Summer, Must You Go So Soon?
Summer reading that makes me want to shrink myself down and live amongst the pages
This month, I read Anne of Green Gables for the very first time. I’ve always known about that young girl with the bright red braids, but never knew what goes on between those pages.
I found a copy while browsing a second-hand English bookstore here in Munich. The adorable cartoon Anne on the cover called to me. I remembered when I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager, my best friend Sarah talking about how much she loved the book. I tried reading it at that time, yet my eyes glazed over within five pages.
As I stood in the bookstore, staring at cartoon Anne, I also recalled how Sarah loved Little Women when we were kids — another book that I found mind-numbingly boring but then fell deeply in love with when I read it at age 24. Hmmm…
Some books you just aren’t ready for. Right story, wrong time.
Turns out at 30, in the midst of my first golden summer in Europe, simultaneously in love with all the ‘new’ while searching for comfort and familiarity… Anne of Green Gables was absolutely the right story, right time.
“Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s content.”
Like her adoptive caretakers Matthew and Marilla, it took me one carriage ride to fall in love with Anne. 11-years-old at the start of the book, Anne’s ramblings about the surrounding world often span a page and a half. She lives deep within her daydreams, and laments that those around her do not cultivate their imaginations. It feels like every chapter she finds something new and wonderful to love about life, and though Anne often falls victim to her most intense emotions, it shows the readers that she can only feel the highest highs because she also allows herself to feel the lowest of lows.
In Anne, I found a kindred spirit.
Perhaps it was her tendency to get lost in imaginary worlds. Perhaps it was her love of names, insisting that she be called Cordelia when she first arrived to Green Gables because she felt it was a “perfectly elegant name” (relatable). Perhaps it was her desperate desire to find kindred spirits, which she successfully collected throughout the five-year span of the book.
Funny, when I picked ‘WANTED: Kindred Spirits’ as my blog title a few months ago, I had no idea this search for kindred spirits was a thread that bound together so many adventures in Anne of Green Gables — a thread that has woven itself around my own day-to-day experiences during my first summer in Munich. Anne reminds me that there are kindred spirits everywhere… even moreso when I sent a passage to some ladies from my US writing group, and they all responded with how much they LOVE this book. How lucky am I to have had kindred spirits with me all along.
“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.
It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
-Anne Shirley
Now, before I go and soak up the rest of this fleeting summer, I want to share some recently published pieces of mine.
2024 was the year that I told myself I was going to be serious about tracking my publications. I’ve been writing short stories the past six years and aside from three stories published in Dandelion Revolution Press’s anthologies, most of my stories sat in a metaphorical drawer (aka my Google Drive), unread by anyone other than my writing groups.
So, I set the goal of sending out 3 pieces each month — some months I did less, some months I did more. Behind each story lies the imprint of my writer friends who carefully read and edited them, always strengthening my ideas, plots, sentences, worlds, and characters. It takes a village to publish a story. I’m incredibly proud of them all.
“A Window of a Book” 📖
An essay written as a letter to my favorite author Khaled Hosseini, sharing with him the remarkable and very tangible way his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns changed my life. (You can also read it as a love letter to the characters in that novel, Mariam and Laila.)
“What Comes After” 🤍🖤
A woman, struggling to understand grief after the sudden death of her ex-husband, discovers solace in the unlikeliest of places with the help of two mysterious strangers.
“Ginormous Beasts” 🚀
Jo secures her opportunity at a better life on planet Orsus, yet soon realizes this dream comes with the reality of leaving behind everything familiar. Read for free here.
“Summer’s Kiss” 🧟♀️
Amidst a world overtaken by the undead, with the line between humanity and horror quickly blurring, one man fights to survive by retreating into his past. Buy the full issue for $5.
If you read any of these pieces, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Sending love from this kindred spirit to another. 💛
Look at all of these published pieces 👏🏻👏🏻 Honored to call you my kindred spirit 💕
Honored to be mentioned! There's so much satisfaction when a friend reads a book that you love and they love it too! I remember being so inspired by Anne's zest for life and appreciation of the little things that we so easily overlook. There's beauty all around us <3