My books, I love'em

[snacky]

rachelmanija posted pictures of her bookcases, so I thought it would be fun to do mine too!



In January of 2021, I had the carpets cleaned and I had to take all the books off the shelves and put them back when everything was done. So I took some pictures, of course.














The chairs are back in the room in these two:






I got a new chair last spring so I took these two pictures. You can see the bookcases with all the other stuff (besides books) on them:






My Narnia shelf, because I'm a nerd:




My small bookcase with a bunch of BoTM books:




Bonus! My desk on the other side of the room:




I was going to offer to post closeups if you wanted to see any books zoomed in, but these are pretty huge.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I never heard of either of them. What are they like?

[coffeeandink]

I hope Snacky will chime in, because it has been so long since I read them! They are very old-fashioned girl-in-small-town novels -- I thought of them as very 50s, although I don't know if that's actually when they're set or were written. Maybe a bit like the Betsy-Tacey books, if that's a reference you know?

[rachelmanija]

Oh yes, I know Betsy-Tacy.

[snacky]

DuJardin and LMW wrote what are sometimes called "malt shop" books, books for teen girls before YA was a thing. Think books that have the spirit of Happy Days or Grease.

The Weber books are my faves! They were written from WWII to the early 70s, before she died. The characters aged a bit but not as quickly as time passed. Beany Malone, the main character of the Malone series was 13 in the first book, set in WWII, and got married in 1960, at 19. The next series is called the Belford series. One Belford sister, Katie Rose, is the MC in the first five books, and the second sister, Stacy, is the MC in the last three. All the series are set in Denver, and the Beany characters make cameo appearances in the Belford series. The Katie Rose books are the ones I love the most, but I love them all. I read them growing up, in my public and school libraries. When I got online in the 90s, I found a mailing list of kindred spirits who had also read them. At that point, the books were out of print, and you could sometimes find them at library sales or ridiculously overpriced on eBay. We would do group reads, where the person who owned a copy of the book would post summaries and questions, so we could discuss them

Eventually the LMW books were reprinted by Image Cascade Publishing (who also went on to reprint series by duJardin and Emery and a bunch of others), and now are also available on Kindle!

I am still a member of the email list, and we still do group reads and discussions. We also have annual get-togethers. One time we went to Denver, where LMW children and grandchildren still live, and we had a blast. We had a dinner at the Press Club, which she had been a member, saw her papers at the library, had a cookout at her family home, and breakfast with her grandchildren.

This is probably more than you wanted to know, lol! Anyway, they're fun books about teenagers growing up in the mid-20th century. They're not perfect, but critiquing them is part of the fun we have in the group.