Calendar Girls: May 2019

Hey all, Dani here.

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Oh, and if you go to either Katie or Adrienne‘s Calendar Girls post each month, they will have links to all the other wonderful book bloggers participating in this event.

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

Oh, and you don’t have to identify as female to join the Calendar Girls. We welcome readers of all types. So if this sounds like fun for you, join us in all of the fun bookish conversations.

And now that we’ve gone over all the details, all that’s left is to announce May’s theme and then jump into discussing honorable mentions followed by my choice for this month’s winner.

The May theme is…

Mother’s Day

Favorite Book with a Mother/Daughter Relationship

With just the theme of Mother’s Day, I had so many ideas pop into my head, particularly of some of my recent reads. But then I remembered that the specifics of this month’s say mother/daughter, not mother/son, which sort of disappointed me. I wanted to talk about the awesomeness that was the family dynamics of the Weekes family in The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller. So I’ll just settle for them being a great honorable mention.

Come on, there’s no way I can have a theme like Mother’s Day without mentioning Molly Weasley, because seriously, she’s awesome. Or I could mention Sally Jackson–Percy Jackson’s mom, but again, that’s a mother/son relationship. Then there’s Robert Canderelli Weekes and his mom (and technically older sisters) in The Philosopher’s Flight. She might not have been the best mom, but at least she supported her son’s crazy dream.

Is it cheating to go with Lorelai and Rory Gilmore? Because there were technically media tie-in novels with stories not done on the show. Or how about Piper Halliwell–though granted, we only saw her as a mom to the boys, but she had a daughter in the epilogue part of the final episode.

I could technically choose Mia and her mom from The Princess Diaries. I remember their relationship being a pretty decent one.

I’m sure that I’m missing so many options for this prompt. I was thinking about it for most of the day, but then I was told by my mom that my brother’s German Shepard isn’t doing that well. Actually he’s got a lot of bad health issues right now and they made the decision to put him down tomorrow. So after work I went to my mom’s to play with my nephew and give him lots of love, since I won’t be able to be there with him as he goes to his eternal sleep.

It sort of pushed thoughts of books out of my mind, so apologies that this post doesn’t have all of the book cover photos and stuff that I would typically have. By the time I made it home, I just felt that I needed to get this post up as soon as possible.

My winner for this month is…

The favorite mother/daughter relationship I can think of right now is that of Rose Hathaway and her mom. Okay, so they don’t have a close relationship by any stretch of the imagination. But there’s still this buried notion that her mom does care, but also wants her to be tough and strong and successful. It is a difficult world they live in, and a dangerous one. So it makes sense that having a close and caring relationship wouldn’t be the best for them. But their oddball mother/daughter relationship does still grow throughout the series, and I think it’s a pretty darn intriguing one.

All right, that’s all I have for you today. Be sure to go and check out the other Calendar Girls posts, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.