Public reader discussion about Elsie Dinsmore in the WeRead Catalog by Martha Finley.
By WildHeron1980
I’m going to be 40 this year and it’s making me really nostalgic. I used to love reading when I was younger, but now I can’t really remember much beyond a few books and authors I liked. I’m kind of curious what other people my age were into reading back when they were kids or teens.
By Curious_Pages9
I’m halfway through *A Skinful of Shadows* by Frances Hardinge right now. It’s this fantasy/horror-ish thing about a girl who can see and kinda keep ghosts around, and then somehow it all ends with her getting possessed by a bear. I keep thinking it could’ve worked as a buddy comedy instead, like just total chaotic, weird hijinks. The tagline would 100% have to be a bear pun—something like “she’s got a voice in her head and he’s unBEARable.” It’s not super good, but you know what I mean. What would you turn into a movie?
By Panther_Cloudy
The name basically tells you everything, but I’ve been bringing this up with my therapist because it was seriously messed up. I can’t remember the title at all—I just keep seeing the scenes in my head. My dad used to read it to me when I was like 10 or 11. The plot (or at least what I remember) is: the mom dies giving birth, the dad basically disappears and leaves the kid with a nanny. Then when she’s around a pre-teen he comes back, but instead of being better he starts abusing her and traumatizing her so badly she gets really physically ill. And then it’s like he suddenly has this “oh wow I was wrong” moment… and then what, she dies? Or they somehow live happily ever after? I can’t tell. My brain keeps throwing both endings at me and I hate that I can’t trust which one is real. A couple specific scenes I remember: there’s this part where she tries to help a hurt hummingbird, but he makes her kill it. And she’s always described as this sweet kid who tries to secretly buy him a gift for his birthday/Christmas, but he keeps “checking” her stuff and realizes she’s hiding money (with the nanny helping). Even though she and the nanny try to explain and plead, he fires the nanny. After that, I swear she just shuts down—like she goes catatonic or falls into some kind of coma/fever situation. I don’t remember what comes next after that point. Yeah, it’s wild that my dad would basically praise the dad character in the story. For a few years after, I’d actually pray at night that I’d be sick enough for my dad to love me. The whole thing is horrifying, but honestly what gets me the most now is that I can’t find the title again. I’ve found it once before, but I didn’t write it down, and now I can’t track it back.
By Carries1983
I wanted to go back and reread some of the books I loved when I was younger, just to see how they land now that I’m an adult. I used to cycle through Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, Little Women, and a few others all the time, like a couple times a year. I kept wondering if I’d notice different things now — maybe little jokes, weird lines, stuff I didn’t catch as a teenager. Mostly I just wanted to know if they’d still give me the same feeling they used to. I started with Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne gets talked about more, but I always related more to Emily and her stubborn little mischief. Honestly, I got pulled right back into it and for a while it felt exactly like I remembered. It did hit a bit differently reading about a kid losing her parents when I’m a mother now, because I found myself thinking of Emily more like one of my kids than like me, which is how I used to read her. But one thing really jumped out at me. Spoilers if you haven’t read it yet — seriously, stop here if you care. I never really got the whole, um, meaning of Emily and Dean Priest before. >!After he rescues her from the cliff and they start talking, it comes out that he’s 36. Then after talking to her for a bit, he decides he’s going to “wait for her,” and she takes that to mean wait until she’s ready to go home. But he means it romantically, if that’s even the right way to put it. She tells him she wants to be a writer, but she’s uneasy about the “love talk” because she doesn’t know what’s supposed to be said. Dean tells her he’ll teach her when she’s older, and even says not to go looking for another teacher. Emily is 12 there. A 36-year-old man is saying this to a 12-year-old girl. I didn’t really see a problem with it when I was a teenager. It just felt a little strange because he was so much older, and I guess I figured sometimes people do fall for older partners and it’s all that “love has no age” thing. My aunt married someone 20 years older than her. But Emily is 12. It completely changed how I see Dean now, because I always felt kind of sorry for him and thought he was sweet in a sad way, since he was awkward and got picked on so much. Adult me just cannot be okay with a 36-year-old man deciding to wait for a 12-year-old girl.!< Has anyone else reread something from when you were younger and found a part that totally changed how you felt about the book or a character?