Category: Back to Classics

Jane Austen July winding down… ✨♥️🌿🫖☕️

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I have really enjoyed joining in with the annual appreciation of Miss Austen’s life and work by reading and watching various things by Austen or inspired by! I’m getting closer to finishing my reread of Sense & Sensibility. Lucy Steele is quickly becoming another all time villain in my book. Ha. I love Austen’s character studies! I’m still plugging away at Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. I identify with the author’s bookish love and really appreciate her personal stories of why and how she feels connected or on the flip side, uncomfortable with a book/author. I don’t love the modern spin author’s try to eke out of classic writers by trying to twist the little bit they know using their modern lenses. Romney sounds a touch whiny sometimes, but it’s at least limited to the hardships female authors had to face in the 18th century, which were true. She’s not, so far, trying to read into Austen or these other authors’s personal lives and make things up.

Overall, it’s a compelling read and I’m enjoying it.

Other things I read and did in honor were watch the 2020 BBC Emma adaptation. While I liked parts of it, unfortunately, it wasn’t my favorite. I reread The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I really enjoy. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a contemporary of Miss Austen’s.

I also read Sarah E. Ladd’s The Governess of Penwythe Hall, which was so enjoyable as a Regency-era story. Georgette Heyer Regency novels (love!) and Amish Pride & Prejudice (don’t really recommend! 🤣) by Ashley Emma rounded out my Austen-inspired reading. 📖 Sigh. ☕️🫖♥️🌿✨

Someone to be looney with me! ♥️🤓

Do you enjoy Austen? What is your favorite by her? ♥️🌿✨

First ‘26-‘27 Homeschool Year Purchase {Day 97} ✏️✨♥️

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I’m getting very excited as I begin homeschool planning! 😍 The past couple of years, I’ve purchased a School Nest planner/record keeper, but I just never use all the features, even in the Minimalist version. I love the options and beautiful covers, but I just decided to go back to my $10 Walmart Pen & Gear brand! I love the calendar at a glance and the big daily slots. That’s really all I need. These are my ‘brain’ and my record book.

I’m rereading this oldie, but goodie and it’s making me excited and refreshed as I pray about our learning!

I’m also going back through this little gem!

Are you getting excited about autumn 🍂 or are you still in summer mode? What do you do to prepare? Honestly, we are still in summer mode, but I love homeschooling and stationery and books, so it doesn’t take much for me to fall into this rabbit hole around August! 😅I felt a bit sad because I saw the Purple Lead Plant coming up and Sumac turning colors 😨 and it made me think of summer ending. I just love the seasonal shifts! ♥️✨Happy Friday!

Top Ten Books That Live in My Head Rent Free {Classic Edition} 📚✨~ {Day 94}

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Joining here for TTT!
  1. The Holy Bible ~ this is not always an easy book to read and I don’t understand a lot of it, but my spirit connects with it. It’s foundational to my life and faith. My favorite books are Psalms and John.♥️🙏🏻🌿
  2. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry ~ this collection of Berry’s poetry speaks to me deeply. It makes me consider time and future generations in a huge way. It makes me think of now. It makes me consider life outside of self. Our lives have meaning for a greater purpose!
  3. Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery ~ my handle online is Amy of Hearth Ridge directly inspired by this book. There’s something to be said for hoping to be useful and a blessing to someone else in your life. How living a selfless life actually is fulfilling. Beautiful story of a daughter and father’s restored relationship bringing healing to those around them.That home keeping can be art.
  4. Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell ~ I can’t begin to tell you how much I love the characters and journeys they go through! The father-daughter, mother-daughter, father-son, and marriage relationship studies in this Victorian novel are fantastic. This is a beautiful story!
  5. Persuasion by Jane Austen ~ a lovely story of redemption and finally being able to have a voice. How one can live kindly and generously in the wake of S.S. Selfish People. 🚢
  6. Home Education by Charlotte Mason ~ late 1800’s to early 1900’s British revolutionary educational philosophy. This is so very Christ-centric and focused on the personhood of children and mothers. A beautiful life-giving read.
  7. Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher ~ a lovely story of how a child can blossom under loving and listening caregivers.
  8. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury ~ a father and son meeting evil together face on! Underlying themes of temptation, fear, and growing older! I’m due for a reread!
  9. Christy by Catherine Marshall ~ beautiful story of a young teacher’s growth and learning in a rural Appalachian school. Gorgeous lessons for her as the very people she came to ‘help’ grow her so much in return. Wonderful female friendships embodied!
  10. The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ the sheer bravery and strength of the early pioneers is astounding, convicting, and so inspiring! I often reevaluate my complaints after rereading this one. 😨♥️

I could have put Elizabeth Goudge on this list, Gladys Taber, Susan Branch, and many more poets! How about you? Which books do you think of over and over? ♥️✨🌿📚

The Simple Woman’s Daybook {Day 89} ☕️

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I used to participate in this blog link up on my old blog YEARS ago! I don’t think it’s done officially anymore, but loved reading them, so unofficially joining here. My Wednesday Wonders post is inspired by this original one! Thank you to the original creator wherever you are! ♥️✨

FOR TODAY~

Outside my window…golden and pink sunrise with a haze, promises to be very hot today! Yesterday it was near 100 degrees! 🥵

I am thinking…about last night’s local homeschooling mom’s meeting and how good it was to see the ladies! Need to figure out which book won the vote for our Autumn read!

I am thankful for…my cat Sophie 😂♥️She’s so comforting!

From the kitchen…we’ve been making our chicken or tuna salad a lot! Usually shredded carrots, chopped celery, sometimes chopped apples, s&p, canned chicken or tuna drained and dill weed! Yum! We eat it on lettuce, bread, or with crackers. Sometimes I shred any available veggie like cucumber 🥒 I have to use things up!

I am creating…I just finished my collage and little article for the letter/zine I write for! I really want to write a penpal letter and I’m trying to blog daily here. This autumn I’d love to pick quilting back up and learn to make granny squares!

I am going…possibly to the lake today so the kiddos can cool off swimming and I’ll sit in shade with my water and book!📖

I am wearing…a green tshirt and probably a flowy green, cream, and orange skirt! My pearl earrings and new brown slide sandals.

I am reading…I may take Moby Dick to lake as I love reading it by water! 😍😅 I’m also loving Captain Blood and Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Among many more. 😉 Here is a wonderful Booktube about some lovely summer reading options!

I am hoping…that my daughter’s bridal shower is ok and not too hot or stormy! It’s outdoors! 😨

I am hearing…ac humming and my 12 yo’s voice (he’s recovering from summer flu 😭). I’m absolutely loving this album! So worshipful and comforting!

Around the house…we’ve have remodeling and wedding messes! 😩🤪🤣 I really need to climb into a storage space to find my daughter’s Christmas ornaments because I’m giving them to her with a new one for her and her soon-to-be husband’s first Christmas! 😭😭😭 I need to check all my boxed books and make sure they aren’t getting damp. 😖 I also need to find our graduation party box to use the platters and twinkle lights for the bridal shower. I also need to make some treats for the bridal shower.

One of my favorite things…early morning with the light pouring through my new sliding glass doors.

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week…a birthday party/book club with local friends and THE.BRIDAL.SHOWER. 😂😱☠️

Here is a picture thought I am sharing for you…

Sunrise 🌅

Monday Ponderings {Day 87}🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️☠️☠️☠️⚓️⚓️⚓️

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Who is that red beetle?

A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.

~Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

It’s HOT. 🥵 These Milkweed are feeling it.

I am loving this swashbuckling story! Have you read it? There’s an Errol Flynn film out there, too! 😆😂 Happiest Monday! ♥️🌿✨🥰

Read My Shelf: 50 x 50 Booklist 📚📚📚 {Day 85}

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Hello 👋 Friends ~ a few of you expressed interest in my 50 books off of my owned shelf that I’m trying to read by the time I’m 50! A few stipulations. Two of these are on my Kindle owned shelf, as they hard to find physically. I also reserved the right to use any form to read these as long as I own a physical copy. For example, I own Moby Dick, but if I want to check out the audiobook version from the library, that is fine. I also gave myself two switch outs. If for some reason, I really can’t read a book, I’m allowed to switch it out from my shelves. I started this project in mid-2025?, so I have till June 2030 😅😳 to complete it. The huge nonfiction are the ones I’m mostly concerned about! 😂 I tried to balance a few lighter things, while still challenging myself. I kept most? if not all of these books out of the great book pack-away for our remodeling. ♥️📚🥰

50×50 List ~

  1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  2. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  3. Dante: Poet, Political Thinker, The Man by Barbara Reynolds
  4. Biography of A Cathedral by Robert Gordon Anderson
  5. Mistress Pat by L.M. Montgomery ☑️
  6. Any of my Victor Hugo
  7. A Dark Night’s Work by Elizabeth Gaskell (Kindle) ☑️
  8. Tempest Tost by Robertson Davies
  9. Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar
  10. The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
  11. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories by Jenny Uglow
  12. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott ☑️
  13. Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope
  14. Vicar of Bullhampton by Anthony Trollope
  15. The Shadow Casket by Chris Wooding
  16. Any of my unread Ray Bradbury
  17. The Virginian by Owen Wister
  18. A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
  19. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
  20. Thoreau and the Language of Trees by Richard Higgins
  21. Any of my Elie Wiesel
  22. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
  23. The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas ☑️
  24. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  25. Revelation by C.J. Sansom
  26. Jane Austen Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney☑️
  27. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
  28. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles ☑️
  29. Van Loon’s Lives by Hendrik Willem van Loon
  30. A History of the American People by Paul Johnson
  31. A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond
  32. Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond
  33. Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
  34. A Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte Mary Yonge (Kindle)
  35. Any of my Edgar Allan Poe
  36. Any of my Nathanial Hawthorne
  37. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
  38. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
  39. You are A Tree by Joy Marie Clarkson
  40. The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein
  41. Any of my unread C.S.Lewis nonfiction
  42. One of my folklore collections
  43. The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton
  44. Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
  45. The Divine Comedy by Dante ☑️
  46. Any of my unread Russian authors
  47. A Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield
  48. Any of my unread L.M. Montgomery short story collections
  49. Make Believe by Elizabeth Goudge
  50. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

What do you think of my list ? Have you read any of these authors or these specific titles? Do you have a list of books you want to read in the near future? Chat books with me below! 👇 🥰📚♥️

Tuesday Haiku ✨{ Day 74}✨

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Follow the light ✨✨✨

“she laughs without fear”
proverbs and Melville school day
praise-pain humid tears.

~

A.M. Pine 🌲♥️

June/July Journals ~ Wrap Up & Set Up 📓🖊️📝 {Day 70}

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Sunset reflected ✨

I’m loosely participating in five? July specific Booktube Readathons! I really enjoy just marking off prompts! 📚✅

I decorated some of my July pages ahead in my to-do pocket Moleskine because there’s some travel and family stuff going on. I usually decorate this one the day of use because it’s so small, but I don’t pack all my journaling supplies when going on trips! I especially love the Jane Austen stickers I saved for the start of Jane Austen July! 😍♥️🌸

Deck-a-TBR-a-Thon! Summerween! Private Eye July! Jane Austen July! Zoom in for Prompts, if interested! 😅📚📚📚

These are some summer long prompts! I made a great dent in them in June!

Two June Read-a-Thons that I had a lot of fun with! I just read what I’m in the mood for and make them fit mostly, but I do tailor a few of my choices depending on topic. Read a couple American Revolution type books with my kids etc.

June Reading Journal pages almost full!

I purchased coffee stickers and cute yellow bakery type washi so my July theme is Yellow Coffee & Flower Shop! 🤪😅😍💛🤎💛🤎💛

VERY ambitious health/mental/spiritual/relational goals for July! 🙃😱😂

What are you creating lately? I so enjoy working in my journals.

~

Top Ten Books I Hope to Read ~ Summer 2026📚~ {Day 68}

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I found a new-to-me-blogger Lisa at Boondocks Ramblings that I’m enjoying and am joining her and the host, That Artsy Reader Girl for Top Ten Tuesday!

I’m an extreme mood reader, but will make heaps of hopeful piles! Many of these are rereads or books on my 50 books by 50 list! I’m in a cozy, domestic fiction mood with a side of nonfiction and a vague feeling of something else reading mood. 😅🤪😎

  1. I’m slowly rereading the Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery series because my Ann with an E is getting married this year! 😭♥️I’m on the 3rd book now!
  2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville ~ I love the gorgeous word-smithing and hilarious situations Ishmael finds himself in! I got 3/4ths through this a few years ago, but never finished so determined to now.
  3. Unmaking the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth ~ VERY out of my wheelhouse, but an interesting look at the dismantling of Western cultural foundations and the dehumanization of man. This is so fascinating and honestly, a bit sobering. I’m not sure what Mr. Kingsnorth is totally trying to say, 😂 but there’s enough in here to make me really think.

4. The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge ~ I’m due for a reread of this beautiful story of an older woman moving to an inherited house in the countryside and asking herself if she has ever truly been living.

5. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery ~ been craving a reread of this one . If you felt you had a short time to live, how would you live your life? Valency Sterling has lived a stifling existence up to this point and jumps at the chance to buck against it!

6. Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery ~ yes, another Maud book! I’m really leaning into the domestic, cozy fiction. Young Emily Starr is taken in by aunts when her beloved father passes away. Her writer’s soul aches with growing pains and trying to find a kindred spirit in her new situation. I’m finally feeling ready to really dig into my reread of this sadder trilogy.

7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ~ this is for my in-person book club! We are all busy moms so reading it slowly, but so much to discuss on fading English aristocracy, religion, family and societal pressures.

8. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot ~ this is a book from my 50×50 list and my friend who I trust implicitly with book recommendations said it’s a good summer read! I don’t really know what this is about but looking forward to trying another Eliot!

9. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney ~ I’ve been hoping to read this for a long time and the Booktube reading event Jane Austen July would be perfect. I’m much slower at nonfiction, so we’ll see if I can get to it!

10. Habits for a Sacred Home by Jennifer Pepito ~ I’ve been interested in checking out this home educating title for awhile and am looking for a title to read with our homeschool mom’s group this autumn!

~These are just a few of the ones capturing my attention currently! What about you? What books are on your stack this summer? 🌞✨☕️📚♥️😍

“The languor of Youth” 🌲{Day 27}

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THE languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth – all save this – come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged. These things are a part of life itself; but languor – the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse – that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Brideshead Revisited, p. 79

Thinking on this quote as I navigate young adult relationships. I’m prayerfully trying to put myself back into “their age shoes” to respond with love, compassion, and a listening spirit.

Monday Ponderings {Day 19}

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Merrily Gareth ask’d

‘Have I not earn’d my cake in baking of it?

Let be my name until I make my name!

My deeds will speak: it is but for a day.’

So with a kindly hand on Gareth’s arm

Smiled the great King, and half-unwillingly

Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him.

Gareth and Lynette, Idylls of the King, Tennyson

‘Damsel,’ Sir Gareth answer’d gently, ‘say

Whate’er ye will, but whatsoe’er ye say,

I leave not till I finish this fair quest,

Or die therefore.’

Gareth and Lynette

I’m slowly getting into my buddy read of Idyll’s of the King and I was struck remembering this lovely picture book version of this part of the poem. The Kitchen Knight retold by Margaret Hodges is lovely, largely due to the illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman!

Happy Monday, friends! Our weekly quest has begun! Go forth boldly and without fear! 🙏🏻♥️😍

Reading stack today…📚📚📚{Day 16}

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If you could chuck your to-do list out the window today, what would you do? 😅😂 I’d find a lovely spot by water, under a tree, or in my cute local coffee shop, grab a latte , and read. I know, surprise, surprise. ☺️😉

Here’s what’s on my stack that I’m currently interested in or really enjoying!

Cheesy, bordering on super silly continuing cozy mystery series that pokes fun of the Regency literature era tropes 😂
I ♥️ my Kindle! Amish in April selection (Booktube Readathon), a couple of fantasy novels, a mystery, writing nonfiction, and continuing 14 yo spy thriller series!
Middle Grade Historical Fiction! Can’t wait to try this! I adore anything with lighthouses!
Oh my word. I’m absolutely adoring this book. Montgomery’s writing and characters make my heart sing. 😍🥹♥️

I love keeping house…it’s really a lovely phrase, isn’t it? Keeping it…holding it fast against the world…against all the forces trying to tear it open.

Mistress Pat ♥️🌿