Anne of Green Gables

The third book I decided to read which was recommended by A Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) was Anne of Green Gables and to be brutally honest, I was disappointed. I found Anne quite often to be annoying and found my self skimming through many of her rambling soliloquies. Many (especially those of the female gender I suppose) may find her apt to talk ad nauseum to be one of her most enduring qualities, I however did not.

I discovered that it was difficult for me to continue reading once the characters had been established, that is I had no motivation to continue reading as there appeared to be no underlying plot to the book. Each chapter was it's own story and there was very little connecting one chapter to the next, so after you finished a chapter it's easy to put the book down and not be in the least bit curious was was going to happen next. After reading about 3/4 of the book, I must have put it down for two weeks as I did not care was was going to happen next, nor did it seem to matter as the next chapter was just as likely to be the same as the last one: Anne would get into some minor scrape which would be resolved in one way or another by its conclusion.

Having said that, I must conclude that I was glad I did finish it. The last two or three chapters were by far the best of the book and they did bring the conclusion of the book to a wonderful little ending. Keeping with my policy of not posting spoilers, all I will say about this is that it was nice to see the person that Anne grew into. I started the book with the hope of understanding girls just a little bit better as I have two daughters of my own. I think that in the end I was successful in that, at least to some degree, however I'm not sure that I could stand living in a young girls world for any sustained length of time

Finally the theme of Education was again in this book (another reason I'm sure it was selected by TJEd) although it only really displayed it's importance late in the book (another reason I enjoyed the ending) I'm not sure that for me it was worth the first 250 pages to get to.

If you are still so inclined you may Get the Book Now