hello from the island

I’ve nothing deeply profound to say, but I wanted to drop you all a note to express my sheer delight at Anne of the Island. I’m about three-quarters of a way through it and I feel like I’m either smiling or contentedly sighing with every passing chapter. A few things I love:

• the Phil/Jonas bit (is it okay that I picture Jonas as slightly John Krasinski-esque?)
• the Roy episode – even though we all know that our Anne belongs only with Gil, I love her process of finding it out for herself. The sonnet to her eyebrows, the flower she can live with… I love it all.
• Diana’s wedding – haven’t we all (who are of a certain age and unmarried) felt the same things Anne was feeling? It’s hard to say goodbye to your friends and watch everything change, even though it’s natural and good and part of life..

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m reaching the last few chapters and the excitement is killing me!

-big sis

a little experimANNEt…(that was a stretch..)

So little sis is doing an experiment this year.  As some of you may know, the Anne books we know and love were not published in the order that we usually read them.

They are usually read like this (for our strangers to Avonlea out there):

1) Anne of Green Gables: Anne moves to Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, Canada and is adopted by the Cuthburts.

2) Anne of Avonlea: Anne is a teenager going to a community college of sorts and teaching at the neighborhood school.

3) Anne of the Island: Anne goes away to college and gets engaged.

4) Anne of Windy Poplars: Anne teaches for 3 years at a school in Summerside (?) PEI.

5) Anne’s House of Dreams: Anne gets married and moves to Four Winds Harbor with her husband (no spoilers here!)

6) Anne of Ingleside: Stories of Anne’s family.

7) Rainbow Valley: Stories of Anne’s children who are older than in Ingleside.

8 ) Rilla of Ingleside: Set years after Rainbow Valley, the story of Anne’s family during WWI, told from Anne’s youngest daughter Rilla’s perspective.

So that’s how we read them.  BUT that’s not the order in which they were published.  So this year, I’m going to go old school and read the books like the original fANNEs read them:

1) Anne of Green Gables (1908)

2) Anne of Avonlea (1909)

3) Anne of the Island (1915)

4) Anne’s House of Dreams (1917)

5) Rainbow Valley (1919)

6) Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

7) Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

8 ) Anne of Ingleside (1939)

ISN’T THAT CRAZY??! I think it will be super interesting to see how the different order affects things.  I’m especially interested in the huge gap between Rilla and Windy Poplars (HOW WILL I MAKE THAT TRANSITION?!) and how the writing will change in that space.

So I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.  It just started getting weird because I went straight from Island into House of Dreams.  No pesky pen tips/Katherine Brook/annoying Elizabeth for me..not for a few months, at least.

-lil sis

Sound off!!

Okay, everyone, I need your opinions. What do you think of Paul Irving?

-lil sis

Island housekeeping..

Guys, I am really buzzing through Anne of the Island this year.  AOTI has always been one of my favorites, but right about now I’m CONVINCED that it has to be my favorite!  Now, a few weeks from now, you’ll be calling me fickle when I claim that House of Dreams or Rilla or even at times Ingleside or Rainbow Valley are my favorites…I know it’s coming…but for now it has to be set in stone that this book has it all.

1) Anne-ishness:  Patty’s Place, flowers we can live with…Anne of the Island has a good helping of all things that only Anne can bring us.  Normal things made magical simply because they’re seen through an Anne colored lens.

2) Anne-ish mischief:  Rollings Reliable, marriage proposals from Charlie and Billy/Jane, the failed chloroforming of Rusty…Something we love about Anne is that she isn’t perfect.  Though she’s grown up a lot since the days of the mouse in the pudding sauce, she hasn’t lost her endearing habit of getting into scrapes.

3) tragedy and deep emotions: Ruby Gillis, refusing Gil…For the first time since Matthew’s death, LM has us reaching for the tissues and feeling a knot deep down inside.  The emotional scope of the story mirrors Anne’s growing up…and I feel like I’m growing up a little too. Don’t even get me thinking about Rilla…

4) The payoff: I won’t spoil it for you…but the payoff is sweet.

I love Anne of the Island.  I will be loyal to no Anne book after this*.

It’s about this time in the year that I always find myself thinking ‘How is in the  middle of November and I’m only 3 books in? The rush to finish the last 5 over Christmas holidays really detracts from fully savoring them.  EARLY NEW YEARS RESOLUTION: Find out how some of these books read in the springtime.  What if I saw Redmond or Four Winds Harbor in the light of a New York springtime, rather than a December 28th reading marathon?

I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Redmond. We just met Roy and Christine.  The night is always darkest just before the dawn…

-lil sis

*With the exception of Anne of Green Gables, Avonlea, Windy Poplars, Ingleside, Anne’s House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside

something’s stirred…

I let out a long sigh as I finished chapter 14 of Anne of the Island. L.M. takes us face to face with reality once again as a childhood friend of Anne’s – Ruby Gillis – dies. I find it interesting how this heartbreaking bit is tucked away in the middle of a book mainly focused on Anne’s swell college days at Redmond. We’re so excited about Patty’s Place and the Thorburn scholarship and… boom! Tragedy.

Hmm… sound familiar? Sound a little like… uh, I don’t know… life?

Yeah, thought so.

I think there are many things to say about this turn of events, but the thing that gets me most is the new layer of Anne that we see; for that matter, the new layer of Anne that Anne sees. I would do an injustice to paraphrase when the actual passage is so beautiful:

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different – something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth. – Anne of the Island, ch. 14

Have you ever had a moment in life when the deeps were stirred? I know I have… and life is never exactly the same after that; it can’t be… and I suppose we don’t really want it to be. I think it’s often in those moments that we have an opportunity to decide how we want to live – this is where we say what we’re about. Sometimes we’re already living the stuff and it’s just a matter of becoming a bit more intentional. Sometimes we have to come to a screeching halt and turn ourselves around.

I think about Anne, though. How many times had she prayed: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, yet here her senses were pricked and she was conscious of what the words meant to her in a new way. Hearing or believing wasn’t enough – she had to be sure to live it.

To live in such a way that heaven wouldn’t be that much of an adjustment. Huh… I like it. I want it. Thanks, Anne.

-big sis

home…

I’ve been a bit absent lately, for which I sincerely apologize. I know that our thousands of readers are waiting with bated breath for my next burst of Anneish wisdom.

*crickets chirping*

But really, I’m still here. I’m getting into Anne of the Island and have quickly remembered how charming this third book is. Anne’s world starts to get bigger as she goes off to Redmond. I love reading about those initial nerves, making new friends, finding her place – is there one of us out there who hasn’t had all these experiences at one time or another? New journeys can mean new dreams and putting down new roots; we often get to figure out a bit more of who we are in those times.

What struck me most tonight, though, was the chapter entitled Home Again.

I must go home. You don’t know how my heart longs for it. -Anne of the Island, ch. 7

It’s that time of year when I start to get a little itchy for home. It’s November, the Northern Hemisphere is welcoming the autumn, and the holidays are just around the corner. I’ll be heading back to Texas (and also spending some time in Arkansas) in a little over a month’s time.

**And yes, that means the Anne Girls will be reunited once again – please hold your applause until the end.**

I’ve learned to put down roots in many places and there’s not just one “Green Gables” that I return to. There are people, though, and places that I love that collectively make up my home. As LM so wonderfully describes, I’ll have days of romps in the woods, all night gabfests, tables overflowing with all my favorites, and lots and LOTS of love. Ok, scratch that woods part, but everything else is pretty accurate. It will be nearly a month of joy, rest and rejuvenation.

Yes, it’s coming. I can feel it. And I’m excited.

-big sis

L.M. Montgomery, author and…psychic?

There are times when I come across something in an Anne book that mirrors my life so completely that I am, simultaneously, inspired and creeped out.  I had just such an experience last night while reading Anne of Avonlea.

“‘I’ve put out a lot of little roots these two years,’ Anne told the moon, ‘and when I’m pulled up they’re going to hurt a great deal.  But it’s best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t.  I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.’”

Whoa.

Now, you may not know me or why this is such a ‘Did that just happen’  moment, but let me assure you that it absolutely is.  Am I leaving my home in Avonlea to go to college at Redmond? No. Are my roots a pair of twins, a deceptively soft hearted old maid, the village school children or the biggest gossip in town? No again.  But the story and the sentiment ring true all the same.

I’ve got my own roots that need pulling.  Some need to simply be transplanted to a different place and others need to be removed altogether.  Yes, it will hurt…it will hurt a lot…but at the end of it all, once growth happens again, I know that it will be beautiful and that I can flourish in a way that I never could if I stayed firmly planted where I am now.

Anne takes chances.  She might be scared or worried or sad…but she doesn’t let that get in the way.  She trusts that around the bend in the road is a fuller life than the one she has now.  I’m approaching my own bend right now and doing my best to trust.  and believe.  and not be scared.  because I know that whatever comes next is going to paint my life in beautiful new shades and hues I’d never imagined before.

I’ve got my own ambitions to dust off.  Thanks for the encouragement, Maud.

-lil sis