The Dustiest Bookcase: M is for Machar

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Marjorie's Canadian Winter: A Story of the Northern Lights

Agnes Maule Machar

Toronto: Briggs, 1906

315 pages

Another winter has come and gone... the twelfth since I found this book at the Stratford Salvation Army Thrift Store. It spent the season on my night table, vying for attention with The Sleeping Bomb, The Terror of the Tar Sands, A Gift to Last, The Wronged Wife, and all kinds of unkind works about Maria Monk. Snubbed yet again, Marjorie's Canadian Winter has been returned to the living room bookshelves.

Miss Machar's most popular novel, I feel it must be read in winter.

Why?

Don't know. After all, I'm always up for hearing "Theme from A Summer Place." Doesn't matter what time of year.

Because I dislike spoilers, I've made a point of skipping over all references to Marjorie's Canadian Winter when reading about Agnes Maule Machar. However, for the purposes of this post, I allowed myself this review of the original edition from the December 24, 1892 number of The Critic:

I can attest to the engravings being neat. Sure looks like Marjorie had fun.

Must admit, I'm intrigued by the reference to her encounters with those "not so satisfactory."

Ah, but I can wait 'til at least December. Spring is here! Besides, I found this today folded between pages 62 and 63:

There are conifers that need planting.