Chef’s kiss for this pastoral elegy to country life in P.E.I. Canada.

I'm going to write about a book where an orphan girl grows up.

And I admit, that, on its own, doesn't sound like much.

And, she is talkative, ambitious, smart, willful, and imaginative. (and as someone pointed out has ADD).

There is nothing untold exciting that happens, and if you don't buy into loving Anne at the beginning you might find this a dull read, but she touched me, and I really wanted to know what would happen to her.

This is such a classic children's book, that I am surprised I haven't read this before now. Written in a time of buggies and new fangled electricity, this is a pleasant slice of rural life on Prince Edwards Island. I'm not sure if this would appeal to modern children. Written with long monologues by Anne, it might be too much. But, I'm used to Victorian books, love E. Nesbit, Charles Dickens and all those other long-winded Victorian writers.

Note, though is is a collection, I have read only the first book in the collection. Not sure if I will read the others, yet. I might need a break from historical rural Victorian fiction. (as it is all I have been reading for the past two months).

And, strangely, I wasn't bothered by the clear separation of "women's" and "men's" tasks, the way I have been in other books. I suppose because Anne never says she "can't" do something, because she is a girl. If anything, she strives to be the best at what she does, competing with both boys and girls in academics.

So, if you have never read this, try the first chapter. If Anne seems too dull, or boring, or annoying, don't read the rest. But, if you find her cleaver, and want to know more about her, do give it a try.

Wonderful. Ignore the awful adaptation on Netflix and read the books.

They're beautifully written with well drawn characters, nice plot twists, and some humor. Whoever did the terrible version on Netflix should be ashamed of themselves. They took a lovely series of books and turned them into political propaganda filled with narrow minded bigotry, the very opposite of the author's original intent.

When I was a pre-teen this was my absolute favorite book series. (That was before discovering dystopia) It definitely is a must read for people of all ages. I read this series at least once a year. Hands down, my absolute favorite classic book series.

A must read for any Canadian girl. I use lines from this book all the time. When I am having a bad moment I think of Anne- " I am in the depths of despair"

Loved all these books as a girl!

Beautiful story telling. Very descriptive and beautifully written. Excellent characters. Brought me back to my childhood.

I read this series in my junior high days. I am now in my mid to late twenties. I spent hours living in the world created by the stories of Anne and her adventures. Memories of these books have never faded with time. It brought many happy day dreams and worlds to explore in my minds eye. Even though, this series is not from the genre of fantasy per se. It has enduring qualities of real life stories from the perspective of a girl named, Anne. She brings magic and wonder to her world through her wonderful imagination and spunky spirit. As the reader, one goes through the loss and joyous moments with Anne as she grows into a women, and then eventually her children. It is a must read for anyone.

The greatest children's series of all time, in my opinion, and not just because she spells her name properly: A-N-N-E.

The amazing thing about this series is that almost every girl who has read it so strongly identifies with the main character - girls of completely different personalities. Everyone seems to find something to love about Anne of Green Gables: her love of reading, how he handles having red hair, her adventurous spirit, her constant muddling things. And don't even get me started on Gilbert. A beautiful story of an orphan girl who finds a home and an identity.

A side note: The made for TV miniseries version of these books surprisingly does them justice (with the STRONG exception of "The Continuing Story", that takes place during wartime, where the producers decided to abandon the storyline of the original books, and our beloved Anne for no apparent reason has the gaunt look of a heavy smoker and the theme seems to be 'disillusionment' - what were they thinking?).

classic literature by women authors is reflection of their collected wisdom through their lives, and the morality and ethics of the writing follows a lifeblood path as do the romances, rather than a study and a fancy clubbed together.

This set of tales was probably serialized originally, especially the second one on, from the tone of separate chapters - each a complete story, and yet they follow smoothly, flowing quite nicely one after another together.

The titles seem to indicate Anne's progress in life via the procession of widening circles they indicate - the house, the village, the island, and then they go specifying again, with house her home, and it's location.

One exasperation for a reader would be, when tempted by the beautiful descriptions of various places, one looks for just where it all is - and the place doesn't exist, or at least pieces don't match. Names are taken from wherever the author liked, and while descriptions might fit a place, it's hard to find just where any of them exists on maps.
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Anne of Green Gables

The book begins with Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who is as much antithesis of Elizabeth from Elizabeth's German Garden as could be. That, one supposes after the protagonist appears, was a little bitter dose so the cherry cake Anne is that much more astounding, taking one by complete surprise.

It's a surprise that the protagonist is a little orphan girl arriving fresh at the home named Green Gables, rather than the woman of indeterminate age one sees on the cover, but that passes. Before long, before one knows, one is deep in comfort with Anne's world. The book is about halfway before one realises she's not going to be grown up in this volume, the author being in no hurry, and one is to enjoy the girlhood and the world thereof, with school and friends, teachers and walks in woods, and not talking to boys who are interested in one.

Nice to have descriptions of loveliness of nature and seasons strewn all over, but characterisation are good, and one expects Anne would grow out of hating Gilbert Blythe, which she is more than done already, long before they tie for top at entrance exam to Queen's.

And they are friends just as this ends, bringing satisfaction to reader despite the tragedy that smites in the silent Matthew departing and Marilla dealing with more.

June 26, 2020 - July 01, 2020.
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Anne of Avonlea

Here we have Anne's career as a schoolteacher and beginning of society of her generation of Avonlea, with Gilbert Blythe now her close friend, apart from Diana (now courted by Fred Wright), and other schoolmates that had been at Queen's.

Her life now moreover is already centred on children, her pupils at school and twins at home who are Marilla's cousins.

Anne and her friends try to improve Avonlea by getting people to improve their properties and fronts, fences and sidewalks, but are confronted by unexpected problems, from mixups leading to a hall painted bright blue instead of green, to serious horrors looming in shape of people renting their fences for advertisements.

Anne lingers in girlhood, woods and flowers and children, with Gilbert still only a friend, although she's become aware he's growing out of boyhood. Her first acquaintance with the phenomenon of love is via a love story of two people of a prior generation, one a father of a favourite student and another she discovers living in a lovely house far out of the village, surrounded by a forest anne is enchanted with; the now middle aged woman finds a kindred spirit in the young boy so like his father, the love of her life.

And the romance does blossom, with Stephen Irving returning to marry Lavender Lewis finally, after Paul writes him about meeting her. But Marilla has the sensible comment:-

""I can't see that it's so terribly romantic at all," said Marilla rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it and had plenty to do with getting ready for college without "traipsing" to Echo Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar. "In the first place two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving goes to the States and after a spell gets married up there and is perfectly happy from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after a decent interval he thinks he'll come home and see if his first fancy'll have him. Meanwhile, she's been living single, probably because nobody nice enough came along to want her, and they meet and agree to be married after all. Now, where is the romance in all that?""

Exactly what those not fooled by the candy floss KJ copy, KKHH, thought. But meanwhile Anne is being sent off to college after all by Marilla, and that's the end of this part of the story and of her teaching Avonlea school for now, with a possible glimmer of romance with Gilbert Blythe on horizon.

July 01, 2020 - July 07, 2020.
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Anne of the Island

One must give credit for continuity of the narrative that it picks up exactly where it left off, strengthening the guess that these were serialised writings published in periodicals before a suitable bunch was published as a book, rather than individual books published at intervals.

Changes are smooth - Diana Barry, engaged to Fred Wright back in Avonlea, has another path in life, and Priscilla Grant, familiar since Queen's, is now close friend and companion of Anne, who is at Redmond college at kingsport in Nova Scotia along with Gilbert Blythe and another Avonlea boy, Charlie Sloane. And now they meet Philippa Gordon from Bolingbroke, NS, where Anne originated.

Letters from Avonlea secured her life at college.

"Mrs. Lynde had more time than ever to devote to church affairs and had flung herself into them heart and soul. She was at present much worked up over the poor "supplies" they were having in the vacant Avonlea pulpit.

""I don't believe any but fools enter the ministry nowadays," she wrote bitterly. "Such candidates as they have sent us, and such stuff as they preach! Half of it ain't true, and, what's worse, it ain't sound doctrine. The one we have now is the worst of the lot. He mostly takes a text and preaches about something else. And he says he doesn't believe all the heathen will be eternally lost. The idea! If they won't all the money we've been giving to Foreign Missions will be clean wasted, that's what! Last Sunday night he announced that next Sunday he'd preach on the axe-head that swam. I think he'd better confine himself to the Bible and leave sensational subjects alone. Things have come to a pretty pass if a minister can't find enough in Holy Writ to preach about, that's what. What church do you attend, Anne? I hope you go regularly. People are apt to get so careless about church-going away from home, and I understand college students are great sinners in this respect. I'm told many of them actually study their lessons on Sunday. I hope you'll never sink that low, Anne."

This book is about change experienced through college years, with summers spent at home in Avonlea even as home is coming to be in two places. And instead of it being limited to light frolic and serious study - which is there, of course, with a couple of exasperating and very unexpected proposals Anne has to turn down, and a attempt at story writing that ends in disappointment at rejection by publishers - there is serious life too, with death of a beautiful friend from school, experienced deeply by Anne. And the anticlimactic winning of story competition because Diana Barry sent the story in without telling Anne, modifying it to suit the advertising of a baking powder, and Anne consequently winning twenty five dollars, to her great mortification! Splendid!

It only gets better thereafter, with millionaire neighbour asking to buy Mrs Lynde's gift of tulip patchwork quilt from Anne, the cats, and Aunt Jamesina, at Patty's Place. There's the very rich, beautiful and brainy Phillipa Gordon sharing this new home and consequently learning frugal life, and saying shopping for groceries was more fun than parties with beaux fighting over her.

It ends well, with several satisfactory weddings, and finally uniting Gilbert Blythe with Anne, after she's had every chance at her romantic fancies - refusing him, meeting the dark handsome Roy Gardner who promptly falls in love and courts her and proposes after graduation, realising she didnt love him, and finally understanding that she could only love Gilbert - so it's quite satisfactory.

July 07, 2020 - July 09, 2020.
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Anne of Windy Poplars
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Anne's House of Dreams

Three years have passed between where the last volume ends and this begins, and Anne has taught school at Summerside while Gilbert Blythe finished his medical school. Their wedding is set and he's to join his great uncle's practice or rather take it over, at Four Winds Point, and he's found a dream house for them - hence the title. Diana Wright, who'd had her son Fred as the last volume ends, meanwhile has a two year old daughter called Small Anne Cordelia, mystifying Avonlea. There's a beautiful wedding in the orchard, with Allens presiding and Philippa Gordon's husband Jonas Blake leading a prayer, a bird singing through it all.

Marilla keeps in her grief at Anne no longer living at Green Gables, and expecting her to visit no longer through every vacation, after the fourteen years of lighting up Marilla's life with love. But Anne's friends - Diana with babies, Allans and Irvings - stay through the evening to supper, comforting them, and the twins are grown and taking over. Marilla might grieve Anne, but she won't be left lonely.

Anne's new home, unlike Green Gables, is close to harbour, and it's her first close acquaintance with the ocean with its might, beauty and more. The author compares the difference of woods verses ocean as human society versus mighty lonely soul, and one gets a feeling on the other hand that a veiled comparison here is that of childhood versus adult life - woods being comparatively safe, comfy, beautiful, while ocean has all the unpredictability and lurking dangers one might encounter in life as adults. A glimpse thereof is already in the previous volume, where Anne meets her perfect romantic fantasy in Roy on seaside walk in heavy storm, and is brought back to the same spot by him when he proposes. Gilbert, on the other hand, proposes both times in woods, in a park first and in an overgrown garden finally. She rejects Roy and the uncertainty, because she realises she doesn't love him; she realises she loves Gilbert Blythe before he proposes again, and faces life in a harbour in a home facing the ocean - in secure company of the love and security thereof that she found in woods.

In a way, this progression runs parallel to that of her life moving from village of Avonlea to the college life in town of Kingsport, and then to the harbour of Four Winds, signifying possibilities of global travel and adventures.

This volume is as much about the beauty of a harbour as it's about the stunningly beautiful neighbour of Anne and Gilbert Blythe, Leslie Moore, and her travails, the very lovable Captain Jim whose life's story is entrusted to Owen Ford the incredibly handsome author, and it's all woven together in reflections somehow of light and ocean, mist and shore, lighthouse and garden. The resolution of it all is unexpected too, and answers the question one wonders about, which is, why isn't there more about the twins and Marilla and so on.

It's because they are there, doing fine, but life moves on, and Anne's life is blossoming. She and Gilbert are to buy a larger house with property across the harbour so it's convenient, and Owen Ford is buying the little house of drems so he and his bride Leslie can have vacations there.

July 09, 2020 - July 12, 2020.
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Anne of Ingleside
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Rainbow Valley

Rainbow Valley

By the time one begins this one, one is hooked. Then comes the surprise, of Rainbow Valley - the title corresponding more to the various chikdren portrayed than the valley unseen by the reader, hence quite misty.

Now thirteen years have lapsed, Anne is a mother of half a dozen, the eldest who looks like both parents born before the family shifted at the end of the last one; next son a dreamer like Anne, twin daughters Anne and Diana who look one each like one of the parents except its diana who takes her mother's colouring, the youngest a six year old daughter Rilla - short, presumably, for Marilla - in Anne's own image, and another son; and the household at Ingleside still retains Susan Baker for housekeeping and cooking, while Cornelia Bryant - who'd married Marshall Elliott after Liberals won and he got a haircut and a shave, after seventeen years - still visits regularly. And Mrs rachel lynde disapproves of Susan pampering the children. The Blythe couple has been to Europe for summer as this opens and left children in Avonlea except one whom Susan kept, since he's her pet. Their gossip session is how the author introduces next batch of characters and their histories, characters and more.

There is a new minister, and the four Meredith children make friends with the Blythe children while the latter picnic at Rainbow Valley, so named by them because they saw a rainbow stretch over it once. Here the author has a variation of the Avonlea woods for Anne's children.

And then the Meredith children find a starving orphan and adopt her for a while, with no adult any wiser, before Cornelia Bryant steps in to correct the situation - and is coaxed by Una Meredith into adopting her! So now we have a kaleidoscope of variations of the original Anne, none quite like her, and some even boys. The author is far more comfortable with children, unless it was readers who steered the author. Anne is now in background, with occasional comments from her, in conversations with Gilbert Blythe, Susan, Cornelia Bryant and others.

Cornelia Bryant continues to be the window for a reader not well versed in politics of churches, politics between communities of different churches, and what's considered propriety, which are all startling if one assumed any of it had anything to do with values such as truth, humanity, or kindness. Hence the Meredith children being always in soup despite their goodness.

Trust Anne to set the gossipers right, and point out that Meredith family is an extraordinary collection of people with rare virtues.

The author ends the book with a double wedding in immediate future, Anne's eldest Jem going off to Queen's soon, and gives a hint of the impending WWI that none of them have foreseen, except for Ellen West, sister of Rosemary, the soon to be new Mrs Meredith.

July 12, 2020 - July 14, 2020.
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Rilla of Ingleside

As much comfortingly halfway between a fairy tale and a dolls house as the other volumes of the Anne series have been until this one, this one is far too alive, gripping, from go - so much so one has to wonder if this ....

I love this series. I have read them over and over again, and particularly liked to take them with me when traveling. Even if I forgot a book, these were some I could always find on the bookshelves of relatives. The story of orphaned Anne Shirley and the people in her world never fails to enchant and relax me. I frequently turned to these books for comfort after moving during the last part of my 7th grade year to a junior high full of unfriendly people. Thanks to L.M. Montgomery, I never felt as lonely as I might have and I will always be indebted to her for that. The final two books I did find to be a bit of a struggle as there is less of Anne and more of her children, but I particularly fell in love with Rilla of Ingleside after finding and reading an antique copy that had some lovely old illustrations. Great series! I even have a guy friend who read these and loved them as well. Books for everyone, and after reading you will feel good; good about life, good about yourself, and good about mankind in general. That's pretty rare in a book these days.

***** 5 Cranky Stars *****

Precocious, ginger haired, freckle faced 11 year old Anne Shirly explodes into the lives of spinster Marilla and bachelor Matthew Cuthbert, owners of the farm Green Gables in Avonlea on Canada's Prince Edward Island.



The Cutheberts had sent away to the orphanage for a home boy to help aging Matthew with the farm, instead they got Anne who entered their lives like a whirlwind and just stayed there whirling! Anne attracts mishaps and mischief like a magnet but her inherent good humor and good intentions wins the hearts of all who get to know her.



The collection contains 8 novels which follow the life of Anne Shirley from school girl to Collage student to teacher, from girl to young woman. Her courtships and friendships, her trials and successes. Her friendships with a myriad of colorful people. The books tell of the days when children could still be children, when mothers made all their children's clothes and fathers mended their shoes, the days when children had chores to do and did not expect payment for it. When life was lived and not raced through; initially no phones but letters written between friends, no planes or motor cars, people walked or traveled by horse drawn vehicles, long distances were traveled by train or boat.
The 8 novels cover Anne's childhood, her marriage, becoming a mother and experiencing devastating loss. The later books concentrate more on Anne's children but she remains a central figure in all of them.



I last read these books as a teenager and my decision to reread them was a treat to myself, the books are written in the beautiful language of the time and the author had a lovely descriptive way of getting her stories told. I highly recommend reading these books either for the first time or re-reading them. Literature that has stood the test of time.



Charming, uplifting, the collection deserves 5 stars, collectively and individually.