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Having read Anne of Green Gables for the first time ever recently, I appear to have embarked on a journey that may last through all the books, book three has now been ordered, but this review is for the second in the series. I finished it while on holiday last week, so it’s already a bit faint in memory, but that’s why I turn page corners down 🙂

This book starts with Anne age 16, and starting teaching in the school she’s only just attended, so she’s teaching her former classmates as all age groups learn together. Having lost a major character at the end of the previous volume, Marilla takes 6 year old twins Davy and Dora into her care. Dora is angelic to the point of dull, Davy is possibly more reckless than Anne was when we first met her!

Here are some of my favourite quotes.

• “Have you ever noticed, that when people say it is their duty to tell you a certain thing you may prepare for something disagreeable? Why is it that they never seem to think it a duty to tell you the pleasant things they hear about you?”
• “It does people good to have to do things they don’t like – in moderation.”
• “You’re never safe from being surprised till you’re dead.”
• “It’s really splendid to imagine you are a queen. You have all the fun of it without any of the inconveniences and you can stop being a queen whenever you want to.”
• “Punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant things. There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use of imagining any more.”
• “Life is rich and full here – everywhere – if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fullness.”
• “Don’t you know that it is only very foolish folk who talk sense all the time?”
• “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures.”
• “Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there is.”
• “It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down that hurt his feelings if you must do something.”
• “That’s a lovely idea. Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with.”
• “I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things.”
• “I’m so glad you’re here. If you weren’t I should be blue – very blue – almost navy blue.”
• “A broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books. It’s a good deal like a bad tooth. […] It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there was nothing the matter with it.”
• “That is one good thing about this world – there are always sure to be more springs.”
• “It’s always seemed to me that the reason two women can’t get along in one house is that they try to share the same kitchen and get in each other’s way.”
• “I’ll wash my face before I go courting. And I’ll wash behind my ears too, without being told.”
• “I wish people could live on pudding. Why can’t they Marilla? I want to know. […] I’d like to try that for myself.”
• “Oh sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after a while and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”
• “I don’t like to be surprised. You lose all the fun of expecting things when you’re surprised.”
• “When all’s said and done, Miss Shirley, ma’am, there’s many a worse thing than a husband.”
• “A wedding ain’t much cheerfuller than a funeral aafter all, when it’s all over.”