Anne of Green Gables
Ratings393
Average rating4.3
I liked this book as much as I had hoped. Reading this as the father of a ten year old girl made me smile at passages that might not have meant as much to my younger self.
Cute read!! Had to get used to Anne's babbles but it was adorable to read it nonetheless!
I never read this as a child as it seemed way too “girly” for me. It's a wonderful story all the same and I wished I'd read it then.
I can't sum up my feelings any better than another goodreads reviewer who gave this book 5 stars:
“yo Anne has no chill, she is practically a talking machine, I am not complaining tho”
This really is the perfect coming of age book, I see why it's a classic. Anne is so whimsical and imaginative and I just know I would have loved her if I had read this as a child. Seeing her grow and really come into her own is even better though, and I bet I find that much more satisfying now then I would have as a child.
As a child the tv movies (PBS) were on of my favorite shows. Anne Shirley was amazing.
The book did not disappoint. I loved reading Anna's fast paced dialogue and could easly picture the exuberance of a child coming off the pages. The turn of a century quaint town of Avilon was so diferent from modern life, in the most interesting ways.
Can't wait to read more of the beloved stories of Anne as she grows up.
Side note: I tried to listen to the audio book for a couple chapters in the middle. It was horrid (there are several so maybe it was only his narrator). The were slow and concise and sounded nothing like a on excitable little girl. Keep to the written book on this one.
Great book. Not sure why Marilla had to be so stone-cold all the time. Love most of the nature descriptions, they made me want to live in the countryside.
4.5 stars. This was truly a very wholesome and winning book. At first I was a little thrown off by the story when we first start, but I slowly got into the groove of things and really enjoyed seeing how Anne grows up in Avonlea.
The book is pretty straightforward. Eleven year old Anne Shirley gets mistakenly adopted by the Cuthbert siblings, who are getting on in years and had initially wanted to bring in a little boy to hopefully help out with the farm as Matthew Cuthbert gets older.
Anne is a bit of a departure from a little girl protagonist that you might expect from a book written in the 19th century. Instead of being this idealistic version of little girls where she's calm, dainty, and does everything morally right according to her lessons, Anne is almost a tornado in comparison, albeit a good-willed one. Her dialogue, or should I say soliloquy, fills pages and pages of the book as she rambles on about everything and nothing in particular. She's a right drama queen at her first appearance, swooning over how beautiful everything around her is, and insisting on calling landmarks names she made up on the spot, like, “The Lake of Shining Water” instead of just Barry's Pond. Her highest prized trait of herself is her vivid imagination, and something which she prizes other people by as well.
To be honest, I found Anne pretty annoying at the beginning. She reminded me of Marianne from Sense & Sensibility in what a drama queen she was. Aside from her endless chatter, she also formed attachments to people based on a projection of her own ideals (“I really want a bosom friend, therefore I've decided that this person is going to be my bosom friend even though I've never met her before”). Similarly, she also doesn't seem to know how to appropriately weigh situations and its consequences, although I suppose this is a pretty accurate depiction of children as a whole, where rewards and punishments never seem to matter that much once the day passes and they forget all about it.
The storytelling is pretty episodic in nature and we get to have fleeting introductions to the Avonlea ensemble through Anne's childhood adventures. Of them all, we are perhaps closest in action to Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, and Diana Barry. Both Marilla and Matthew behave as parent figures as Anne, and they both have their faults while executing their function here, but I feel like I'm more aligned with Marilla than Matthew. Sure, she's way too severe sometimes and her deliberate self-oppression of her emotions gets on my nerves sometimes, but ultimately she was trying her best to help Anne grow up into her version of a proper lady. If Marilla had tried to single-parent Anne, she would've certainly been able to do it, but I doubt the same can be said for Matthew. Matthew's influence was still a beneficial and valuable one to have to temper Marilla's style of child-rearing, but it was sometimes annoying when he shirked the difficult tasks in life and very gladly palmed it off on Marilla.
What I found masterful about the book was really the last third of it:
I semi-loved it when Anne slowly grew up from eleven to fifteen, from a little girl to a young lady in her own right. I say "semi-love" because I felt like Montgomery did such a great job in aligning us the readers with Marilla's perspective. I found it bittersweet that the little Anne I found so annoying all those chapters ago has disappeared in place of this not-so-romantic, less chatty, and more regular-adult young lady. It's not to say that sixteen year old Anne is a whole different person, but even Marilla explicitly asks her what happened to her imagination and her Storytelling Clubs and all that, and Anne casually just dismisses them all. Instead of being driven by romantic notions and dresses and imagined horrors in the woods, Anne becomes driven by ambition and scholarships and a sense of filial duty to Marilla by the end of the novel. These are great developments for any child to have, but perhaps because I'm a new parent myself, it really hits hard that even when your child is following a trajectory you can be proud of, you're still sad that the baby/small child that they used to be is gone forever. The part where Marilla weeps over how the talkative eleven year old Anne she used to be so annoyed with has now vanished was so heartbreaking to read and I'll admit I absolutely bawled during that part, thinking about how even in the best case scenarios, my baby isn't going to stay a baby for long. Any book that can make me cry in earnest is automatically elevated a few notches by my standards.
Overall, a really great, light-hearted book and I can certainly see why it became a classic. I'm actually interested in continuing the series to see what happens next!
The book is awesome.There are touching moments. I like The book. I like Ann and her story, and recommend this Book to readers
I just found a new all-time favourite! I seriously loved every part of this book! It was quirky, it was a bit sad, it was happy. I love Anne Shirley and my, oh, my, do I love Gilbert Blythe. ;-; ♥
On to the next one! ♥
Oh wow, what an amazing book. Besides Dracula, which is my favourite book, I rarely read classics. They tend to bore me and I find them so hard to get into, but I got a pretty edition of “Anne of Green Gables” a while ago and I finally decided to pick it up.
Ever since the beginning, I fell in love with Anne. What a brilliant soul she is. She's a pretty red-headed orphan girl who is adopted by mistake by a sister and brother that live in Avonlea. By mistake meaning they wanted a boy, but they got the skinny girl that couldn't stop talking. Anne grows on them day by day and she becomes a part of their little family.
I absolutely loved Anne's journey, it was so inspiring and it's a perfect example for: no matter where you come from, you can do it. She is so ambitious, so full of life, she finds pleasure in the smallest things and I think that's really beautiful. We should all be like Anne, who feels so happy just by seeing a beautiful sunrise or a lake, she is so fascinated by nature's wonders.
This book starts with Anne as an eleven year old child who makes a lot of mistakes and it ends with Anne as a beautiful, mature teenager now sixteen, who has achieved so many great things and has become such a wonderful person. It's a very emotional ride and I just couldn't put the book down.
Loved this book, I never read it as a child. The writing and Anne improves as the book goes on. I can't wait to read the next one in the series.
*4.5 stars
You know those times when you've been building something up in your mind for so long that it inevitably lets you down when you finally read it?
This was not one of those times. ♥ ♥ ♥
When I'm stressed I like to listen to prissy little girl fiction. It's relaxing. This was a glorious throwback. Anne and Marilla are a delight. Surprisingly it hasn't aged too badly (I was actually shocked by how old it is) and I hope little girls still get to enjoy it like I did and my mum and idk about grandparents/great grandparents actually because this book is Canadian and I don't know when it made the trip over but a lot of little girls have read it and I hope they continue to.
I'll probably listen to Ballet Shoes or Little House on the Prairie or something next.
I've always been drawn to the Anne of Green Gables stories but I honestly can't remember if I ever attempted to read them. Of course with many screen adaptions I was no stranger to Anne and always smiled when I saw anything depicting her. While I wish I could remember if I ever read the book in school or picked it up at the library, I feel I got much more out of it as an adult. I already want to read it again and was sad that I had to finish it. I'm very much looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
It is P's favorite book, and today it became mine too.
Livre audio lu par Catherine Proulx Lemay, production Radio-Canada Première.
It's been a while since I finished a book, but I've started many. According to my Goodreads, I'm currently reading 9 books. A few I own, and a few are from the library (Libby). I don't read quite fast enough, so my loan usually expires before I finish. Then I have to put it on hold again. With Anne of Green Gables, I didn't finish within the allotted two weeks either, but no one else had it on hold luckily!
I've never read Anne before and I knew nothing about it. I thought it was about an orphaned, red-headed girl who got treated badly but had an imagination. That doesn't seem right at all after reading this book. Yes, she was badly treated in her past and she does have quite the imagination, but Anne is about something entirely different.
Anne is an orphan, and by accident she is adopted by siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. They are both loving in their own way, and Anne is raised in a remarkable way. She is free to be herself. Sometimes her temper or pride get her into difficult situations, but it all works out. This book isn't here to challenge the reader in any real way. It's meant to be pleasant and lovable.
For me, this book romanticizes childhood, but I don't mean that in any kind of negative way. I'm tempted to write that, “We all want...,” but I will only speak for myself. I desperately want to remember how it felt to be a child. The imagination and the dreams. The magic, fun, play, laughter, ambition, hope... How so many things were new and exciting. How the world seemed great and full of possibility. I think this book romanticizes all of that, but in a way that it should be romanticized. We, as adults, should try so hard to remember those feelings.
I haven't read up on any history of this book. I know when it was published, and that's about it. I'm afraid if I read about the book, I'll be spoiled for the rest of the series. I would like to continue reading it, and even the smallest spoilers usually bother me. So I'm unsure of any intent by the author, or history of the author herself.
The reason I'm not giving the book a full five stars is because roughly the last third bothered me. Most of the book was so detailed with how Anne was growing up between the ages of about 11 and 13. And then suddenly she's flying through the years, and I think the book ends with her being almost 17. The chapters dedicated to “young” Anne are darling. I couldn't stop reading. I enjoyed all of Anne's eccentricities, and Marilla's reserved amusement. Then all of sudden, Marilla remarks that Anne doesn't talk as much anymore. What happened between then and now?
I would have loved more time dedicated to those teenage years. Again, I don't know how the book was published – was it serialized? I don't know how the author wrote it – was she rushed in the end, or was a series planned from the beginning? In any case, it looks like there are eight books in total. I suppose the story from here will dedicated to Anne as an adult. I'm sure it will be interesting, but the two-thirds of Anne of Green Gables dedicated to young Anne was so special.
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This book is truly a warm cup of cocoa (or dare I say, a cup of raspberry cordial?) for the heart and mind. My inner nature-loving, romance-loving, country girl was beaming from ear to ear reading this. All the characters were so sweet and lovable, even the not-so-nice ones. I can't wait to read the rest of the series!
What a delight! A children's classic I am glad I got round to reading finally. This book was light relief after a busy working week. Anne was a delightful and lovable character and reading about her adventures was such blissful escapism! The descriptions of the Canadian seasons was exquisite and Anne's story of growing up in green gables and making friends is both beautiful and heartwarming. A new classic I feel deeply in love with. If I had read this in my early teens I am sure it would have been a 5 star read but still a strong 4 star read from me.
Rating: 4.5 leaves out of 5Characters: 4.5/5 Cover: 3.5/5Story: 5/5Writing: 5/5Genre: Children/Historical Fiction/ClassicType: AudiobookWorth?: Yes!Hated Disliked It Was Okay Liked LovedI can't believe I didn't read this book sooner in my life. It was such a touching and heartbreaking story. Loved Anne and how she was so full of life and broke my heart a bit to see her grow up. I saw the show, Ann with an E, and so it differs a little bit but both breaks the hell out of my heart. Honestly loved this damn book.
When I started this book, I was so sure that I was going to be bored to some degree as classics are not my favorite, but I loved Anne with an e. Her babbling reminded me so much of how I was as a kid. So many questions, incessant talking about everything, though I didn't use large words, declare everything in terms of romantic and unromantic, and wasn't half as charming, but I related nevertheless. The importance of puffed sleeves reminded me so strongly of my burning desire for flared bellbottom pants at the age of 9. I loved Matthew's instant attachment to her, I loved Marilla's slow burn love for her. I just loved this book and I wish I had read it sooner.