June Wrap-up & Currently Reading

Hello rosebuds!💐

June was yet again another drastically slow month for me. I only ended up completing three books with another two that I am still currently reading. I don’t think I will finish my current reads by the end of the month, but I am still going to include them in this wrap-up anyway.

Considering what a slow reader I am as of lately, starting at the end of July I will no longer be doing monthly wrap-ups. Instead, I will be doing seasonal ones. In other words, my first seasonal wrap-up will cover all of the books I read in the months of July and August (aka summer).

Anyways, without further ado, let’s get into my June Wrap-up!

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THE WRAP-UP

1. Betsy-Tacy
by: Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy-Tacy follows two characters–Betsy and Tacy–and their friendship after one moves in to the neighborhood. This is a short book with short chapters as well. The overall length is just 113 pages, which technically makes it a novella.

Although I found Betsy-Tacy to be a quick, easy read, I didn’t find the overall narrative to be very memorable. Not enough happend in the plot to hold my interest, and to be quite honest, it just wasn’t very interesting.

My Rating:

2. Mandy
by: Julie Andrews Edwards

Mandy was such an adorable read. The beginning started off with a very similar plot to The Secret Garden–an orphan wanders off and finds an abandoned plot of land which she decides to tend to and make her own. The only difference with this part of the story was that in addition to finding a garden, Mandy also finds a cottage as well. After the narrative progressed though, Mandy became a unique tale of it’s own.

I don’t know what it is, but reading about characters who tidy up and tend to gardens is just so satisfying. There’s more to the plot than just a girl cleaning up though. Mandy is also a story about family and what it means to find a place to call home. I honestly loved every minute of this book, and could not recommend it enough.

My Rating: 

3. Garden Dreams
by: Ferris Cook

Garden Dreams is a collection of nine essays and features gorgeous Art Nouveau drawings as well. Each essay is basically a description of the writer’ ideal garden. Whether that be a garden they saw while traveling abroad, or even one they have yet to create.

I found this collection to be rather tiring to get through. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love reading about gardens and nature–when it’s done right. Every other sentence in this book included flower names and terminology that only an experienced gardener would understand. I often felt like I was reading words from foreign language that I didn’t know existed. When an author is writing about nature, if they are going to throw around strange terminology they need to do their part in describing that flower or plant and not just stating the name. Not all of us are professional gardeners here! Some of us are just enthusiasts.

If Garden Dreams wasn’t just a bunch of weird plant terms thrown together in order to describe the writer’s ideal garden, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Unfortunately, this was a huge miss for me.

My Rating: 

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CURRENTLY READING

 

1. Mary Poppins Opens the Door
by: P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins Opens the Door is the third book in the Mary Poppins series. Considering this is  a sequel, I won’t go into the synopsis for the sake of spoilers. I will however, tell you some of my thoughts so far.

While I am enjoying this third novel, I do think a lot of what is happening in the plot is getting quite repetitive when comparing it to each book in the series. I normally wouldn’t mind that so much, but I feel like with each new book, the same sequence of events occur. The plots all just seem the same, and as a result I am starting to lose interest.

2. Eight Cousins
by: Louisa May Alcott

Eight Cousins follows Rose Campbell, who after the death of her father, goes to live with her six aunts and eight cousins at “The Aunt Hill”.

I am only on chapter 9 of 24, so it’s hard to get an idea of how I’m liking it so far. The writing is super easy to get through, I’m just not sure that the plot will be interesting enough to keep me going. I will update you guys in my summer wrap-up though!

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I hope you enjoyed reading my June Wrap-up!

Until next time,

March Wrap-up

Hello rosebuds!💐

March was the best reading month for me so far, as I ended up completing a total of five books. Even though I failed at the Irish readathon and zodiacathon, I don’t care, because I set a new record for 2019.

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THE BOOKS

1. Gulliver’s Travels
by: Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels was the first book I completed for the Irish readathon. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved this story, as I wasn’t expecting to think really anything of it. What shocked me the most however, was the plot. We all know from the movie, that Gulliver gets stranded on an island full of tiny humans. In addition to that country though, Gulliver travels to many other lands that are full of bizarre inhabitants ranging from friendly giants, and going all the way to wise horses. My favorite territory to read about was definitely Brobdingnag, or the land of friendly giants.

Considering Gulliver’s Travels was published close to 300 years ago, the writing was a bit outdated, and in all honesty, just not my cup of tea. This is pretty much the only reason as to why I didn’t give this classic a solid five flowers.

My Rating:

2. Charlotte’s Web
by: E.B. White

This was my first time reading Charlotte’s Web, and boy did I love it. It did however, take me a while to pick up, as I had to mentally prepare myself for what I guessed would be a pretty dismal ending.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am an extremely emotional person. I have the tendency to cry while reading pretty much every book. Even if there isn’t necessarily anything depressing going on, I will always find a way to get emotional. You can darn well bet that while reading Charlotte’s Web, I was ugly crying to the point of hyperventilating.

With that said though, I often find that some of the best books are the ones that can produce reactions such as that. Charlotte and Wilbur’s story was absolutely beautiful. I really felt for every character, and found myself caring about the fate of each. I highly recommend this book, not only for the kids in your life, but the adults as well. Charlotte’s Web has something for everyone.
My Rating:

3. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
by: Edith Holden

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is a facsimile of Edith Holden’s original diary from the Edwardian era. In it, Holden chronicles her observations of the plants, animals and landscapes throughout each month in England, starting with January. In between are some illustrations of what she saw as well as poems that relate to the current time of year. This is a stunning book, as the publisher basically just took her original diary, and put it into a readable hardcover. All the text inside is Edith Holden’s actual handwriting.

Although I did enjoy this for the most part, I think I would have gotten more out of it if I was a professional gardener, and not just an enthusiast. There were a lot of flower names thrown around that I wasn’t familiar with. I think it would have helped if I could actually envision them to get the full effect. Either way, this was a beautiful book, I just didn’t love it as much as I had hoped to.
My Rating:

4. Clara Voyant
by: Rachelle Delaney

I would be lying if I said that Clara Voyant didn’t somehow manage to disappoint me. While I did think this a fun and quick read, there was way too much build up where I was just waiting for the climax to happen. What really disappointed me though was how misleading the synopsis was. Yes, Clara does cover the horoscopes section in her school newspaper, but the so-called predictions she made seemed more like observations that anyone could have guessed. There didn’t seem to be anything clairvoyant about her character until the last 25 pages.

While I was pretty disappointed in that aspect, I did still enjoy a majority of this story. There was a decent amount of things I loved, which is why I didn’t give Clara Voyant a lower rating. I am going to do a full review on this book soon, so I will go into more detail then.

My Rating:

5. The Secret Garden
by: Frances Hodgson Burnett

This was obviously a reread for me, and I loved it just as much as the last time. I adore rereading my favorite books, because I am always finding even more reasons as to why love them so much. This time around, I realized how much Dickon’s character reminded me of my father. I won’t go too in depth on this, but if you want to know what I am talking about, check out my Top Three Children’s Classics post here.
My Rating:

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I hope you enjoyed reading my March Wrap-up!

Until next time,

Zodiacathon TBR

Hello rosebuds!💐

As promised, today I am posting my TBR for the second readathon in which I am participating in this month. That being, the zodiacathon.

ZODIACATHON OVERVIEW
This is a readathon that is inspired by astrology. In order to participate, you must know your sun, moon and rising signs, as most of the challenges are based off of what signs you were born under. The zodiacathon will last 7 days, taking place from March 20th-March 26th. There will be a total of six challenges which I will go over below.

THE CHALLENGES
Like I said above, participants must know all three of their signs in order to participate. If you don’t, you can very easily look up a moon and rising sign calculator by searching those terms on google. You will just need to know your time and place of birth.

There is a challenge for every sign of the zodiac, so I am only going to discuss the one’s that I am participating in according to my signs.

My signs: Sun-Pisces | Moon-Scorpio | Rising-Virgo

Challenges are as follows:

1. Buddy read a book with someone who shares your sun sign.
   There are group chats on twitter for pretty much every sign. In the Pisces group chat, we have chosen to read a bad ass book about mermaids which I will discuss in my TBR below.
2. Read a book with an astrology/astronomy term in the title.
   Pretty self-explanatory.
3. Read a book that fits the challenge for your sun sign.
   Again, my sun sign is Pisces. The challenge for that sign is to read a five star prediction.
4. Read a book that fits the challenge for your moon sign.
   My moon sign is Scorpio. The challenge for that sign is to read a book that has romance.
5. Read a book that fits the challenge for your rising sign.
   My rising sign is virgo. The challenge for that sign is to read a mysterious book.
6. Read the group book.
   Although I listed this challenge, I will not be participating in it.

For a full list of the challenges and an in-depth description of the fine details, you can go check out the twitter profile for the zodiacathon here.

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THE TBR

1. Sea Witch
by: Sarah Henning
challenge: Buddy read a book with someone who shares your sun sign.

In the Pisces group chat on twitter, we decided that our buddy read for this first challenge should be Sea Witch, by Sarah Henning.

According to ancient mythology, the Pisces constellation was originally created by the ‘first mermaid‘ known as Atargatis. Considering the fact that Pisces is a water sign and has mermaid origins, I don’t believe we could have picked a better book.

For those of you who don’t know, Sea Witch is a retelling/prequel to The Little Mermaid. It basically tells the story of the Sea Witch, before she turned evil.

2. Clara Voyant
by: Rachelle Delaney
challenges: 1. Read a book with an astrology/astronomy term in the title.
2. Read a book that fits the challenge for your rising sign. (Virgo: read a mysterious book.)

I am going to be doubling up on books for the above two challenges. I know Clara Voyant is kind of pushing it for the first one, which is to read a book with an astrology/astronomy term in the title, but ‘voyant’ can be seen as an astrology word. Voyant–which is technically a french term–can be defined as a person who is sensitive to things beyond the natural range of perception, or in other words, a medium or psychic. This is also a middle grade mystery novel, so it works out great for the Virgo challenge, as well. 

Clara Voyant follows a girl named Clara who joins the newspaper staff at her new middle school. Clara intends to write articles that deal with hard-news and other ‘important’ issues, so when the editor assigns her the topic of horoscopes, she is less than thrilled. Things start to get worse (or interesting) when her horoscopes start coming true. 

Now I don’t know about you, but I am totally here for that synopsis. 

3. A Year in Provence
by: Peter Mayle
challenge: Read a book that fits the challenge for your sun sign. (Pisces: read a five star prediction.)

A Year in Provence is a memoir that follows the author who one day, decides to drop everything, and move to the south of France. This book chronicles his adventures throughout the course of one year, going from month to month. Starting with Peter’s first day in his 200-year-old farm house and going all the way to his odd escapades, such as discovering the secrets of goat racing.

I am a total sucker for the south of France and just anything related to that country. A few years ago, my mother took me on an unforgettable trip all along the border, and you can bet we visited the region discussed in this book. I am totally expecting to love A Year in Provence, and would be highly shocked if I end up hating it.

4. Anne of Windy Willows
by: L.M. Montgomery
challenge: Read a book that fits the challenge for your moon sign. (Scorpio: read a book that has romance.)

I had a hard time deciding on a book for this challenge, as I am not the biggest fan of the romance genre. In the end, I decided to go with Anne of Windy Willows, because it includes my favorite Pisces heroine, Anne Shirley.

Anne of Windy Willows is the fourth book in the Anne of Green Gables series. It has been included on countless TBRs, so I am not going to trouble you with a synopsis.

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I hope you enjoyed reading today’s post!

Until next time,

Books About Gardens & Gardeners + Birthday Giveaway

Hello rosebuds!💐

You guys! Today is my 26th birthday! In honor of this very special occasion, I came up with the grand idea to combine my two loves into one discussion. Those being: books and gardens. I mean, my blog isn’t called The Garden of Read-En for nothing, am I right?

THE GIVEAWAY:

I am also hosting a birthday giveaway over on my bookstagram @the_garden_of_readen. The post for that won’t go up until a little later on today, so make sure you are following me to be alerted as to when it does. It will also include all of the rules and details on what you can win. The giveaway is going to be themed and will include items inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. I may or may not also include a separate prize for the same winner to win a book of their choice. Not everyone can be pushed into reading my favorite books. I get that!

Anyway, let’s get into some books about gardens and gardeners, shall we?

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THE BOOKS

1. The Secret Garden
by: Frances Hodgson Burnett

I  couldn’t write a list of books about gardens and not include The Secret Garden. This children’s classic has beautiful descriptions of the hidden garden Mary tends to. Burnett’s writing is so utterly atmospheric that you can’t help but be instantly transported to the gardens at Misselthwaite Manor.

2. Old Herbaceous
by: Reginald Arkell

Reginald Arkell is somehow able to perfectly capture the care and passion a gardener has for their work in in Bert Pinnegar’s character. Bert’s only true love in life is gardening, so when his job as head gardener is taken from him, all that’s left is a longing in which only a fellow retired landscaper would understand.

Old Herbaceous is a classic British novel of the garden. In it, we follow an orphan, Bert Pinnegar, starting from his youth as a schoolboy where he enjoys picking wildflowers and often finds himself dodging angry farmers, all the way to adulthood where he becomes a legendary head gardener earning the name, “Old Herbaceous”.

3. Tom’s Midnight Garden
by: Philippa Pearce

This children’s fantasy novel isn’t necessarily a gardening book, but rather a book that just takes place in a garden. Unlike most of the other picks on this list, Tom’s Midnight Garden has some magical elements to it. If you are interested in reading a book about a garden, and fantasy is your go-to genre, than this might be your best bet.

Tom’s Midnight Garden is a modern children’s classic that follows Tom who is shipped off to his aunt and uncles for the summer after his brother gets sick. Tom is positive that the entire season will be spent miserably, but then one night he hears his relative’s grandfather clock chime thirteen times. Tom is then transported back to an old garden where he meets a young girl named Hatty.

Every night, Tom returns to this garden and has wonderful adventures with Hatty. Not everything is quite as it seems though. Hatty grows mysteriously older with each visit, and by the end of the summer, Tom finds himself wanting to stay with her forever.

4. Down the Garden Path
by: Beverley Nichols

Down the Garden Path is known as one of the most quintessential gardening books to date. Written as a memoir, the book follows the author’s account of the creation of an English garden during the 1930s. Considered to be just as comical as it is memorable, Down the Garden Path highlights some of the many trials and tribulations in which every gardener will at one point go through. Labors range from the setbacks of creating a rock garden, and go all the way to the struggles of cultivating plants in a greenhouse. There may or may not also be some cats involved as well. 

5. My Summer in a Garden
by: Charles Dudley Warner

Along with Old Herbaceous, as well as a few other books on this list, My Summer in a Garden is part of the Modern Library Gardening series. This collection of paperbacks features a total of seven gardening books.

My Summer in a Garden is another memoir where we follow the author through his  many struggles as an amateur gardener. Warner’s accounts of his laborious struggles in the garden are organized by monthly entries where we see him learn to garden through the many experiences that come with having no help but his own.

6. The Forgotten Garden
by: Kate Morton

The Forgotten Garden is a great pick for those of you who love the children’s classic, The Secret Garden. The narrative brings Frances Hodgson Burnett in as a character, and gives the idea that the walled garden in this novel, influenced the original story.

The Forgotten Garden is a historical fiction novel that follows Nell, a young girl who is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia back in 1913. Years later, when Nell is told the truth of her history by her adopted parents, she sets out to trace her real identity. Unfortunately, it’s not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell dies that everything starts to come together.

7. Elizabeth and her German Garden
by: Elizabeth Von Arnim

This is a book that has a realistic portrayal of what it means to not only be an amateur gardener, but a Victorian woman with a desire to garden, as well. We follow Elizabeth as she struggles to communicate with her gardener how she wants her garden to look. She has a vision, but due to the fact that she can’t physically get down on her hands and knees and plant everything herself, she often fails to get the desired results.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is an extremely short book at only 104 pages. It is told through a series of diary entries from the author Elizabeth, and follows her throughout the course of one year. Elizabeth often discusses how she has found the utmost happiness in her garden.

8. The Gardener’s Bed-Book
by: Richardson Wright

The Gardener’s Bed-Book is a collection of 365 essays all relating to the garden. The idea being that each story is meant to be read in bed at night after a long day’s work. Wright not only gives great gardening advice, but also excels at describing some of the challenges one goes through when cultivating a garden of one’s own. The Gardener’s Bed-Book is a great read that is perfect for not only gardening experts, but admirers as well.

9. We Made a Garden
by: Margery Fish

We Made a Garden is a memoir following a unique English country garden. In it, we follow author Margery Fish as she discusses how she and her husband created a cottage garden on the site of the former farmyard in Somerset, England. She also explains many things in which she learns along the way. From the secret to cultivating the smoothest lawn, all the way to the landscaping possibilities of evergreens.

10. The Lost Garden
by: Helen Humphreys

Like The Forgotten Garden, The Lost Garden is another historical fiction novel featuring a mysterious garden. The narrative takes place during WWII and follows Gwen, a 35-year old spinster, who flees London to join the “Land Girls” in the farming of potatoes. Upon arriving, Gwen discovers two things. The first being that the other girls are more interested in the soldiers than in planting the crops. The second being a hidden, abandoned garden on the estate. Got Secret Garden vibes yet? Thought so.

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I hope you enjoyed reading today’s post!

Until next time,