Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge

You've been talking and I've been listening. Lucy Maud Montgomery is my favorite author of all times. (Well, my favorite female writer. The favorite male writer being, of course, C.S. Lewis.) I have not only read everything L.M. Montgomery ever wrote but I also own everything she wrote (minus one non-fiction magazine article). I seriously love her writing and I'm not sure I can even say why, exactly, although I will certainly try.

Lucy Maud Montgomery had an active imagination. She must have taken herself on some wild personal adventures but she also provided her reader to escape to a magical place known as Prince Edward Island. The majority of her stories were set on Prince Edward Island. Because of that, about 8 years ago I traveled to that Island to see this world that Montgomery breathed out into her writing. I wanted to walk where she walked and see what she saw and wrote about in such an impacting way.

She wrote when times were simpler and love was valued. These days we hardly notice love because we're too busy dashing about trying to accomplish "to-do" lists that are miles long, destroying our ability to relax and just be. Montgomery wrote about front porch discussions, tea parties, apple picking, snow walks, letters mailed by post and laughter. If you've read Montgomery at all you come to realize that she is very tongue-in-cheek and has a wicked sense of humor. She writes about people's personalities which makes them believable and is quite frequently sarcastically funny. I love it! It's my style.

In the last little while I've been re-reading some of my favorite Montgomery short stories and several of you have commented that you haven't ever read Montgomery before or you haven't read very widely. I think it's time to change that, don't you? Whether you are planning on reading the Anne books for the first time or the fiftieth time, or wanting to read about Emily, Pat or a variety of characters in her short stories, I hope you will read something of Montgomery's.

I would love to start my year off right by traveling back to Prince Edward Island and tromping through fields of Queen Anne's lace. I would like to watch another sunset next to the North Cape Lighthouse and . . . just be! I invite you to join me on this journey. Will you come?


The plan is simple

1. Pick the Montgomery book (or books!) that you most want to read and then read them during the first few weeks of January. I'll have a Mr. Linky up on January 1st through January 9th for you to link up to if you plan on participating in this challenge. All you need to have prepared on January 1st (or shortly thereafter) is a blog post pointing people back to the Mr. Linky post and challenge. If you'd like to say which books of Montgomery's you plan on reading during the challenge, do so then! There are a great many to choose from.

2. Come back on Friday, January 30th, 2009 and link up however many Montgomery related reviews/posts you like.

3. Visit around and see what everyone else had to say about the Montgomery books that they read and learn as much as you can about Montgomery and her writings. Visit with people about what they read and why. Fellowship and just be in this different world.

Why am I doing this? Because I love Montgomery and I think her writing is valuable and relevant. Also, I don't want to read her alone. (I mean, I would, but I don't really want to if I can have company along the way!) Let's do this together and start the year off in a magical way.

Will you join me? Hope so! SPREAD THE WORD and see you back here on January 1st!



Here's the code to add the button to your own blog if you would like to participate:

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