I’m glad you are here for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot and I hope you will check out the most clicked post, my highlighted posts, and then link a couple of your own posts and click on some other posts this week.
Let’s get right to our most clicked links for this week.
I’m so glad you are here and taking part in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
This month I will be writing about classic summer movies that I’ve picked out on my own or that were suggested to me. These will be movies released before 1970.
Some will be campy, some will be about the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen, but all will have an element of fun in them.
First up is Gidget (1959) starring Sandra Dee.
This movie had me all kinds of nervous and stressed, let me tell you.
First, they seemed to be rushing very young girls toward sex and romance way too early and that surprised me for a movie from the late 50s.
Second, while much of the scenes were meant to be funny, I just kept thinking about how dangerous many of the situations young Gidget was in were.
I was practically yelling at the TV at one point.
We start with Francine Lawerence in her bedroom and her friends are telling her it’s time she grew up and tried to get a man. She’s about to turn 17 and her friends are taking her to the beach so she can join them in trying to hunt men.
Of course, much of the movie is meant to be silly so when her mother asks why she doesn’t look excited to go, Francine’s friend says it’s because she’s going on her first “manhunt.”
The mom is a little shocked but sort of shrugs it off when Francine’s dad protests that she’s too young for that.
Francine is of the age when young girls look for boyfriends, her mother says.
Again, I was a bit shocked with this declaration but continued on.
On the beach, Francine’s friends undress to their bathing suits and do their best to catch the attention of a group of young men lounging on the beach next to their surf boards.
Francine isn’t as – ahem – developed as her friends so she doesn’t garner much attention.
The boys are also on to the girl’s ploys and mock and ignore them for the most part.
Francine would rather go swimming than catch boys anyhow so she sets out into the ocean and gets herself caught in some seaweed, which leads to her calling for help.
A young surfer named Jeffrey “Moondoggie” Matthews (James Darren) comes to her rescue and once she is rescued his friends mock him and Francine, but one of them offers to take Francine back to their hut and help her learn about life. Eek.
Francine is naïve and clueless about the flirting surfer so she ignores him and instead wants to know how she can get a surfboard too. She’d love to be part of the gang, she says.
They all wave her off and tell her to go home but the next day she is back at the beach to buy a surfboard and meets the Burt “The Big Kahuna” Vail, played by Cliff Robertson – a man who is close to 30 but spends his days surfing the waves all over the world.
Francine eventually inserts herself into the group and gains the nickname Gidget from them. Moondoggie isn’t too happy with her being in the group because he knows his fellow surfers aren’t the nicest guys and will try to take advantage of her.
At point he has to rescue her from the first guy who suggested teaching her how life works – ahem again – and tells her to go home.
“The lessons you’re going to get here aren’t what you are looking for.”
And they aren’t because the lessons Gidget wants are ones that will teach her how to surf so she can fit in with the guys, especially Moondoggie, who she’s fallen for.
Meanwhile at home, while Dad was once nervous about his little girl becoming a manhunter, he decides he should use her to get in good with his boss by having her go out with the boss’s son who is visiting.
The word pimp came to my mind at this point, I’m sorry to say.
There is a ton of humor in this movie, even if I was cringing at some of the scenes with men trying to take advantage of Gidget’s innocence.
I didn’t like the idea that a girl is expected to start dating men at such a young age, even if it was a different time.
Still, I had some fun with the movie and liked the surfing and beach scenes, even if the surfing scenes were very fake.
I thought it was interesting that Elvis was the first choice to play Moondoggie but he was in the U.S. Army at the time. Luckily he went on to make some dumb beach movies on his own in the future, including Clam Bake, which is one my list to watch for this series.
The movie was based on the book Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas by Frederick Kohner who based the main character on his daughter Kathy. According to Wikipedia, the screenplay was written by Gillian Houghton, who was then head writer of the soap opera The Secret Storm, using the pen name Gabrielle Upton.
There were a few more Gidget movies made after this including Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes to Rome, Gidget Grows Up, Gidget Gets Married, and Gidget’s Summer Reunion.
Different actresses played Gidget in each movie.
There was also a series called Gidget that ran for one season in 1965 and starred Sally Fields.
The original movie is said to have kicked off the “beach genre” movies, a couple of which I plan to watch.
I didn’t look up a ton of reviews and trivia about this one but did see this excerpt of a review by Craig Butler in Allmovie notes: “Although the very title prompts snorts of derision from many, Gidget is actually not a bad little teenaged flick from the ’50s. Great art it definitely isn’t, but as frivolous, lighthearted entertainment, it more than fits the bill. Those who know it only by reputation will probably be surprised to find that it does attempt to deal with the problems of life as seen by a teenager—and that, while some of those attempts are silly, many of them come off quite well. It also paints a very convincing picture of the beach-bum lifestyle, much more so than the Frankie Avalon–Annette Funicello beach party movies.”
Have you ever seen Gidget or any of the other Gidget movies?
My complete Summer Movie Marathon list (with some additions possible):
I cannot even begin to explain how much I loved The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.
This was the first book I had read by her that was not in the Anne of Green Gables series and I was blown away by it.
The voice in this book was eons away from what I’d read in Anne of Green Gables and that’s not meant to disparage Anne. I absolutely loved Anne of Green Gables and a couple of the other books in the series (a couple I did not like at all ) but The Blue Castle was even more bold and romantic and poetic.
It read more like a book that would have been written at a time later than 1926. Way beyond its years, this book captivated me with its boldness and enchanted me with its heartwarming essence.
I love the main character, even if I wouldn’t have made some of the choices she made – though, maybe I would have if I had been in the circumstances she had been.
Valancy is 29 years old but is treated like a child by her mother, cousins, aunts, and uncles. They refer to her as overweight, boring, half-witted, and expect her to do what they say. They act like she’s always sick or going to get sick. She never does anything exciting and wants to be in love but never has or had anyone love her.
To get herself through her mundane days, she imagines a “blue castle” where everything is bright and beautiful and handsome suitors come to court her. She dreams of a day where someone will love her and take her away from the dark sadness of her life. She reads books about nature and how to connect with it by a man named John Foster, escaping from her world through his beautiful words.
She’s been having pains in her chest, though, and she doesn’t like doctors but she finally decides to go to one. When she does, her entire life changes. Her life begins right before she is told it will end.
She begins to change how she acts and acts completely differently from how she has acted all of her life. Her change in her future shakes her awake and she begins to go after what she wants instead of waiting for it to happen.
There are so many great quotes in this book. I was underlining like a madwoman. I don’t usually mark up a book but I felt like I had to for this one.
Here are a few that I either underlined or marked in my Kindle version:
“If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.”
It was three o’clock in the morning – the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free.
“Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.”
“But though she was not afraid of death she was not indifferent to it. She found that she _resented_ it; it was not fair that she should have to die when she had never lived. Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by—not because she had no future but because she had no past.”
“I’ve been trying to please other people all my life and failed,” she said. “After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I’ve breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life. What a luxury it will be to tell the truth! I may not be able to do much that I want to do but I won’t do another thing that I don’t want to do. Mother can pout for weeks—I shan’t worry over it. ‘Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.’”
One of my favorite quotes was: “Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something. It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear, and it is of all things degrading.”
I have other favorite quotes but they would be spoilers and I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.
If I was going to express anything negative about this book it would probably be that the beginning of Valancy’s story, where she is stuck in depression and lack of love from her family, goes on for a bit too long for me. It’s a slog to get through it and I almost thought of putting the book down. I probably wouldn’t have made it through if it hadn’t been for the way Montgomery wove some humor and sarcasm into those chapters.
Some readers have criticized how Valancy acts toward her family after she’s been told she will die soon and, yes, she is harsh to them, but I think we as the reader really need to put ourselves in her shoes. She was treated horribly for 29 years and now that she believes she doesn’t have much longer to live, she’s letting loose. I am pretty sure I’d do the same thing for at least a little while and then I’d tone it down some.
This is a book that could have been filled with heartache and bitterness but instead it is a book full of hope and a type of awakening to how precious life is. To me, the message is that we need to grab ahold of every moment and experience we can because we never know when we will lost the opportunity to do so.
Have you read The Blue Castle? What did you think of it? Are there any other L.M. Montgomery books you enjoyed?
I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr late last year and was swept up in the story, written for middle schoolers but with a message for all ages. The book was heartbreakingly beautiful.
Last week I watched a German movie based on it and it was as breathtakingly beautiful as the book.
So much of the movie was exactly how I pictured it in the book.
Before I continue, I want to mention that the movie is in German so if you don’t speak German you will have to read the subtitles.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a semi-autobiographical book based on the facts of Kerr’s life. The main character of the book is Anna Kemper and the story is told her from her point of view.
Her father, like Judith’s, was a newspaper columnist from Berlin who spoke out against Hitler right before Hitler won a majority to take over in Germany. Because he spoke out against Hitler, Arthur Kemper is on the Nazi’s hit list. A member of the police who is not a Nazi warns him that he needs to get out of Germany before Hitler is elected.
Anna’s father escapes to Switzerland and the family joins him even before they know the results of the election because they are warned by their father through their Uncle Julius to do so.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is the story of the family’s life in Switzerland and then Paris, France. There are other books after this book that tell of their move to London, where they eventually settled. I believe Judith eventually moved to New York City.
The movie begins in Berlin in 1933 and then shifts to Switzerland. I was thrilled to find out that the movie was actually shot on location in Switzerland and then in various places in Germany.
The views when they moved to the country were absolutely beautiful and I didn’t see how they couldn’t have actually been shot in Switzerland.
The movie filmed scenes in
Berlin, Germany
Prague, Czech Republic
Bodensee, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Soglio, Switzerland
And Munich, Baveria, Germany’
All of the actors are outstanding in this, especially the little girl, Riva Krymalowski, who plays Anna. Her expressions and line delivery are subtly powerful.
The woman who played the mother – was also outstanding in my opinion.
This is a movie that could have been extremely dark, but because the book keeps a lighthearted tone (as light as you can when writing about Nazis chasing people down for their faith or political beliefs) the movie keeps a similar lighthearted tone mixed in with somber themes.
When the children move to Switzerland they have to learn a new language and new customs. They also deal with antisemitism, which becomes more apparent when non-religious Germans come for vacation at the hotel they are staying at but the Germans would not speak to them or let their children play with them because they are Jews who left Germany.
In the book, the children who usually play with Anna and her brother Max don’t play with Anna and Max while the other German children are there because the German children won’t play with them. This was cut out of the movie but in the book they all remain friends after the other German children leave and Anna’s Swedish friend apologizes for abandoning her.
I know everyone thinks Paris is beautiful but I was disappointed when the movie left the gorgeous scenery that Sweden provided. I’m not as thrilled with buildings – even ones in Paris.
What I did love is how free Anna’s mother and father felt in Paris and how they showed their love to each other — finally feeling like they weren’t being hunted down while there.
Like in the book, the children have to learn the languages of the countries they move to and Anna is better at this than her brother Max. She quickly learns and excels at French for example.
While she learns the languages, though, she still struggles with feeling like a refugee. Her father reminds her that Jews have always been refugees and they are no different. He encourages his children to always act respectfully and kind so that people who hear from the Nazis that Jews are awful, selfish people will not those lies aren’t true.
I found it interesting to read that Kerr held her German citizenship until 1941 and then was considered to be “stateless” or not a citizen of anywhere from 1941 to 1947. In 1947 until she died she was a citizen of Britain, where she eventually earned an OBE.
One thing that the movie brought home for me more than the book was the mother’s character, including how hard it was on her to leave Germany, as well as how strong she had to be for her family. I didn’t catch on to this as clearly when I read the book, but she was a musician who wrote operas so when she had to leave her piano behind in Berlin, it was like losing a part of herself.
In the movie there is a scene where they visit a rich family who left Berlin (and who they knew because Anna’s father once wrote a scathing review against the husband) and Anna’s mother is excited to see they have a piano. She has the chance to play it and it lifts her spirits immensely.
I felt like the movie developed her character even more.
The scene between the Kemper family and the richer family also demonstrated to me the huge disparity that developed between classes among the Jewish people during that time. The Kempers lost everything when they fled and were living in poverty. This man was somehow able to keep all of his wealth when they left Germany and ended up living in a wealthy area of Paris with plenty of food and clothes and other items for their children.
In both the book and the movie, Anna talks about how she’s read books where famous people all have difficult trials to overcome before they become famous. She comments to her brother, “Maybe that means I will be famous one day.”
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is part of a three-book series of semi-autobiographical children’s books that Kerr wrote. She also wrote and illustrated 57 books in her lifetime – including The Mog series – and they have sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit was translated into 20 languages.
In London, where she lived until she died in 2019 at the age of 95, Kerr finally found the home she’d been craving since her family left Germany in 1933.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This week was fairly lowkey. Little Miss and I went swimming twice – once earlier in the week and once yesterday with her friend who I’ll name Crazy Child for the sake of the blog.
She had a sleepover last night and it’s the last one of the summer, so I’m excited about that even if she isn’t. I know. I’m awful, but sleepovers can be so exhausting.
She and her friend had a ton of fun, though, so I am glad.
The temps dropped so much the last couple of days that I think my animals thought it was fall already. They were curled up on me or against me Friday and Saturday. Our youngest cat wanted to be on me no matter what Saturday night – even laying on my chest while I was trying to sleep!
Temps are going to warm up again because we aren’t done with summer yet.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Our daughter let me know this week that she is done watching movies based on books. They ruin her images of what she sees in her mind. I just thought that was funny and accurate because so many of us readers feel that way.
I am currently reading
Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour (just taking my time on this one since it is not my normal genre)
The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes (A Nancy Drew Mystery) by Carolyn Keene
Tracking Tilly by Janice Jackson
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (loved this one. I’ll have a review later this week.)
The Key Collector’s Promise by Donna Stone (this book will be out in September)
Renee by Sandra Ardoin
An Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey
The Boy is in between books.
Little Miss and I are listening to Little Women on Audible at night before bed.
The Husband headed off to work before I could ask him what he’s reading right now.
What We watched/are Watching
This week I watched Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshopwith Kelsey Grammer and a British actress I’d never heard of. It was pretty good but was a pretty simple mystery. I read that it was meant to be the first movie in a series but You Know What happened and then Kelsey started filming the new Frasier.
I also watched When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit(a German film based on the book by Judith Kerr, which I enjoyed).
I started a movie called From Time to Time but haven’t finished it yet. It is a bit weird and involves a young boy going back in time. I’m not sure how they got Maggie Smith for it. It isn’t horrible but it doesn’t seem to be at the same caliber as her other work.
What I’m Writing
I am still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree and having fun.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I’m glad you are here for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot and I hope you will check out the most clicked post, my highlighted posts, and then link a couple of your own posts and click on some other posts this week.
Today’s our most clicked post is actually two posts by the same person – Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs!
I’m so glad you are here and taking part in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up. I know I have met some very fun bloggers that way!
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
For the month of August, I will be writing about classic summer movies that I’ve picked out on my own or that were suggested to me. These will be movies released before 1970.
Some will be campy, some will be about the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen, but all will have an element of fun in them.
You’re welcome to join in and watch them and write them as well if you want.
My complete Summer Movie Marathon list (with some additions possible):
Sun, sand, and tea are just three of Everly Swan’s favorite things. Her batty, beekeeping great-aunts and small, coastal hometown of Charm, North Carolina, round out the top five. So returning to Charm for a fresh start on her wilting life is an easy decision for Everly, and opening a new seaside cafe and iced-tea shop puts the proverbial icing on her legendary lemon cakes.
Everything is just peachy until a body turns up on the boardwalk outside her home and a jar of her proprietary tea is found at the victim’s side.
Now, Detective Grady Hays, Charm’s newest and most mysterious lawman, has named Everly as his number-one suspect, and Everly’s new start is about to go up in smoke unless she can dish up the real killer.
I’d heard so much about this book from other cozy mystery readers of Booktubers so I was excited when it finally became available through Libby, the library ebook app.
I started it and really enjoyed it in the beginning. I even found out I could listen to it for free via Audible for the times I couldn’t sit and read. I then discovered that Bree Baker was the pen name for another author I’d recently read – Julie Anne Lindsey – so I was sure the book would be as good as everyone said. Lindsey’s book was Apple Cider Slaying, which I really enjoyed.
The writing is great, don’t get me wrong, but after a few chapters I began to realize that I was reading the beach version of Apple Cider Slaying.
Sure, the characters were somewhat different – an extra elderly relative was thrown into this one with two aunts instead of just one grandma – but otherwise the plots were somewhat similar.
There was a person in town who didn’t like the main character, Everly, having her business in her home and before the end of chapter one he was dead.
Everly was considered a possible suspect so she had to clear her name. In Apple Cider Slaying, the main character had to clear her grandmother’s name.
Once again we had a former U.S. Marshal who moved to a small town to start over as the local police chief and the main character found out more about him by looking him up online.
This time we tossed a kid and dead wife into the mix, but the police chief does become a love interest.
Now, all this being said, I’m not saying the book was bad. There were aspects I liked about it, including the back story of the Swan family.
Overall, the book was interesting and engaging even if it was predictable and not as good as I had hoped. Still, cozy mysteries aren’t known to be creatively unique or full of depth all the time. They often simply give readers what they want – a mystery to solve by an amateur sleuth who must clear either her name or that of a friend or family member and some quirky and fun characters. Cozy mysteries are to cozy mystery readers like romances are to romance readers – comfortingly predictable and maybe even slightly cheesy.
Live and Let Chai had all of that so I enjoyed it, yes, but I don’t know if I will rush out to read the next in the series – especially because I didn’t really like the main character that much. She was a bit rude and pushy at times.
I will, however, most likely read the next in the series at some point because I am curious to see if the other books will be as predictable or if Lindsey – er – Baker will break the mold a bit.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
After I posted that post the kids and I picked up a friend of The Boy’s and brought him home to our fold to become one of the family for a couple of days – though he is really part of the family even when he isn’t here.
We also stopped and picked up groceries.
Yes. It was a very exciting day, but we needed that after our busy week last week.
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.
I’m very much enjoying this book which is so much different than the Anne of Green Gables books. I love the main character and can’t wait to see what happens to her in the end.
When You Returned by Havelah McClat
Tracking Tilly by Janice Thompson
I put Dandelion Cottage by Carrol Watson Rankin to the side and plan to pick it back up in the fall to read with Little Miss – or actually we may start it this week because am I as writing this I remembered we finished our read aloud this week.
Return to Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright
Renee by Sandra Ardoin
Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour
An Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey
What We watched/are Watching
This week I watched the original Gidget movie (1959) for my planned Summer Movie Marathon and will write about it in a future post.
I also rewatched the 2010 version of True Grit with The Boy and his friend. As usual I cried at the end. It’s such a good movie.
I am currently listening to The Cross-Country Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini.
I have also been listening to Anne Wilson’s album, Rebel.
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
