Welcome to Litsy!

Thank you Helen ♥️ it‘s a well received hug! We‘re having a couple of wobbly days so I think we‘ll all be glad when tomorrow‘s finally done.
Looking forward to reading this one after following the buddy read. After I‘ve got this weekend done I‘d love to sort out a meet up in the middle 😁👍🏻

#hellothursday @wanderinglynn

1. I used to think of myself as a very city person and I still am but I‘m growing to love the countryside too! I love both but hate the suburbs (where I‘m from, v bored!)

2. All of the above

3. Hiking/walking/strolling/wandering

4. I haven‘t camped since school, I might try again but I prefer hotels and proper roofs...

5. The grasslands of this book are still swimming round my head and I read it 5 years ago

#winterwonderland #sleighride

There‘s one sleigh ride story that won‘t leave my mind and that‘s the one that Pavel tells in My Antonia. I can‘t tell you why because spoilers. But those who know, you know!

#RequiredReadingRedo

Day Three: Your least favorite required reading.

This is a good book. Cather is very readable. It was just the simple fact that I was a high school girl, from Nebraska, reading about Nebraska. We learn pioneer stories early and often. We KNOW the land. I just had a hard time connecting with this one. Antonia‘s portions are the best parts. I gave it a 2nd go for the Nebraska 150 list, but 🤷🏻‍♀️. It‘s me, not the book. 😄

I graduated to Willa Cather after eating my way through Louisa May Alcott as a girl. What were your faves in middle school? #bestheroines #favoritechildhoodreads

Reading this one on the Serial Reader app. I like the app because I almost feel like I'm accidentally reading a book in the background of all my other reading.

This is the year of finding out that I really love frontier books (#NewsoftheWorld), not that this matters with such writing. Willa Cather paints affectionate, striking portraits without ever being sentimental as Jim Burden remembers his childhood on the Nebraska plains and one character in particular, Antonia. #WillaCather #MyAntonia

Parents sent cake and Willa Cather for my birthday🎂

"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." -Willa Cather, My Antonia

Just posting this month's calendar pic. I love when they have literary allusions, and this one has so many! This month's quote is from My Antonia.

A very tentative pick here, this book would be amazing for a bookclub and a bit of backstory on Cather makes this read more interesting. Bad, the thankfully one chapter with casual racism. It pulled me out of the story. It felt weird as the whole tone of the novel is sympathetic towards the other (white) immigrants who were looked down on at the time. This is a problem I have with older novels a lot (pub 1918 originally) cont in comments

So I do have issues with holding up old books to modern day standards (such as the controversy of huckleberry Finn) but damn if this sentence take me straight out of the story and go whaaa?

Not for me. It took forever to get through this. I did like The Professor's House.

This is the books I'm focusing to finish for #thismonthstbr anything else that gets read will be a bonus #readjanuary

#booktober Day 22 While I have many #immigrantstories on my TBR (thanks to Litsy), this is currently the only one I own. I'm an avid library user and don't buy that many books anymore.

This read like a more beautifully written, more lush version of Little House on the Prairie--with them living in sod houses and farming the harsh Nebraska winters. I just loved every page! Ántonia is a flawed but beautiful character that seems to reach people on a more in-depth level. We all love and root for her but her story takes its course and feels real. The descriptions may be some of the most beautiful I've ever read without going too far.

The old man's smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness, of pity for things, that I never forgot it.

#SeptPhotoChallenge Day 16 - book rainbow

The Penguin #Dropcaps are definitely the rainbowiest of #rainbow books on my shelves!

#SomethingForSept

I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Finished up this lovely book on a not so lovely Memorial Day morning. It took me a while to appreciate the quiet beauty of the writing and story, but I think this one will stay with me for a long time to come.