I’m so glad I’m finally getting around to reading this series. I enjoyed the first two Anne books, and this one was no exception.  [...]]]> There was nobody else — there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.

I’m so glad I’m finally getting around to reading this series. I enjoyed the first two Anne books, and this one was no exception.  This one is about Anne’s college years, her relationship with her friends Priscilla and Philippa, and also about her beaux Gilbert and Royal.

Spoilers ahead, but it probably doesn’t matter as most of you have already read the book anyway…

Of course, how could she choose anyone BUT Gilbert?  I do wonder why it took her so long to realize that.  Besides their relationship, I enjoyed reading about Patty’s Place, Davy’s further development, and all the other girls’ drama.  I do think I enjoyed Anne of Avonlea just a bit more than this one, but I still fell in love with Anne of the Island as well.  I probably won’t get to the others in the series until next year, but I’ve enjoyed these first three books tremendously.

1915, 239 pp.

1909, 276 pp.

What a wonderful book!  I enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, but I absolutely adored Anne of Avonlea.  Now a schoolteacher, Anne is much admired by her students.  I loved the sweet descriptions of Anne’s pupils.  I enjoyed meeting the new cast of characters as well: Mr. Harrison and his [...]]]>
Anne of Avonlea
by L.M. Montgomery

1909, 276 pp.

What a wonderful book!  I enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, but I absolutely adored Anne of Avonlea.  Now a schoolteacher, Anne is much admired by her students.  I loved the sweet descriptions of Anne’s pupils.  I enjoyed meeting the new cast of characters as well: Mr. Harrison and his parrot, Miss Lavender and her lovely stone house, the twins Davy and Dora, and the motherless Paul Irving. I anxiously await Anne of the Island.

I listened to the CD read by Barbara Caruso.  What an excellent narrator.  I wouldn’t hesitate at all to listen to one of her audiobooks again.

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps. . . perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery is a book I wish I’d read in childhood. I know I would [...]]]> I am probably the last adult female in the world to fall in love with Anne Shirley, but it’s finally happened. Her sweet, spunky, imaginative spirit is impossible not to fall in love with.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery is a book I wish I’d read in childhood. I know I would have gobbled up this series just like I did the Little House books. While as a child I could relate to Laura’s tomboyishness and her location on the prairie, I now see in Anne a competitive spirit that I could have also related to, particularly with academics. It also would have been nice to have the American/Canadian contrast while I was a young girl, but at least now I know what I’ve been missing. Just as those around her were spellbound by Anne, so was I. I can’t wait to read more of the series.

Raidergirl, I thought about you often during the reading of this book. I’d love to visit you in PEI someday!

1908, 369 pp.
Rating: 4.5

Also reviewed by:

• Teddy Rose

Heart of Darkness tells a story about colonialism in the Congo, but it is so much more than that. It is more about men’s ‘hearts of darkness’ and what they become after they [...]]]> I will be reading more of Joseph Conrad’s work. English was his third language after Polish and French, and his writing is superb.

Heart of Darkness tells a story about colonialism in the Congo, but it is so much more than that. It is more about men’s ‘hearts of darkness’ and what they become after they leave ‘civilization’. Marlow is a steamship captain in search of Kurtz, who is one of the best ivory traders The Company has. It is said that Kurtz has become ill and The Company does not want to lose him because of his high productivity in obtaining ivory. But just how does Kurtz maintain his high productivity?

Kurtz isn’t the only one to leave his morals behind when he leaves ‘civilization’. The actions of The Company Men leave moral questions as well. Is it only the ladies, as Marlowe states, who try to uphold society’s mores, or are they just deluded in thinking society, left to itself, has any morals?

It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.

This book is short but very complex. It is one that I’ll definitely read again at some point to try to understand it a bit better. I’m still trying to figure out “The horror! The horror!”

Some interesting passages:

I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work — no man does — but I like what is in the work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage – who can tell? – but truth – truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder – the man knows, and can look on without a wink.

I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words — the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong — too dull even to know you are being assulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil — I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place — and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.

Whether he knew of his deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last — only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vegeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude — and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core….

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had — for my sins, I suppose — to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

1902, 80 pp.

Rating: 5