My Latest Book Conquest

So I just finished reading the whole box set of the Anne of Green Gables series. The common sense rule still applies here that good books are definately better than the movies! The original Anne book is a treasure and the movie is a fairly good representation of that book. It seems that common opinion, from what I've read online, that Anne of the Island is the second most popular book, since it's the one where Anne finally figures out that she's in love with Gilbert. It seems to go along with the general rule that the public enjoys the chase more than the capture. I have a differing opinion though. Maybe it's because of my own perspective on life, being a psychologically minded person and all, but Anne's House of Dreams is my favorite book of the series, even more so than the original book. I find that what happens after the chase is more thrilling to me and I often get frustrated with books that end with the simple resolution that the characters end up together in the end. To me, there is still so much more story to tell and adventures to witness. The adventures, as Gilbert puts it in Anne of Avonlea, experienced "hand in hand all the way through life". The stories in Anne's House of Dreams are beautiful and touching about the beginning of life experienced together and not being alone, in happiness or sadness, anymore.

I think one of my other favorite moments in the Anne series is the end of Anne of Ingleside. All through that book we read the stories of her children and the scrapes they get into and the silly things that go through their heads and how wonderful and wise their beloved mother, who we as readers know gained her wiseness by going through similiar silliness and terrible scrapes. Anyway, by the end of the book the reader is thinking, "Boy Anne has grown out of all her foolishness", but by and by at the end of the book, we find that she can be the same old silly Anne. I love that sense of consistency with the character.

Though good ole' Maud (L.M. Montgomery) might be over 60 years dead and published the first Anne book 100 years ago, she knew how to tell a good long life story with laughing and crying all mixed in! I applaud her for looking around and seeing her world and then creating one that others could escape to, if only for a few hours :)