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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.”

If you haven’t read this book, read this book!

I had the pop up versions of this when I was little, and the VHS, because Anne of Green Gables is where my middle name came from, but I never read the actual book, or, as it turns out – books! The second book in the series is ordered and due to arrive tomorrow 🙂

Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are an older brother and sister who decide to adopt a boy to help on the farm, when he arrives, it turns out it’s actually a girl, it’s Anne. Anne lives in a world of her own imagination, doesn’t stop talking, and is very keen you know that it’s Anne with an E.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBGB6srEYnC/?taken-by=inekeclewer

Anne gets into all sorts of trouble, never intentionally, but living under strict Marilla’s eye, it takes a while to tame her. She also hates her red hair, and Gilbert Blythe.

I folded down a tonne of page corners in this book, some of my favourite lines are below, all bar one are from Anne herself:

• “Am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can stop when I make up my mind to it, although it’s difficult.”
• “Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair.”
• “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
• “Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them”
• “I know very well when we grow up that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall I do? I hate her husband – I just hate him furiously.”
• “It wouldn’t do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs Lynde says the minister’s wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she dresses so fashionably.”
• “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
• “I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to be naturally good, and Ill never be that, so I suppose there’s no use in thinking about it.”
• “It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.”
• “It’s always wrong to do anything you can’t tell the minister’s wife.”
• “I don’t want to cheer up. It’s nicer to be miserable!”

And then just one from Mrs Lynde:

• “It’s a great blessing not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it.”