I wanted to like this book more then I did. Of all the Anne books, this is the one most distant from Anne herself, which is saying something considering she practically disappeared in the last couple of books bearing her name. This is a collection of short stories, most of which had been published previously, which Montgomery slightly altered to fit the Blythes in somehow (it’s more obvious in some stories then others) and then connected with a few poems and smaller pieces of Anne reading […]
Woodrow Wilson Writes Good Notes, And That You May Tie To
So we finally come to The Great War. This has been slowly building for four or five books now, each book has had some hint about this major event and how it will effect the characters. If I’m to be honest, I don’t think I’ve read this book more then once or maybe twice. The first time I read it, I was very young and the character death really bothered me, so I didn’t re-read it very often if at all. Is that a spoiler? […]
Barely connected to Anne at all
Rainbow Valley is the seventh Anne book and WWI marches ever closer, the mentions of the war are a lot stronger here then in previous books and Montgomery’s foreshadowing was, occasionally, heavy handed. I’d forgotten how very little of the Blythe family is in this book, let alone Anne, instead it’s mostly about the Merediths and their adventures and scrapes. However, despite those two complaints, I really do enjoy this one. In many ways, this book is a return to what Montgomery does best, simple […]
Anne and her Children have Scrapes and Adventures
I haven’t been reading much of late, and so it’s taken me a while to get through this novel. Unfortunately the episodic nature of the Anne books, particularly this one, means that while it reads well in this periodic manner I’m kind of iffy on things that happened in the earlier sections of the book as it’s starting to meld with other Anne books. This was the last book Montgomery had published in her lifetime, though apparently there was a collection of short stories recently […]
Isn’t that just like a man?
Anne’s House of Dreams is probably my least favorite in this series. I can’t give it more than three stars; if I’m 100% honest, and it wasn’t an Anne book, I’d probably bump it down to two stars. This is the most self-indulgent book of the series, and there are very few gems in the cast of characters. Plus, and this is completely silly I acknowledge, “the race that knows Joseph” doesn’t have the same ring as “kindred spirits”. So here we are, Anne is 25 […]
But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life.
And we return to the Anne books with the fourth chronological novel, but the second to last one written and published. I actually got quite curious about the publishing history of this novel and so I did a bit of research and now I’m completely fascinated. There are all these tidbits of information, which have very to do with the book’s content but are just so interesting. Also of note, unlike the previous three books, I have only read this particular one a handful of times. […]