books: anne of green gables et al

[seperis]

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.

Comments

[fox]

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~

[seperis]

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.

[fox]

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.

[seperis]

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.

[seperis]

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

[fox]

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.)

[seperis]

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*

[fox]

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

[seperis]

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

*shuddering*

[concinnity]

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