seperis | books: anne of green gables et al

Still favorites. I always liked them for combining both the most romantic and best parts of nineteeth/early twentieth century small towns and communities with realistic assessments of what they were like; loving something without glazing it in impossible idealism. It always makes me more than a little amused when people talk about the nuclear family and it's singularity and above-all-ness; I can't imagine it working at any point in history when community was so necessary to survival, much less social interaction.

It also reminds me it's a fairly modern luxury to be able to socialize only with people you like; I'm not entirely sure, when reading, whether it's altogether a good thing. Being able to restrict your social interactions that much, and quickly eliminate on the basis of not quite simpatico instead of required social interaction means never really developing both the ability to get along with people and also miss the opportunity to know people who make take time and effort and skill to deal with, and I'm pretty sure it's worth the effort.

It was also a hell of a lot harder to end a friendship when you are pretty much going to see them forever until you die at every social event; that's pretty good motivation to get over yourself and move on and fix what you can--which surprisingly isn't as hard as it sounds. I like happy endings, though.

Anne of Windy Poplars is both my least and most favorite depending on mood; I'm not a huge fan of epistolary writing at the best of times, and I always manage to forget that it's the eternal exception to the rules. Her letters to Gilbert are always hilarious, and I always faintly wish there'd been a volume of his to her; he always struck me as one to have just as many odd adventures and fall into as many odd scrapes.

Currently at Anne's House of Dreams. I skipped about a bit to get to my favorite bits, and Miss Cornelia is not be missed.

Hmm, yes. I think of the Anne books as comfort-reading colored with a gloss of nostalgia, but there's a lot of hard-headedness in them. Marilla's failing eyesight and the cold narrative eye on Rachel Lynde's marriage, and poor consumptive Ruby Gillis. But then you get the glorious descriptions of the landscape, and the ridiculous romanticism on top.

Oddly enough, I didn't discover them until I was out of college: I think they were out of print in the US for most of my childhood. Although the miniseries certainly re-invigorated American interest. (I've always thought it was a shame Megan Followes didn't go on to a marvelous career; she's still doing one-off character roles in other people's tv shows.)

Anyway, I just downloaded a bunch of these and read them on my Kindle within the last few months--they're marvelous reading for stressful times--but I'm cranky that Windy Poplars isn't available electronically. Boo, I say.

(Look! I has an icon!)

Australian gutenberg for Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of Ingleside.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100251h.html <--Poplars
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100281h.html <--Ingleside

Leslie Moore's marriage was one of the most indirectly brutal of them; even by implication, as I got older, what was said got more and more horrifying on re-read as I figured out what it meant. It makes the debate about Dick Moore being restored to reason even more heartbreaking. I always felt teh books grew up with Anne in a way; as she got older, the situations she was exposed to became more complex, or she was privy to more information to show the complexity. Especially the hints about her childhood before Green Gables.

Miss Cornelia was the most fun though; her tireless championing of women and truly stunningly civility-as-deadly-insult and oh, her gossip. A joy forever.

Oh, you rock! How marvelous!

And yes, there's a lot of horrible abuse hidden between the lines in a lot of places in those books. Both for Anne and the other children. Like, for instance, what does it mean to be a Pye in Avonlea? And why?

Miss Cornelia was totally a kick.

Oh, since you answered here! You will remmeber this bit. I read this at twelve adn laughed so hard my mom had to read teh passage since I couldn't articulate it for weeks without breaking down.

Miss Cornelia on her first visit to Anne, discussing the current Presbyterian minister:

"...I'll never forget the first sermon he preached after he came. It was on the subject of everyone doing what they were best fitted for--a very good subject, of course; but such illustrations as he used! He said, 'If you had a cow and an apple tree, and if you tied the apple tree to your stable and planted the cow in your orchard, with her legs up, how much milk would you get from the apple tree, or how many apples would you get from the cow?'"

*still giggling*

And Cornelia's final denouncement:

"The long and short of it is, I consider him a reverend jackass."

I love her. God.

oh man, the scene in Anne of Avonlea with the jersey cow still makes me laugh. I usually reread at least one of that series every year, or The Blue Castle or Emily of New Moon. I love reading about the family hierarchies and how being a Murray or a Stirling etc comes with certain expectations and inherited social grudges (valid or otherwise).

I couldn't read Windy Poplars the first time I tried - epistolary fiction needs to catch me in the right mood - but when I managed, it was completely worth the time it took me to get there.

Now I feel like I should re-visit Miss Cornelia as well...

I love reading about the family hierarchies and how being a Murray or a Stirling etc comes with certain expectations and inherited social grudges (valid or otherwise).

Oh God yes. *hilarity*

My copies of the Anne books are some of my most treasured possessions. They are tattered and broken, but I love them dearly.

I always wanted to be like Anne, and while I definitely lived in her world of imagination, I did finally realise that I would never have her nobleness, or her innocence and degree of kindness.

One thing that had always confused me is why my copies included anne of windy willows, not poplars.

Ps. As mine are in a box in Aus, if you had a link for the others in elec format that would really be appreciated. :)

The rest are available on gutenberg.ca, along with some of her other works. Also on gutenberg.org.

Thank you!

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100251h.html <--Poplars
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100281h.html <--Ingleside

The others are up at gutenberg US, Canada; for some reason, these two I could only find in the Australia site.

Thank you! :)

I desperately want a book of Gilbert's letters to Anne. If I thought I could not make my Yuletide writer hate me for all eternity, I would SO request that.

Oh, if only there were joint requests! [begins to ponder]

Wouldn't they be adorable? His sense of humor would have just done it.

I want to know what Gilbert thinks about his students! I want to know how he copes with Marilla and Mrs Lynde on his own, and his relationship with Diana, and if he is still involved with the Improving Society, and because I Come From the Internet, I want to know what he thinks about at night which prompts [several pages omitted].

He's one of the very few fictional men I can see genuinely waiting for marriage. He literally had no romantic designs on any other girl since he met Anne via slate-to-head (it's so cute it hurts me inside; it's like the most perfect puppy-kitten-bunny hybrid purring/growling in my lap).

Oh, totally. I love how much he loves Anne — healthy devotion is one of my bulletproof kinks — and I would love to eavesdrop on him telling her how. And why.

I so want Gilbert POV. And just them being married and adorable and awesome. Just--this. More.

The late-80's movie hit me exactly in the target audience - I was ten or eleven, so you can imagine. Read all the books in some sort of land-speed record, though naturally I got more out of the later ones in subsequent rereads when I was in a position to have the faintest idea what was going on. :-) Within the past few years I have successfully identified the exact type to be Fox's Favorite Character in a given setting - your Remus Lupins, your Aral Vorkosigans, aaarguably your Sam Seaborns, certainly your Commodores Norrington and roughly half the cast of Lord of the Rings - by testing him against the Anne Shirley Criterion: "I think I'd like it if he could be wicked, and wouldn't."

I needs me an icon! ~twirl~

The first movie was so perfect, but God, the second and third and THE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FOURTH....

Otoh, Anne and Gilbert's wedding night. Verrrry nice.

Forgot!

testing him against the Anne Shirley Criterion: "I think I'd like it if he could be wicked, and wouldn't.

Yes. It's really the perfect criteria.

edited at: Date: 2011-09-19 04:48 pm (UTC)

The second one was sufficiently made-up that I checked out at that point, and it wasn't until much later that I even learned they'd made further ones - along storylines having no resemblance to anything at all in canon, is my understanding. I've seen a picture of the wedding scene, and I believe there is a happy-family (one child!) shot as well, but nothing else. Wedding night, indeed, hm? Heh.

The--whatever--of the third had a wedding and like, ten seconds of wedding nightness. The fourth was and is an atrocity that will burn burn burn until nothing else is left on earth. Luckily, Follows isn't in it, thank God.

Dominik isn't theirs. She adopted him from a random Cute Guy Chasing Her Married Self after he died. It's confusing.

And did I read somewhere that Gilbert is killed in the war? Which - I mean, yes, they had to do something timeliney about the fact that they'd dressed everyone in the first pair of movies something like twenty years ahead of how they'd actually have been dressed in the books? (I was just reading something over at AO3 about blah blah young women in the Edwardian era, and I kind of went ~blink~, yes, in through the movie door, never mind, and then the story was very nice.)

This is actually the first I've heard of the fourth one, and I now see from the Wikipedias that it doesn't even pretend to have a thing to do with the books - where apparently the third one believed it did (have a thing to do with the books, that is), and was just mistaken. (Again: I hear. As I said I've never actually seen it.)

In the third movie, Gilbert does survive and there is, I admit, a totally awesome scene at the end of their reunion. The fourth one, gilbert dies and the fourth one is, as I said, kill it with fire and spread its ashes on Venus. Or in the Andromeda galaxy. *shudders*

You are, oddly, beginning to convince me that I should view this atrocity. Exactly once. For science.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063034/

*shuddering*

Now that you've said it, I realize that is more or less why I married my now-ex-husband. Huh.

Oh, House of Dreams. I have trouble reading that one in places because of [spoiler].

When I was a kid, I loved Anne of the Island beyond all things, but as an adult I find myself drawn to the last book, Rilla of Ingleside. I'm not quite sure why the change, except that I find Rilla very appealing as a character -- very much Anne's daughter, but also Gilbert's, and I like watching her grow up, even though it's a painful growing up.

Siiiiigh. God, I love those books. Just reading about you reading them made me happy. :)

I got my first copies at the mall while shopping with my grandmother at the age of, I think, twelve. Never looked back. I like the author's other ones--especially Chronicles of Avonlea and The Story Girl--but none like these.

I tore through the Anne series last week! I agree with you; I always wished there was a book from Gilbert's POV. I would've loved to see his perspective more in general; he seemed like he had such a sense of humor.

Miss Cornelia is fantastic. During and after I finished the series, occasionally her pet phrases would pop up into my head (usually "Isn't that just like a _____") and her first meeting with Anne and Gilbert was lovely.

I don't typically like books like these (give me explosions and magical explosions, please) but Anne of Green Gables + sequels just had this charm to them.

Oh, Gilbert's POV would have been marvelous.

Miss Cornelia is fantastic. During and after I finished the series, occasionally her pet phrases would pop up into my head (usually "Isn't that just like a _____") and her first meeting with Anne and Gilbert was lovely.

I just tread that part last night!

Oh Anne. *happy sigh* I love these so much.

I have to admit, when I read these the first time (maybe about the same time as you did?), my reading comprehension was pretty damn good, and yet I almost still missed the main (sad) event of House o' Dreams; it was so very hidden in the language and I didn't have my 19th Century decoder ring. (Trying to be suitable vague so as not to spoil folks.) But god, I was in floods of tears at the end of Green Gables.

Also. I have to ask the obvious question - you do know that there is a book 7 & 8? I discovered these by a sheer fluke.

I also have a soft spot for Emily series.

Trufax, I pick up so much more now than I did on original reading, which feels kind of appropriate; I like that as an adult I can see it's not all idealism and romance and perfect; between the lines is legions of stuff I wasn't old enough (or experienced enough) to understand, much less think critically about.

when I read these the first time (maybe about the same time as you did?), my reading comprehension was pretty damn good, and yet I almost still missed the main (sad) event of House o' Dreams; it was so very hidden in the language and I didn't have my 19th Century decoder ring
OMG ME TOO! =/

*g* I suspect reading those books at a young and impressionable age might have had something to do with my eventual career choice as a teacher.

She made teacher sound like the best thing ever. (I wanted to grow up and go to Queens for years. Not even being Canadian, I had many nifty plans for this.)

I actually did end up with a B.A. from a Canadian college. Hee.

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