extemporally

Anne of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery.

This had some cute moments in it, but I was mostly skeeved by the whole Miss Lavendar plotline :( why was I skeeved by it :(

The Callendar Papers, by Cynthia Voigt.

This was pretty good, with some brilliant moments in it - I didn't like that I could see the big revelation coming from a mile away, but aside from that it was pretty good? I mean, this was pitched at a younger demographic than Voigt normally writes for so. I appreciate the continued commitment to gender equality (whoo, suffragists!) and all round badassery, so while what I'm really longing for is the full throttle adult Gothic remixing of this novel, this was pretty good by itself. Yay!

A Solitary Blue, by Cynthia Voigt.

Ugh, this was such a tender, rich little novel - I loved Jeff so much and how you can see him blossom through the years and the pages, and how he and his father grew together:

Jeff ran his fingers all around its outlines, its deep curves, its straight lines. He plucked at low E and heard the mellow, clear reverberation of a perfect note. He looked up at his father, across the table. "It's an old one," he said. Then his voice choked and he swallowed. "May I be excused?" he asked quickly. He didn't wait for an answer because he could feel tears swelling up behind his eyes. He left the kitchen hastily. Halfway up the stairs, he remembered and turned back. He put his face just through the doorway. His father had been staring into the mug of coffee, his face expressionless. "Thank you," Jeff said. "Thank you," he said again. His voice sounded steady, but emotions pushed up behind his eyes as he repeated his thanks, and he rushed down the hall. The Professor didn't like tears and emotions - and it would be a rotten way to show how much he liked the guitar to throw all that emotion at the Professor, to show how he was feeling.

All the more poignant because he doesn't show much emotion the first couple of pages, and now he is like ALL OF THE FEELINGS <333

Or! or! the way his mother ends up disappointing him:

One day Melody did return and was there in the living room with Gambo and the aunts when Jeff walked in the front door. He didn't remember where he'd been when he heard her voice and saw her face, her eyes shining at him, her hair damp and curly from a shower. "Where have you been?" she asked him.

Jeff just let the happiness grow inside him.

"Nobody knew where you were," Melody said. "You shouldn't just go wandering off like that."

She was angry. "I'm sorry," Jeff said. "I told Gambo this morning."

Melody stood up and took him out into the front hallway to say, "You know she can't remember anything. Honestly, Jeffie, I thought I could trust you."

And the way he's in love with Dicey (although everyone should be in love with Dicey!!!):

She had pronged him, with a single stroke, pronged him through the heart and he was caught. Just like with Melody, caught. But this wasn't Melody, Dicey wasn't. And besides, he didn't feel pronged, he felt - overwhelmed, out of breath, breathless.

I love how Cynthia Voigt's books are about fundamentally good people getting fundamentally happy endings. ♥

Sons From Afar, by Cynthia Voigt.

Man, I have so much love for James just because he kind of resembles who I was growing up - intelligent, confused, and with low self-esteem. Also he loves his family so much:

He was so embarrassed about himself, so ashamed. What he thought about it, there wasn't much he was proud of in his life. One thing was the way he'd always helped Maybeth with school, first reading and then math, too, whatever she needed. He did a good job of helping his younger sister, he knew that. He should probably be a teacher or something, some no-money job where it didn't matter if you were a wimp. Also, he sometimes had good ideas, like when he suggested to Gram that she rent out the acreage of the farm, so the land would earn them some money. Now the fields were planted every spring, with soybeans, and Gram and James had negotiated a deal with Mr Hitchins, the farmer, to take some of the rent in cash in the spring, and the rest in a percentage of the net profit. So James wasn't a total loss. He thought.

Also because you know that's the way people think of him, at all:

James stood by the door. Those two, they'd gotten their Momma's good looks, her golden good looks, and he'd gotten - he didn't know what he'd gotten. He'd gotten lost and helpless and confused. He'd gotten the bad differences. No wonder he was such a dork. But maybe he would do it, anyway, maybe he would try to trace their father and find out something about him. Maybe he'd just go ahead and do it.

#jamesyouarekillingmehere

And also, how kind he can be:

"Do you know?" James interrupted. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if you turned out to be really famous. One of the pioneers of astrophysics. One of the really big men, the men who really contribute something." He said it because he meant it.

Toby's eyes got watery for a minute, but James didn't mind. Even if Toby had burst into tears, what did tears weigh in all the time that had passed? If Toby felt like crying, and cried, that was what was important.