have you seen this delightful human’s endpage bio? You should!). But what she has gifted us with are books that bubble over with readerly joy.

I needed that joy this week. It’s the fourth quarter, testing season, and everyone is just done! I do not blame them–students, teachers, or administrators–it has been a…what’s a diplomatic word?…fustercluck of a school year, and the emotional drain and saturation are real. We can all use an infusion of joy wherever we are able to find it at this time.

So for that I say HUZZAH and THANK YOU, Kimberly Lemming! Your Mead Mishaps came along at just the needed time for me, and I cannot wait to read the rest of them. I appreciate and laud you and your work and all the joy that it undoubtedly brings to myself and countless others! You are amazing!

Book Review: Marmee by Sarah Miller

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I cannot explain how happy this book makes me! Little Women is, far and away, my favorite novel and has been for the majority of my life. I have consumed this story in a myriad of different forms and have had so many surprising parallels between my own life and that of Jo March’s fictional one. But this book…oh, this book!

Here is our beloved Marmee’s soul laid out in her own journal entries. It was so brilliant to read the familiar plot points of Little Women but from Marmee’s particular perspective with all the hidden details that often fill a mother’s heart and mind. We are familiar with the Marmee who admitted to her spitting-image daughter Jo about her own struggles with her temper and indignation at the unfairness and injustices of the world. Furthermore, in this book, Miller expands upon those personal struggles and her journey through them and the life her beliefs and actions have built for her girls, her “little women”. Miller presents Margaret March as thoroughly human — loving, longing, struggling, working, and yearning. In the midst of “hoping and keeping busy”, we see the true needs of a woman, mother, wife, and friend presented in honest relief. Now a Marmee myself, I cried at portions, feeling indelibly seen and known in that particular capacity by this best of stories.

Before, I have always identified with Jo, but here in Miller’s well-researched and heartfully-rendered portrait, I blessedly saw my own heart reflected back at me in Marmee’s vulnerable humanity and the loving work of her life. I found myself yearning to be as lucky as John Brooke or Laurie or Birte Hummel, to be drawn into the warm circle of Marmee’s life.

It is also not only Marmee’s portrait that has been filled out by Miller’s pen. Grandfather Lawrence becomes a deeply-loving father figure that is sorely-needed, John Brooke a man thoroughly deserving of Meg and the Marches’ love (no matter Jo’s young protestations), and the Hummel family comes to rich life as full characters instead of a mere vehicle for lessons in kindness and sacrifice.

While Miller does indeed make some changes to this well-worn story, I found none of them to be detractors or detrimental to the effect of this gorgeous story. It is more than just a retelling, it is a new side of the much-beloved story of the March Family. Miller has drawn the stitches between the fictional Marches and the humanly real Alcotts tighter and embroidered them with stunning flourishes of growth, love, faith, hard work, and hope. I could not have asked for or even dreamed of a better novel with which to begin 2023. It has done my heart and soul unspeakable good and has become one that I will undoubtedly recommend over and over again. Thank you, Sarah Miller, for all your hope and hard work in producing a book of such feeling and skill. Thank you for giving me a story that shall find its way into my own Marmee’s hands as well as next to my childhood and anniversary editions of Little Women, in pride of place among my most cherished volumes. A place among my treasures, for that is what it is: a treasure.

Book Review: The Snatchabook by Helen Docherty & Thomas Docherty

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I have found my new favorite children’s storybook – The Snatchabook. This is a story about a little bunny named Eliza Brown and all her friends in Burrow Down. Every evening, they all cuddle down in their little homes at bedtime and listen excitedly to their bedtime stories. Then, suddenly, one night, the story books start to disappear, right out of their hands, flying out the windows and disappearing. Poor Eliza Brown is shocked but determined to find out what is happening. So she lays a trap and, when the thief comes for the pile of story books she has set out, Eliza confronts them! It turns out that the thief is a little creature called a Snatchabook (looks like a kangaroo mouse with dragonfly wings), and it has been stealing books because it has no one to read to it. Poor thing!

Eliza Brown takes pity on the Snatchabook and, together, they come up with a plan to return everyone’s books. Afterward, Eliza gathers her friends and explains the situation and, after that, the Snatchabook is welcomed to storytime in everyone’s home.

Written and illustrated by Helen and Thomas Docherty, a husband and wife team from Wales, this is a simply lovely storybook, composed of lush illustrations and a beautiful story written in lilting rhyme, perfect for a little ones. I thoroughly enjoy reading this to my 2-year-old daughter and, sometimes, I even take it down to read just to myself.