Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I've just finished Anne of Green Gables, a childhood classic, which I nevertheless never heard of until I was an adult. It's a wonderful book. Anne is delightfully precocious, full of wonderful speeches and emotion. I read it as part of an online read-along.

Montgomery is a wonderful writer, given to beautiful descriptions of nature.

"It was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school -- a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain -- amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the field glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping, unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it was jolly to be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane winding up notes and Julia Bell passing a "chew" of gum down from the back seat."

Another example which struck me:

"Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the south-west was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh-bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne's heart and on her lips."


There's so much humor in the book. As a girl, Anne frequently gets into scrapes -- like the time she offers her friend Diana raspberry cordial only to discover later that it's really currant wine, and the time the minister and his wife come for dinner, the beautiful cake Anne has prepared tastes very unappetizing because the vanilla she put in it is really liniment. One of my favorite bits of humor is when Marilla tells Anne that the teacher Miss Stacy is organizing a preparation class for students who plan to take the entrance exam to get into Queen's College, and asks Anne is she would like to join the class:

"Oh, Marilla!" Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands. "It's been the dream of my life -- that is, for the last six months, ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the entrance (exam)."