Calendar Girls July: Bookish OTP

Good gracious, 2019 is halfway over?!?! Summer vacation is halfway over. *cries* This is getting a little too intense. Cue the Grease music please.

Ah, much better.

This month we’re talking about our bookish OTP. For those of you unfamiliar, OTP means “one-true-pairing”. This is your favorite romance in a book, the one you were holding your breath waiting for it to happen, the one that makes your heart stop just a little. For once I had absolutely no difficulty making a decision, because my one-true-pairing is the couple that I have been shipping (putting into a relationship) since I was eleven years old. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble guessing.

Ron and Hermione
from Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out in the relatively early days of the internet. We still had dial-up at my house. Yeah. These were the earliest days of fandom, before social media and texting and IMs. We had chat rooms and forums. My favorite forum was on MuggleNet, the Harry Potter fan website, and there were several articles on the site that I was constantly re-reading. My favorite was the list of evidence for a Ron/Hermione relationship, which I printed out and highlighted my favorite quotes. I still remember the ONE that solidified it, that made me know they were MFEO.

“Well, if you don’t like it, you know what the solution is, don’t you?” yelled Hermione; her hair was coming out of its elegant bun now, and her face was screwed up in anger.
“Oh yeah?” Ron yelled back. “What’s that?”
“Next time there’s a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!”

I know a lot of Ron/Hermione critics out there think that Ron isn’t good enough for Hermione, to which I have two responses. 1) Who is? 2) You don’t fall in love with someone because they’re “good enough” for you. It just … happens.

I’m the sort of reader who just goes along for the ride, and so I rarely think characters “should” have made different decisions or something. That’s like second guessing history to me. (Except the priest in Romeo and Juliet, that guy was an idiot.) Ron and Hermione’s was just the love story that I liked watching unfold the best. It felt so inevitable, yet also so fragile. You had to be in it for the long haul for that one!

Summer Lovin’
Bookish OTP

Our Picks

Ron & Hermione from Harry Potter – Katie (that’s me!) @ Never Not Reading
Veronica & Stoker from A Curious Beginning – Adrienne @ Darque Dreamer Reads
Kaz & Inej from Six of Crows – Teri Polen
Monty & Percy from A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue – Deanna @ Deanna Writes About
Achilles & Patroclus from The Song of Achilles – Ashley @ Inside my Minds
Lara Jean & Peter from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before – Samantha @ Modern Witch’s Bookshelf
Emi & Shiro from Red Winter – Lindsey @ Lindsey Reads
Stella & Michael from The Kiss Quotient – Sophie @ Beware of the Reader
Will & Louisa from Me Before You – Clarissa @ Clarissa Reads it All
Westley & Buttercup from The Princess Bride – Lucinda @ Lucinda is Reading
Neville & Luna from Harry Potter – Dani @ Mousai Books
Anne & Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables – Gemma @ Book Beach Bunny
Feyre and Rysand from A Court of Thorns and Roses – Flavia @ Flavia the Bibliophile

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event created by Melanie at MNBernard Books, and Flavia at Flavia the Bibliophile, and is now be hosted by me (!), Katie, and Adrienne at Darque Dreamer Reads. 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 I 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!