Not only is Anne of Green Gables one of my favourite books, but Anne is one of my favourite characters. I just loved Anne’s approach to life, her imagination and her loyalty to those dear to her. After her experience as an orphan, her life at Green Gables was really idyllic for a child, a perfect place to grow character, develop a sense of community and a joyful spirit. If I could be any character, I would choose to be Anne!
A fascinating look into not only present day education, but the history of compulsory schooling. Gatto digs deep to point out not only the flaws in the system but how if affects our social order and even our individual souls.
I don’t always agree with him but he is passionate about his beliefs and brings so many issues to light that would otherwise be left unexamined. While slightly haphazard in its organization, the book is riveting. I try to read it at least once per year.
This book was soooooo sad! As a child reading this book, I cried and cried when Old Yeller died. I’ve always wanted to re-read it to see if I would find it as heart-wrenching as an adult, but just the thought of experiencing the emotions I did as a child, has made me hesitant. Does that mean I was traumatized the first time? 😉
This book is so obscure that I can’t even find a cover photo for it. Flip: the Story of An Otter.
It wasn’t a classic, and obviously it is not now well-known, but from it I developed a complete love of otters. The story was so cute in some places, yet starkly realistic in others, that it drew me right into their world. I still have the book on my shelf and from the library due date card in it, I took it out of library at least once every two weeks. It is still one of my most treasured books!
Okay, I admit that I don’t read romance novels very much anymore. So I’m going to change the challenge to “favourite romances in books”. Now for an eclectic mix ….
The romance of Dante and Beatrice! He first saw her when she was eight years old and loved her until her death at 24, even though their lives did not intersect. She was his muse and guides souls to heaven in The Divine Comedy.
Another Beatrice and her love Benedick feature in the Shakespearian drama, Much Ado About Nothing. It is said that the course of true love never did run smooth and that is a perfect description of the relationship between these two characters. A fun romance to read about!
A beautiful story of a boy and his dog. It made my cry!
Without a doubt, the movie version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is my favourite book turned movie. The producers stuck so closely to the plot and all the lines so closely mirror the dialogue in the book that it is a true production of the original.
Other versions try to alter the story or the actors aren’t able to portray the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy accurately, making them poor comparisons. 
And, just to be obscure, another adaptation that I have actual enjoyed more than the book is Doctor Finlay by A.J. Cronin, a story of a doctor in a small town in post-WWII Scotland.
David Rintoul’s performance is excellent and I find the medical procedures of the time fascinating.
An interesting tidbit: Rintoul played Mr. Darcy in a 1980 version of Pride and Prejudice.
I love Tove Jansson’s Moomin series!! So what better book to grab for a summer read on an island, than her The Summer Book. I was so looking forward to it but, overall the book was a sad disappointment. I thought it would be a nostalgic, earthy, summer-y story about a grandmother and her granddaughter on an island in the Gulf of Finland. However I found it started rather abruptly and the relationship between the two of them was almost antagonistic. At times the granddaughter was outright rude, seemingly for very little reason, and the father was often “absent”, even though he was there. It did pick up, with more description and a few funny stories but that wonderful enjoyment of a summer read was woefully lacking.
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.”
What better time to read this book than during the days leading up to Halloween. I expected a terrifying, nail-biting, ride of horror but to my surprise, the story left me completely flat.
A carnival comes to a small town and two boys, Will & Jim, are anticipating its amusements; what they experience instead is an evil that almost defies their abilities to comprehend and their efforts to contain. Finally, Will’s father, stumbles on a way to defeat the devious ghouls and all is saved ………. for now ……..
After reading up on Bradbury’s making of the novel, it was initially conceived as a screenplay. Perhaps this is part of the reason why the book felt so awkward to me. A visual conception full of lyrical language, darkness and evil, in a setting with conventional characters in a commonplace town ………. hmmmm …….. Bradbury does not really explore any of the characters other than Jim, Will and his father. Even the Illustrated Man, the leader of this nefarious group, is not developed past a description of him and a few instances where he is able to evoke fear. And as for the language, the florid, and at times, awkward description was distracting from the plot. Not that it couldn’t be used to an advantage, perhaps like a symphony or as even a Greek chorus, but Bradbury wielded it in a stumbling manner, interspersing it through both the characters and narrative alike. An example:
“It was indeed a time between, one second their thoughts all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat.”
Well, okay, that’s a nice image but the reader has to pause and think how to apply it to the narrative. It appears he is setting up the following sentences in the paragraph, which are a list of contrasts, but how does it really fit into the story?
And this one:
“Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he’s covering up. He’s had his fun and he’s guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn’t just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that’s your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two. I’ve know a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it’s thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can’t let himself alone, won’t lift himself off the hook, if he falls just a breath from grace …………. Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it’s hard, right? with the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that’s what the clock ticks, that’s what it says in the ticks…….”
A great piece of philosophy but it kind of dribbles off and falls into nothing. Did Will learn anything from it? The reader will never know because it is not addressed again. Did Will’s behaviour change between before his father imparted this wisdom to him and after? Not really. Will was basically good throughout the book, Jim was a boy who liked to live on the edge and the father was a scholar cum philosopher who liked to contemplate the world around him. No — character — development.
All in all, I didn’t hate the book but I found it distracting, disjointed, and poorly developed. If I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have missed it.
Whew! This was a tough one! Surprisingly so, because I love quotes. Yet nothing is coming directly to mind so I’m going to randomly go with:
And: