Spell the Month in Books // March Linkup 2021

Happy Saturday, and welcome to another Spell the Month in Books! Here’s the rundown of how this linkup works:

As the title implies, the goal is to try to spell the name of the current month by using the first letter of book titles (skipping articles like A, An, and The). This can be done with books you have on hand, creating a physical bookstack, or by building a virtual bookstack. I’ve recently started sharing themes a few months in advance to focus your book search, but following the theme is entirely optional. Once you have your stack, you can share it whatever way is convenient for you. Most bloggers do this by creating a post and adding their link to the linkup toward the bottom of this page (click on the blue button that says “Click here to enter”), or sharing their link in a comment. You can also share the list in a comment (without a link) or share a picture of your stack/list with the hashtag #SpelltheMonthinBooks on your preferred social media site. Regardless of how you participate, feel free to grab the button from the bottom of this page to include with it. This is a new button made in February 2021; if you’ve been using the one I made a few months earlier, it is totally fine to keep using that one! Other than aesthetics, the only difference with the new one is that it links to all of my posts tagged #SpelltheMonthinBooks rather than one specific post.

So, are you ready to take the challenge? Can you Spell the Month in Books? The linkup will be open for the duration of the month, so there is no rush if you need some time to ponder your options.

March – Memoirs

M – Maud by Melanie J. Fishbane

So I’m starting off with a book that isn’t a true memoir. This is a fictionalized account of L.M. Montgomery’s later childhood, and it’s a book which I love.

Fourteen-year-old Lucy Maud Montgomery—Maud to her friends—has a dream: to go to college and, just like her idol, Louisa May Alcott, become a writer. But living with her grandparents on Prince Edward Island, she worries that this dream will never come true. Her grandfather has strong opinions about a woman’s place in the world, and they do not include spending good money on college. Luckily, she has a teacher to believe in her, and good friends to support her, including Nate, the Baptist minister’s stepson and the smartest boy in the class. If only he weren’t a Baptist; her Presbyterian grandparents would never approve. Then again, Maud isn’t sure she wants to settle down with a boy—her dreams of being a writer are much more important.

Life changes for Maud when she goes out West to live with her father and his new wife and daughter. Her new home offers her another chance at love, as well as attending school, but tensions increase as Maud discovers her stepmother’s plans for her, which threaten Maud’s future—and her happiness—forever.

Read in 2017. My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Read my review here.

A – All Creatures Great and Small: The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World’s Most Beloved Animal Doctor by James Herriot

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot’s periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot’s recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

I haven’t read this book, but it appears to be popular and rather heartwarming.

R – The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “a classic,” The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time.

Finding a memoir that started with “R” is more difficult than I expected! I hadn’t even heard of this particular biography until perusing Goodreads lists specifically for this post. There isn’t much information given about it, but it could be interesting, especially if you’re into this part of history!

C – Confessions by Saint Augustine of Hippo

Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author’s early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible.

Read in 2019. My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

H – Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews Edwards

With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films–Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry — from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations.

Read in 2020. My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

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Thanks for stopping by! This month’s list was much easier to put together than February’s – I’m glad to have a short break from months with the letter “Y”!

Are you up to the challenge? Can you Spell the Month in Books? Next month’s prompt is Comedy/Books that Made Me Lol (or that look like they would). As always, you don’t have to use this prompt if you don’t want to, but it is there if you like the additional direction!

Until the next chapter,

Jana