Many years ago I read the War and Peace book from this series, little books that fit in your hand, and just give you a high level overview – perfect for things I know I’ll never read properly!
Most books start with a quote, list the main characters with a sentence about them, and then a summary of the plot, very easy to work through!
There were a few stories I’d seen on film/TV, and they were easier to fly through, but it also got me interested to watch a few more that I’ve not seen before. A lot of them were much darker than I expected!
There are a whole load of these available, I have the Shakespeare one on my shelf, which is the one I actually bought first, but have been a bit more daunted by, so I guess that’s one to try in 2025!
The final book in the trilogy, picking up from where we left off at the end of book two, when Amelia ended up coming to live with Father Christmas. She’s now attending school with the elf children, and struggling to get to grips with their subjects (elf maths is VERY different, eg: 2+2=snow, or a feather duvet), and she just doesn’t feel like she fits in.
There follows an accident with a sleigh, an elf that hates humans and spreads fake news about them in a very Trumpian fashion (this book was published in 2017, and you can tell!), and a warren full of rabbits, led by the Easter bunny – standard kids Christmas stuff, right?!
One problem that made me chuckle is that money in Elfhelm is chocolate coins, and when Father Christmas goes to withdraw money to cover the damages from the sleigh accident, it turns out that he has very few savings left as he ate it all… oops! And there is a point where our heroes are at great risk of being drowned in chocolate, what a pickle!
I’ll leave you with a line I thought was just beautiful: “Books and trees are the same thing. My aunt used to tell me that books are just trees that are having a dream.”
A marked improvement on the world history version, this was more science-y which is my cup of tea, and less assumed knowledge which is where the other one fell down for me. It still had a few typos, which makes sense given it’s the same series of books, but a different author at least improved the other issues.
It’s a page per thing, and covers all sorts of levels too, so right down to individual types of cell, up to whole systems across the body, and at the end, cloning, and death – so most things you’ll want to know about will be in here, it’s all just brief, which is what I wanted. Most double page spreads are a page with a couple of paragraphs on the left, and a diagram on the right. Good for an overview.
The final book in the Anne of Green Gables series, this felt quite different to the rest, in that it’s set from the eve to the end of the First World War. Like the previous book, while Anne is still in this, the focus is not on her, this time we’re mainly following Rilla, her youngest daughter, who is now 15 – she wasn’t in Rainbow Valley much as she was too young to play out with the older children, and so they are young adults.
When war starts, the oldest Blythe and Meredith boys enlist, and as time passes, some of the others get old enough to head off too, leaving behind the young women, some of whom have become sweethearts. Early on, Rilla, who ’til now has been rather self-involved, comes across a newborn baby whose mother has died, and whose father is away at war, and so she takes him in to raise herself, which obviously comes with its challenges.
I found it really interesting that a man in the village who is somewhat pro-German is referred to as a pacifist. He’s obviously seen as an awful person, but to me, pacifist is something really quite different!
It’s a book that have a real heaviness to it, but still has it’s moments of levity (and yet more Methodist bashing!), I really loved this book, and watching Rilla grow.
And now as I’ve finished the series I’m just sad that there are no more books for me to discover. I’ve enjoyed the characters of this series so much, Anne is obviously the main body of the stories, and even though these last two haven’t been about her so much, the books are still as wonderful.
As per usual, some quotes I noted:
“Why couldn’t they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly “Rilla”?”
“Some calls are visits, and some are visitations, […] dear.”
“He is […] very nice and clever, and would be quite handsome if it were not for his nose. It is a really dreadful nose.”
“I don’t wonder babies always cry when they wake up in the night. Everything presses on my soul then and no cloud has a silver lining.”
“We are told to love our enemies, Susan” said the doctor solemnly. “Yes, our enemies, but not King George’s enemies, doctor dear.”
“I used to hate Methodists, […] but I don’t hate them now. There is no sense in hating Methodists when there is a Kaiser or a Hindenburg in the world.”
“”Do you know, Mrs Blythe […] what I would like to do to the Kaiser if I could? […] I would like to turn the Kaiser into a good man – a very good man – all at once, if I could. That is what I would do. Don’t you think, Mrs Blythe, that would be the worstest punishment of all?” […] He would understand how dreadful the things he has done are and he would feel so terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable than he could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful – and he would go on feeling like that forever.”
“If the Almighty had meant us to fly he would have provided us with wings.”
“Some men, I am told, consider a little preliminary courting the proper thing before a proposal, if only to give fair warning of their intentions.”
“Compared with Germans, even Methodists seem attractive to me.”
“There is nothing like acting sensibly in an emergency.”
“I am going to take a honeymoon to celebrate the peace.” “A honeymoon, Susan?” “Yes, […] I shall never be able to get a husband, but I am not going to be cheated out of everything and a honeymoon I intend to have.”
ineke.co.uk 