That after an ugly childhood and gawky adolescence, I would blossom into a legendary beauty, the type of which that would awe strangers and be best described as “lissome” and “shining,” instead of being someone who obsessively watched makeup tutorials on Youtube and yet still manages to go out with one eye made up perfectly and the other one looking like it had been made up by a drunken goat with only one hoof.
That as an adult woman, I would be judged mostly on the skill of my housekeeping, and people would comment on the cleanliness of my dishcloths and quality of my ironing rather than literally every single other decision I made starting with my clothes and ending somewhere around the way I chose to orient staples in paperwork.
That college would involve a great deal more cakes and beautiful dresses and having housekeepers, and much less time arguing with roommates over whose turn it was to take out the recycling and what that weird smell coming from the pantry was.
That I could (and would, of course) give my house a name without neighbours and the Canadian postal authorities treating me like I’d completely lost my marbles, and refer to my house by name with a straight face and without constantly explaining myself.
That it would be impossibly romantic to live on a small island in the middle of a lake, rather than just incredibly inconvenient when I would run out of eggs or Scotch tape or aluminum foil.
That peddlers would actually come to my house with things I needed or even wanted to buy, instead of no one coming by my house ever except for the mailman and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That elocution was an actual art form and viable career path, and reciting was a skill that would I would be called upon to demonstrate periodically as a teenager, even though as an actual teenager more of my time was spent gossiping with my friends on the phone about what someone said to someone else in physics.
That I would have a collection of beautiful gowns made of silk, satin, organza, challis, lace, and chiffon, rather than a collection of T-shirts with mysteriously-appearing holes in them and weird stains.
That cooking would involve a lot more things like jam doughnuts, homemade wine, creamed chicken, gingerbread with cream, lemon pies, pound cake, tongue, and puddings in general; and a lot fewer things like exciting new ways to marinate chicken breasts and a general inability to master things like beaten biscuits and not pathetically overcooking vegetables.
That it would be seen as the height of inhospitality and rudeness to greet guests without a healthy supply of pies and cakes, rather than the exceedingly normal state of affairs and certainly no cause for alarm.
That I would be faced with a number of handsome and respectful (or at the very least, respectful) potential suitors and/or love interests, instead of a series of dates and boyfriends that varied between “mildly weird with the potential for good stories,” to “heartbreakingly misguided,” to “outright alarming.”
That life would involve many, many, many more sunset vistas and clouds soaring over hills and many fewer hours spent sitting in rush-hour traffic and many fewer days spent living in apartment buildings with views of dumpsters.
That being published would require nothing more than a knack for writing, the money for many sets of stamps, and the patience to continue sending out work; instead of requiring an MFA in writing, at least one good family connection to a famous editor, and the promise of a firstborn child or the blood of a sacrificial lamb.
This is true. No wonder I am failing at life–I was prepared for a much different one.
That my closest friend and I would share an intense relationship best characterized as passionate-bordering-on-romantic instead of one based on liking each other’s photos every couple days.
I am a grown ass woman, but my bosom friend’s lack of interest in clasping hands over running water and swearing eternal fealty to each other really stung, ngl.
Ha!
Yes! I EXPECTED and WAITED to find my Diana and she never showed up.
That my closest friend and I would share an intense relationship best characterized as passionate-bordering-on-romantic instead of, you know, dating.
Same.
Same.
Ooof this is so real it hurts.
Hey, I have totally had friendships kind of like that. When I was a teenager, and was super-emotional about absolutely everything and had no clue that those intense feelings might actually mean I was into both girls and guys.
I wanted to post something witty here, but then I realized that in fact LMM#1 really prepared me well for life, including:
-How to marry your classroom nemesis
-How to make friends through extreme enthusiasm and verbose expressions of affection
-How to really appreciate a stormy day
-What to do when your at-home-hair-dye-makeover goes terribly wrong
….cut it all off and wear a jaunty new bow???
Well first you hide under the covers until someone comes looking for you.
Unfortunately, my worst at-home hair dye entailed a) not getting all done in one night; b) having to drive from LA to Berkeley to attend a conference, with the plan to actually finish the dye job that evening in the hotel; c) getting a flat on the 5 en route, thus not getting to the conference hotel until well after dinner time; d) discovering that the replacement hair dye I had brought with me was missing one of the two bottles of stuff you needed to make it work; e) the friend who offered to go get me another box of hair dye while I ordered in dinner having to drive to 5 different drug stores to actually find the hair dye I needed (evidently everyone in Berkeley was dying their hair blond that evening); f) sitting up past midnight in the hotel room bathroom by myself while my roommates slept–or snored, as the case was–while I waited for the bleach to take; g) realizing that my dark hair wasn’t going to get any more “lemon-yellow” than Bozo the Clown orange; h) sitting even longer in the bathroom while I tried applying the ash-blond color anyway to tone down said Bozo orange; i) attending the conference as Bozo the Clown Goes Folklorist! and trying to come up with a non-snarky response to “Oh my god! What happened to your hair?”
Second worst at-home hair dye job? Doing the exact same damned thing seven years later, only this time I was going to a Celtic Studies conference at Harvard rather than a folklore conference at Berkeley, and I was staying with my cousin instead of in a hotel. And this time, sadder but wiser, instead of trying to go through with the blond, I just dyed it back to dark brown as soon as I got to Boston.
Seriously, dying my hair purple is the most mainstream, least disastrous of my various Adventures in Hair Dye.
As a fellow hair dye enthusiast, I very much relate. I don’t know why they even sell those stupid bleach kits in the drugstore, as it seems their only purpose is to change your hair from “blonde” to “a slightly different shade of blonde” and anyone with a natural shade of hair darker than “autumn wheat” can go jump in a lake. (To hide their flaming orange hair.)
Honestly, I can see dying the gray out at home, that’s easy-peasy, but anything involving several steps like Going Blonde, I figure it’s better if you stick a crowbar in your wallet and pay the professionals to do it for you! Just lie there like a lox under a sheet with your head poking out while you are fussed over and done to, and emerge from your chrysalis a sexy Blonde Lady.
I need to take 2 tablespoons of cordial wine and lie down now.
What would the minister say if he knew you kept cordial in the house?
It’s not mine, obviously. It belongs to my brother, who as the minister well knows, hasn’t been quite right since that horse kicked him in the head.
Why, he’s been known to enjoy a glass himself, as you well know, Rachel Lynde.
That after an ugly childhood and gawky adolescence, I would blossom into a legendary beauty, the type of which that would awe strangers and be best described as “lissome” and “shining,”
this was the cruelest lie of all
I wanted to be Emily SO badly.
So true. For me, “Green Gables” was far less accurate than “The Really Ugly Duckling” from The Stinky Cheese Man.
ALSO LOOKING AT YOU MEG MURRAY
Listen, you! We don’t have enough time left in the month to expect a companion piece about Mrs Murray O’Keefe.
I’ll be in the attic without Fortinbras because allergies.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sorry…
Yes! I just recently realised that all my favorite ya heroines followed this formula – no wonder awkward weird me loved all those awkward, funny looking, smart girls who turned in to beautiful and successful women. Anne Shirley, Meg Murray, Jo March (to a lesser extent).
Well I’m at least moderately SUCCESSFUL… The “thin and beautiful” thing… Well, *I* think I am beautiful. But I realize that society may not agree, in large (no pun intended) part because of the “thin” thing… 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
I assumed, as a child, that I would grow up to be tall, thin and beautiful. The fact that my family (on both sides) tends more to the short and plump side of things did not seem to be relevant. When I realised that the first two things definitely weren’t going to happen, and the third also seemed unlikely, I was very disappointed.
I know, right?! SO MANY kids’ stories fed me that lie.
That puffed sleeves would be the be-all, end-all of party fashions, and becoming a teacher in my early 20s would result in lasting-friendships with snobby locals and misadventures in which I bond with my charges. All lies, LMM, all lies.
The one thing LMM did prepare me for was that if (when, really) I drink too much wine at a small get-together, I will become exceedingly intoxicated, my mother will be horrified, and I will puke in bushes. And yet, it hasn’t stopped me.
no one will ever be able to convince me that puffed sleeves are not the very height of fashion
My favourite cocktail suit was a pink shantung number I had in the Eighties with a miniskirt, extended shoulders, sweetheart neckline, puffed sleeves with bows and, of course, a peplum.
My waist never looked so tiny.
Earlier this spring I took a staycation where I basically just put off sending one important email while cooking extravagant things for a week, so yes, it is possible to have that glorious pantry full of pies and cakes and tarts for any guests who may happen to come by! Although probably not so much under the current mode of capitalism 🙁
I will be stopping by your house for tea time.
Please do! Although right now all I have on hand is seltzer, yogurt, and ice cream, because capitalism
My life would have been so different if it had been…written by an author a hundred years ago.
(Damn: I was hoping that I could magically change my life into one written by LMM, although preferably with fewer long-kept secrets about half-siblings. Ever read Akin to Anne?)
I did! I think I finally got my hands on all the Rea Wilmhurst collections, and I am sad because it sounded like she had a couple more planned before she died.
Against the Odds has some pretty cool ones, and Among the Shadows.
Project Gutenberg has the complete short stories of LMM in chronological order! All the ones in the Wilmshurst collections, and then some.
jam doughnuts, homemade wine, creamed chicken, gingerbread with cream, lemon pies, pound cake, tongue, and puddings in general
And now this is what I want for lunch.
After I learned–the hard way–that re-enacting the Lady of Shalott was not an activity one could propose to other children without repercussions, I learned to take LMM’s promises with a grain of salt.
Other scenes from literature are also unacceptable, I’m given to understand.
This broke my heart so many times as a child. We were able to eventually compromise on Robin Hood, where they reenacted what they’d seen from the movie and I secretly stayed true to the book.
ME TOO. My friends in elementary school would humor me to an extent–if it was on Wishbone we could play it (mostly The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, 3 Musketeers) but they drew the line at poetry. Still now, as a grown up, no one cares that I can recite The Lady of Shallot
I CARE. I can only recite the first verse or two, I think. And probably not accurately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0rVNQw1DQM
Not the full lyrics, but I love this sung version!
YES. This is very familiar to me, from my Loreena McKennitt/Sarah McLaughlin/Wicca extension college classes phase.
I can attest that, once you make it to your mid-to-late-twenties and have assembled a proper assortment of librarians and grad students for friends, re-enactments, recitals, and copious liquor make for a hell of a party.
I had most-to-all of these things in my mid-to-late twenties, and yet this never happened? Something must have been off in the alchemy. I have to say though, there were cakes and dresses enough, so can’t complain?
We have not yet re-enacted LoS, but my book club did recently do a “synchronized” swimming routine to a large portion of Lemonade.
I think this may be even better? I know I definitely want to do this.
This is amazing
I took a blissful ride in a punt through a willow-lined stream a little while back and I mentally re-enacted the AoGG Lady of Shalott the ENTIRE TIME.
Not Three Men In A Boat (to say nothing of the dog)?
When my daughter was in third grade, she and some friends started re-enacting The Hunger Games. The teachers put a stop to that right quick, let me tell you.
I couldn’t even get a group of friends to write terrible romance stories with. 🙁
Think what fun LMM would have had with fan-fiction!
I would often reenact the climactic Simba/Scar duel at the end of The Lion King with my friend, in 4th grade, outside at recess. What that means is that we would circle each other, snarling, and then wrestle, in plain view of everyone.
Thank God for high school band, haven of the weird, earnest and expressive. I’d hate to think of what my middle- and high-school years would have been like if I hadn’t had a place to flee to, away from the witnesses of my strange youth.
I totally giggled at that mental image of growling nine-year-olds.
I was keen on putting on plays during that period. Snow White and Rose Red (which I believe I flounced from when I was not cast as one of the title characters even though it was my idea). A ridiculous desert island-genie thing I wrote with some friends and forced friends and family to sit through. I feel like I may have been a “challenging” friend/child.
I totally have an illustrated fanfiction of Snow White and Rose Red that I created when I was about that age.
I wanted to learn how to fence for the sole purpose of reenacting the duel between Wesley and Inigo in The Princess Bride.
“Unless he has studied his Agrippa! Which I have!”
“I am not left-handed!”
It didn’t happen, because I am as left-footed as I am right handed, and that won’t work in fencing. But it was a nice idea.
oooh! me too! Left-footed, right-handed, left-eyed. I fall over a lot.
My friend and I reenacted “I died that day! And you can die too for all I CARE!” and pushing Westley off of the couch! I mean down the steep slope. And then launching ourselves off of the sofa to roll across the floor as well. But at least there were no other witnesses.
I did one hell of an ROUS impression in the college cafeteria. I am lucky that by then I’d found many, many nerd friends and stopped caring about what anyone not among them thought.
#SpaceWitchConGoals
No that is pretty much my repertoire of cookery tho! Except the meats, I don’t have to do that, but i suffer through very few days without a pound cake or lemon pie on the counter.
There has literally never been a pie or a cake on my counter. We cook but do not bake; it is a great sadness. The most I have ever managed is cookies, extremely sporadically.
Will you marry me?
it turns out effusive declarations of eternal devotion did not actually make me any friends in elementary school, and in fact secured my identity as the weird smart girl everyone avoided. LMM let me down so hard.
it me
it me so much
Ow, my heart! Leave me not, as-yet unmet bosom friends! Pass not away from me as the Toast is broken into pieces for birds to carry away.
I don’t think I realized until now exactly how resentful I am of LMM’s lies. I used to sit outside in long dresses reading books while carefully arranged on the grass and no one ever thought I looked lovely or wistful. They just thought I was weird or perhaps a bit touched in the head. Hmph.
This is all making me feel so much less alone, having made it to 34 thinking that I was literally the only person who did stuff like this.
Oh no, there’s a legion of us across the globe, all of us faintly disappointed and perennially unable to travel on any road where trees are in bloom without thinking of the White Way of Delight.
Yesssssssssssss
This. This is me. Between LMM & American Girl books I was the weird kid who had solo tea parties outside in long dresses, reading Emily Dickinson. My poor mother (“Don’t you want to invite anyone over? To… not do that?”)
My parents enrolled me in volunteer opportunities in Boston to get me out of the house, which I suspect was a thinly veiled ploy to get me to be a bit more urban and a bit less Lady of Shallot.
“Don’t you want to invite anyone over? To… not do that?”
I laughed so hard.
A memory just came back to me. My mother taking me, my sister and a friend to a botanical garden…and I made them name everything with me, ponds, bridges, everything. Luckily they still speak to me.
Thing she did NOT lie about: the petty levels to which people can stoop about virtually anything. Reference: basically the entire book Rainbow Valley. The way the Merediths were treated? Bad. Kitty Alec Davis? Worse. Ellen telling Rosemary she can’t marry the man she loves because of a promise she’d made 10 years prior? Horrific.
Word
I can’t stand Rainbow Valley for all of these reasons. Anne of Ingleside is pretty bad too – I just read the chapter where Christine Stuart gets her comeuppance.
yes, that is weird. Anne of Ingleside is weird in general–it was written so much later and LMM was kind of sick of it all, but so many odd, kind of nasty stories–the terrible girlfriends Nan and Diana make, for one. The girl who cons Nan into thinking she was switched at birth.
Yeah, although as a childless-by-choice woman, I always get kind of prickly at the equation of “don’t want kids” with “shallow and selfish”.
Also, Ellen was the *worst*. Which is too bad, because she has great dialogue, but: THE WORST.
the petty levels to which people can stoop about virtually anything aka summary of A Tangled Web.
Families will TOTALLY rip each other up about an ugly piece of china. This is 100 per cent true. I don’t know how to assure you I’m in earnest and not being sarcastic.
YES. That book! (On the other hand, how much do I love Margaret?)
OH I love that book SO MUCH. That book, and Howards End, are my absolute favorites ever.
Truth. Reading LMM was pretty good preparation for the modern work world w/r/t pettiness.
And also for living in a condo. My association has a whole village worth of petty, eccentric inhabitants piled into one vintage low-rise building. But some of them are less endearing in person than I was led to believe.
That your large, argumentative family will have a lot of quarrels with each other but will unite against outsiders out of fundamental decency.
That Mean Girls will eventually bring their comeuppance upon themselves.
I’m still hoping that she’s right about how all you need to do to cow the badly behaved people in your life is find and perform the right quelling glare.
*practices her quelling glare in the mirror*
I practiced The Murray for hours as a young person, and all the only result was a permanent wrinkle between my eyebrows. : /
Frowning does make you smarter, though (second paragraph in #4 here): http://www.cracked.com/article_19971_5-things-you…
This explains a lot about Emily Starr AND Elizabeth Murray: they’re focused and detail-oriented!
You can’t summon the Murray Look; the Murray Look summons you.
Can we have an Emily of New Moon/Innsmouth crossover, please?
I feel like Emily and Ilse and Teddy and Perry would be pretty good paranormal investigators, actually.
Too much of the Starr in you, girl.
That the boys who insult you and pull your hair would grow up to be worthwhile human beings who were apologetic for their actions.
aw, sometimes they really do!!
They really do. I have had it happen. STILL NOT MARRYING THEM, YO. But I hug them at reunions.
Ugh, that was THE WORST. Between him and Mr. Darcy I was sure that I had to find a love/hate rivalry full of romantic tension in order to live happily ever after, but it seems that IRL the only guys who are into that are concealing hate/hate under the love/hate facade. I was pushing 30 before I realized this.
I hate that he’s-mean-to-you-because-he-likes-you trope, but Gilbert is my one exception to the rule. He was a jerk to her that one time, but he more than makes up for it with all his subsequent actions.
That hikes and walks will involve sunsets and whispering pines and fields of ferns and blueberries, instead of blackflies, goose poop and spruce bogs.
JOHN FOSTER’S BOOKS ARE LIES
You should have known he was a scoundrel, with eyebrows like that.
I know that Barney is really John Foster and all of his complaining about how the books are sentimental nonsense is misdirection, but I still agree with him. NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR PURPLE PROSE, JOHN FOSTER.
I’m pretty sure he writes them either just to get them out of his system or just for the heck of it to see how much wordiness people will lap up.
He’s like that best-selling author who thinks “this is tripe, I know it’s tripe, why are people buying it?”
Also, why tf are they best-sellers?? They are TERRIBLE BOOKS.
Be fair, there are a metric ton of terrible, awful, no good books that are best-sellers. Badfic sells, especially if you salt it good with Badporn.
SO TRUE. I actually moved to Canada (well, first Finland and then Canada) because I was that sure of this. But nope! Blackflies, goose poop, and spruce bogs all the way! (I mean, they have their charms too, but John Foster is a lying liar.)
I first read Blue Castle as kid while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes on a sweltering day in the Ontario Bush.
HE LIES.
(also, pet peeve, there’s no way that Barney and Valancy would have been able to skate everywhere as much as they did that winter because the snow covers the ice!!)
When we were living in Canada (for six years–just moved Down South again), I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Muskoka to channel Valancy, but maybe it’s just as well we couldn’t! The mosquitoes and sweltering alone probably would have been a crushing blow to my fantasy.
I’m going to Prince Edward Island in a couple of weeks (on a cruise with my grandma, so sadly I won’t be able to frolic as much as I want) and i fully intend to live my best AoGG lifestyle while there. Gilbert will magically appear, I’ll drink too much cordial, I’ll gossip with Rachel Lynde, and recite Tennyson. I figure that once I’m actually on PEI all of these lies will turn into truths. Right?
A cruise to PEI is LITERALLY my dream vacation right now; I didn’t think I could be more sad about The Toast ending but now I know I can’t even ask you to come back and report to us all about it in an Open Thread 🙁
Have so much fun on your trip, though! All those things will definitely happen and I’m sure it will be wildly delightful!
Maybe that’s the secret? Maybe these things are only true on PEI?
I went when I was 13! It IS as beautiful as it looks/sounds, even if you have a passive-aggressive mom and not a Gilbert.
I went when I was 65 with DH. We had fun taking watching the Japanese tourists squeeing over Green Gables and bought a five pounds of potatoes from some Australian hobby farmers to take home as souvenirs.
I just got back from PEI (I DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE) and I definitely brought back raspberry cordial with me. Everything about the trip was perfection. And I have about 4,000 pictures of red cliffs by the ocean. And I met about 100 kindred spirits (but that was probably mainly because I was at a Montgomery conference and it seems to be a rule that only people who are of the race that knows Joseph are allowed to come)
When I read this I had to double check I wasn’t reading a comment posted last summer by me. Because I went on a cruise to Canada with my grandma last summer and it included stopping at PEI and me taking the Anne tour. (She’s too frail to do that/not interested.) She invited me by calling me and asking if I wanted to see Green Gables, to which I immediately and enthusiastically said yes. I am happy to answer any and all questions about it from anyone because my family didn’t want to hear all the details.
I don’t live too far from PEI, and one time I went there and looked out my hotel window to see a helicopter landing, and then a costumed Anne and Diana jumping out of it.
So lies, yes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when it leads to scenarios like that.
Here’s a hot PEI story (I’m trying to comment a lot while I still can…)
I met Roberta Bondar, Canada’s first female astronaut, outside of Anne’s room at Green Gables, when she tried to give my dad photography tips (which is amazing). The whole thing was Peak Canadian Woman.
She was like “I’m Roberta Bondar, the astronaut” and I was like I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. (I had what was essentially a shrine to the Canadian space team in my childhood bedroom.)
My dad sent her the photo to sign, which she did, and now I have a signed photo with me and Roberta Bondar outside Anne’s room in Green Gables, and, well, life is good.
and then on the flip side, if you read her journals, you can convince yourself that your depression will never get better, everyone you love dearly will die young and that you beloved firstborn will turn into a sociopath who will destroy your peace and happiness.
I think Chester McDonald is 90% of the reason I’m terrified of motherhood.
And yet… and yet…
I can’t be mad at her. Mostly because I think I still believe in all those lies, and am just a late late late bloomer. My time is coming!
Off to recite some poetry to myself and the trees.
Dirtbag Lucy Maud Montgomery.
WOULD READ.
I want Dirtbag Diana Barry
That the boy who pulled my hair in 5th grade would grow up to be my true love. Instead he grew up to be an astronaut.
why is everyone saying this!? did all the little shits in your life truly grow up to be big shits?! the boy i thought would be my gilbert is not, but he is a very sweet person and we are friends! and a few years ago i saw a more persistent hair-puller/fighter/mocker and he apologized for being a little shit and is, by all rumors and appearances, a lovely and upstanding citizen now.
Not all of them! My elementary school hair-puller has been a great boyfriend to my high school best friend for several years and apologized to me profusely for pulling my hair by saying ‘I’m so sorry. I liked you a lot and had no idea how to deal with my feelings or how to act like a human being.’
Also, the idea that Being a Spinster could be your job and you’d get a house and a garden and not have to do anything else to pay the bills.
Elizabeth Gaskell and Agatha Christie also lied to me about this.
Life goals tbh. I am DETERMINED that this will not be a lie.
Please let us know your secrets, when you discover them.
grad school
The problem with grad school is eventually they make you graduate.
but by then you’ve established your etsy knitting shop/baking blog/cat sitting service?!!?!??
Hmm. I should have been more on top of that? And also moved away from CA to someplace with an extremely low cost of living.
Sadly, I think it’s inherited wealth.
THIS
I would now like to print business cards that read “Amy Mullen, Spinster.”
The greatest lie, above all: Invariably, you will charm those you meet with your strangeness. The basement of your soul is well-covered with a vapor barrier and the springs of Self-Doubt and Apprehension cannot and will not seep upward into your heart.
I have charmed exactly one person with my strangeness in my entire life. But it turns, one is really all you need.
I charmed one, but then he met Christine Stewart and lost his taste for my variety of weird.
Ooh I had not thought that my soul was/had a basement!
I find it’s a handy storage space for the things I’d rather not think or feel.
WHY YES I’M A PARAGON OF MENTAL HEALTH, THANK YOU.
What else are souls for?
Truth.
I remember when a co-worker told me that he’d just seen the PBS version of Anne of Green Gables and that I reminded him of Anne. I was flattered until I realized that he really didn’t mean it as a complement. He meant that he thought that Anne and I were both weird.
I regret to say that I am in my thirties, and somehow managed to develop an irritatingly persistent crush on a man whom I should not rationally like, and who clearly and openly thinks I’m weird, and not in a good way.
Why you gotta play me like that, heart o’ mine?
How in the everlasting fuck is that what someone took away from the Megan Follows AoGG? That’s all he got?
Oh god, reminds me of something that happened at a previous job–I was talking to my manager about some time off I had requested. A coworker overheard and asked where I was going.
“To a Sherlock Holmes convention in Atlanta, mostly to hang out with people I met online.”
“Wow, you’re a nerd.”
“Yeah, I sure am!” –with a big smile on my face
And he looked really confused? And that’s when it hit me that he meant it as an insult.
My exact thought process as I read this. “AwwwwWHAT?!” How can being compared to Anne Freaking Shirley not be a compliment? I’m so sorry you have to work with that person!
It was a long time ago and we’re no longer coworkers. Thank goodness. He was creepy for many other reasons.
It was a weird conversation. He told me I reminded him of Anne and I was like, omg, I looved those books growing up. And he was like, books? There were books?
Do any boys read Anne?
That is a good question. My guess is that some boys do. But I don’t know any. The boys whose reading habits I know about did/do not read Anne (mostly my brother, my nephews, my cousin and my husband – which is not a big sample). I’ve noticed that my 9 yo niece is really not interested in reading about boys and only reads stories about girls but her younger brother is still willing to read stories about girls – although he’d frankly rather read about oceans and sea mammals.
That people would willingly act out poems and stories with me and be mildly impressed with my ability to recite The Lady of Shallot/ think my recitation of poetry is charmingly romantic instead of just plain odd
That you could be mean to a boy for years and not only would his affection for you grow ever deeper but he would grow into a mature, thoughtful man… Instead of the boy just actually hating you and growing up to be some entitled redneck lout who posts pictures of his truck on Facebook and sexually offensive memes.
Ugh, where’s my long line of respectable suitors? I want those instead of tonight’s OKCupid date that I’m not remotely looking forward to. And where the hell is my Gilbert Blythe?
I do love all the gossip about townspeople that pervades her books, especially in the later Anne books. They always seem to be judging people by their housekeeping or some weird story about a relative.
That after an ugly childhood and gawky adolescence, I would blossom into a legendary beauty, the type of which that would awe strangers and be best described as “lissome” and “shining,”
This. See also Madeline L’Engle. At least Meg was an award winning scientist as well as a raving beauty. But still. Adulthood has been very disappointing w/r/t ethereal beauty.
Honestly I was so messed up by all the Victorian girls lit I read, I plan to actually not share it with my kid(s). Between LMM, Alcott, and Hodgson Burnett, I fully drank the Angel in the House Kool-Aid, to the point I liked Mary Ingalls better than Laura! I felt bad about not being Christian (I tried but my non-religious upbringing kept winning out), or pretty, quiet, and neat, because even though all those books have a heroine who doesn’t fit the ideals of the time she’s constantly made to feel bad about it, and strives to keep her temper and imagination in check. So even all the lovely dresses and tea parties and poetry didn’t stick with me as much as the ideals of Victorian Womanhood, which remain somewhere in my subconscious no matter how hard I’ve rejected them.
It’s actually kind of amazing to think that those books might still be fucking kids up almost 100 years after original publication…
Honestly, upon reflection I don’t think those Victorian ideals are really that different from today; I still feel weird because I talk too much, am not good at mimicking the culture’s beauty ideals, and don’t keep a perfect house/parent perfectly. We’re just expected to excel in careers now too…
I liked Mary better too. And Beezus better than Ramona. Oldest child + rule follower.
Yep, and identified with Meg March. It’s odd because the stories are all from the perspectives of the more interesting younger sisters, but I couldn’t help but feel bad for their older sisters.
Howl’s Moving Castle was a very important part of my childhood canon for this exact reason.
Definitely related more to Beezus, even though I’m the younger child.
Yup. To all of these and Meg March.
it me.
See also: Meg Murray’s obsessive need for Calvin, which I suspect deeply messed up the way I thought about boys.
My biggest complaint is nobody except my mother thought getting my period was as big a deal as I did, and all my friends clearly thought I was weird for getting excited about it at the start of 8th grade (both those who had and hadn’t gotten theirs). Can definitely chalk that up to Are You There God?, which I will probably also not be giving to any theoretical daughters, just because I don’t think I would’ve made it into such a big deal on my own.
I had kind of the opposite experience! I wondered if there was something wrong with me because my reaction to getting my period was basically “ew” and “well, this sucks” in contrast with those Judy Blume girls who were so excited about it.
(Also, in general Just As Long As We’re Together made me feel so self-conscious about being “the smart one.”)
I was the last person I knew to get mine (I was days short of turning fifteen), and I still had the reaction of “well, shit, I guess it was gonna happen sooner or later. What a hassle.”
Please, please, please give your children modern literature.
1) Growing up reading Boxcar Children books where a loaf of bread costs something like thirty-five sense really messed up my sense of how the economy works. (Are there children’s books that talk about inflation? We need those.)
2) I definitely thought the Cold War was still running in 1999 because I didn’t know to look at copyright dates on library books.
3) Was not aware that gollywogs are super racist; thanks so much for that, Enid Blyton!
4) I am now twenty-seven years old and have still not stumbled upon an international jewel-theft ring and I feel that Carolyn Keene owes me a goddamn apology.
After reading Nella Last’s Mass Observation diaries about the Second World War and the period immediately following, it was really jarring to go to the supermarket and buy food with all the stuff she’d written about rationing and food prices and thrift in my head. I felt like an extravagant monster.
Mass Observation! I wrote my senior thesis on the history of British women in WWII and I read so, so many Mass Observation diaries. They were fascinating.
They really are. I should obtain more of them, because they are great. (The archives are housed at the University of Sussex, which is really near my hometown, so I have been to a few talks by researchers using the material for their work – there’s so much cool stuff in there.)
I still have most of my childhood favorites and a son who’s turning 3 soon, and I plan to reread a lot of them and decide whether I really want to give them to him. For me it’s not even so much the overt problems as the subtle unspoken things; that the colonization of the western United States was exciting and necessary (Little House books), that the colonization of India was perfectly fine (Secret Garden), the expectations of female people (the books we’re discussing above). On the one hand reading a lot of children’s classics gave me an excellent sense of cultural history, but there was so much I had to unlearn as I got older, compounded by being the last generation of children to learn about things like the conquistadores as unquestioned heroes (I’m 35). My parents’ generation rolls their eyes when I talk about this stuff, and I don’t know modern kids’ lit past Harry Potter at all, but I don’t want to give him an unexamined idea of western civ like I grew up with.
Do you like Louise Erdrich? Her Birchbark House series is a nice antidote to all that Manifest Destiny in the Little House books. My son turned three today and I’m planning to read them to him as soon as he can sit still and would be interested. They came out once I was an adult (I’m 37), and I wish they’d been around when we were kids.
I just read a review of a children’s book by Sherman Alexie (who also wrote a great young adult novel), so you can definitely start early!
I went to any author signing by Lucy Tapahonso and they ran out of her poetry so I bought her picture book about Shiprock fair, if you want more Native picture books.
ughhhh cents not sense I’m so tired today
By the way, as an American, reading the Enid Blyton books was EXTRA confusing and amazing. My Canadian mom had lived in England for several years, so I was always going to her to ask “What’s this Snap that they’re playing? What’s clotted cream? What’s a lorry? Wait, the kids are drinking ginger BEER?!” Also thanks to reading her books in my youth, I have a weird vocabulary and spelling, and sometimes don’t even know what’s American, what’s Canadian and what’s British. (Like “The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage,” do Americans even say burnt? Maybe only if it’s burnt toast. TOAST, noooo! But I can’t think of rules for when we say burnt vs burned.) Also I don’t even know if we had golliwogs over here in the USA, so when I read those Noddy books, I thought Golly was just a PoC doll and that’s all. It never crossed my mind to realize that he’s the ONLY PoC and also the one who is always BAD until my mom pointed it out. Ugh. But we sure loved all those Enid Blyton books.
I was really confused as a child reading UK editions of American books – I knew that Americans said some things differently to how I said them, but in my BSC books they were all calling their mothers “Mum” – was that a Connecticut thing? What was going on? I would have much preferred it if the editors had left the text as it was.
I hear you about drinking that kool-aid. My parents say that when they offered to put me in little league with my siblings, I said no because it “wasn’t ladylike” (I have no memory of this). It has to have been from the stuff I was reading, since it’s not like my parents had those views or cared about ladylike-ness. I’m now fully on the Ban Men platform, so. :p
Truth. I managed to pick up some bizarre attitudes about sex from the books I read – I really thought that sex should be a surprise on one’s wedding night. To the point that I kind if thought I’d ruined the surprise when I read an explicit sex scene in a friend’s romance novel when I was 14. Looking back, I’m sure it wasn’t explicit by today’s standards, but there were thrusting hips and spreading thighs and it was the first time I understood how the bodies and body parts lined up during heterosexual sex.
Definitely related to and copied the books, although I mostly have positive associations. To the point when in college I had to choose a senior thesis topic, and I thought of a book I could write about and obsess over for a year and not hate at the end that hadn’t been done to death, so I chose Secret Garden. But also my family is/was pretty big on being polite and ladylike, and emulating the books helped me not be a shouting interrupter. (Not in a “stifle the girl” way, but in a “don’t hurt our eardrums and also let the other person finish a sentence” basic politeness way.)
I related to Meg March and Meg Murray and Are You There God because of my name, although I definitely wanted to be Jo. (Actually L’Engle GOT ME because of my name and I had a little brother who is/was super smart who had one of Charles Wallace’s names, so basically I was sad when we didn’t get angels in our garden although I was happy my brother didn’t get sick and we didn’t have to time travel.)
Wow, I read all those books and loved the Victorian girls lit genre, but I think my awesome mom just kept things in balance by encouraging me (and my brothers too) to read some of everything: fantasy, historic fiction, mythology, Newbery winners, mysteries. And I think she didn’t like Little Women (not sure why? maybe too focused on romance?) and actively disliked Jane Austen (because she thought it was silly just to be stories about women looking for husbands) and she forbade me to read some romances that other girls in my school were reading. So I guess she probably believed being the Angel of the House was ok, but not the one and only route I should be aiming for, and also not something I needed to be even thinking about as a young adult.
And now I’m a happy forever spinster! Yay! (Haha, she’d probably be alarmed if she thought she was the cause. But she wasn’t really. My older four siblings all married, I’m just the feisty youngest sister of our story.)
Oh, I read very widely and had feminist parents, but this stuff still had such a pernicious influence on my formative ideals that that’s why I’m so cautious about letting my kids read them. It took me years to even realize how much it had sunk in.
That’s so interesting! Maybe it’s because I actually grew up in a church and Christian school where a lot of my peers really did think they needed to find a man and become the Angel in the House that I rebelled against it. I enjoyed reading about those historic eras, but I definitely knew I didn’t need to be Miss Prim and Proper and catch a man. (Though my mom also did teach me to be ladylike and learn how to cook and sew and take care of a home. Haha not a homo, silly typing fingers.) It’s so interesting that you just gravitated toward all that on your own, in SPITE of your parents.
But you know, if you forbid your kids from reading them, they might gravitate toward them too! Plus they’ll be missing out on “cultural literacy” which was something my mom also favored. (Man, my mom really is the greatest.)
Haha a couple years after I left home (and my home chruch) for college, I was visiting my parents and saw a booklet on the table called “Keepers in the Home” and asked my mom what it was. She said it was something that the ladies in the church were considering as sort of a church version of Girl Scouts. I looked through and it was all about cooking, flower arranging (!!!), table settings and things like that. I told my mom “DO NOT LET THEM CHOOSE THIS BOOK!” I’m glad to say they didn’t.
I definitely got anxious about the fact that I didn’t say prayers before bed, which apparently all good children did. I think that was a combo of Anne of green gables and Heidi and little house on the prairie. So I memorized the prayer in A Child’s Garden of Verses and for a while would say it before I went to sleep. My poor atheist parents were so perplexed.
You are all my kindred spirits.
Did anyone else mourn when it was revealed her death was suicide, even though she’d been dead for ~70 years by then?
I felt bad when even my kid book The Anne of Green Gables treasury couldn’t hide over that she had a pretty unhappy life in the little biography they included.
…oh my god, I missed this somehow. Oh no 🙁
Yes! I learned this after I moved to Canada and her descendants were talking about it in a major newspaper ( I forget which one). I felt so sad for her and for them, and also (in a different way) sad that she’d been working on a sequel to Jane of Lantern Hill.
oh, I never knew that about Jane!
I read a great biography on LMM, The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio, that went through her life. It made me appreciate the creepier aspects of her work, particularly in the Pat of Silver Bush books, which everyone likes to put down.
I think I joked about Pat earlier, but yeah, as a manifestation of depression and anxiety it’s pretty intense. I like to think about them with Jane of Lantern Hill to, via Elizabeth Epperly, when she talks about how differently they use domesticity and love of home–Jane’s love of homemaking/keeping becoming a force for liberation in her life, while for Pat it becomes a kind of paralysis.
Yes- that’s awful. It’s terrible to think about the happiness of so many of her books compared to the reality of her life. I’ve been meaning to read LM Montgomery’s journals, which I’ve read parts of before, and in what I remember reading she said, essentially, that she never loved her husband and only married him because she wanted children and wasn’t sure she’d get another chance. Mr. Meredith is supposedly based on her husband.
That’s so sad, especially as her books contain so many instances of people bringing up children not their own – it’s made very clear that marriage is not the only route to childrearing.
Okay, but my mom middle-named me after Anne with an E, and I always secretly felt that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy because I turned out dreamy and bookish and outspoken, and so whenever someone mentions to me that they don’t like AoGG, they have no idea but I feel PERSONALLY REJECTED.
Which LMM character are you? Your options are Anne, Emily or Valancy, unless you think of a better one.
Valancy, I hope.
Always and forever Emily
Mostly Emily, with a Valancy streak. (I would like to have a Jane Stuart streak, too.)
I was just going to say this, in exactly that combo! Kindred spirits, maybe?
I’m pretty sure I’m Mary Vance.
I’m probably Miss Cornelia.
I aspire to being more like Mrs Rachel Lynde.
Diana Barry with a small streak of Josie Pye.
Valancy, always, now and forever.
So,so Valancy.
I’m not lissome either, and my dishcloths are a disgrace, but I don’t keep all my goods in the shop window either; does that count for anything?
A thing Emily of New Moon didn’t lie about – that having a teacher who reads your writing carefully and gives you honest praise and honest critique all mixed together is the best and you will treasure that honest critique and praise through decades of rejection.
sigh. i agree with this but i’m also concerned about what it conceals, namely, that such an insistent valorization of curmudgeonly old men makes for some pretty uncomfortable cultural and erotic patterns
Mr. Carpenter is my favorite, and I miss him. I’d reread the books, but I’ll just end up missing him again.
There is so much of Mr. Carpenter’s advice that LMM really ought to have taken more often herself.
I am a great fan of old curmudgeons, as long as they don’t creep on anyone, which Mr. C. didn’t as far as I recall — unlike Mr. Kelly teasing Emily about sweethearts and such, which I always thought very embarrassing. I do wonder what the story was with Mr. Carpenter’s wife.
How I will miss the Toast.
“That I would be faced with a number of handsome and respectful (or at the very least, respectful) potential suitors and/or love interests, instead of a series of dates and boyfriends that varied between “mildly weird with the potential for good stories,” to “heartbreakingly misguided,” to “outright alarming.””
I am to shift to Canada this fall, so basically things are not going to look up for me even after I travel half way across the world? Just Great.
Seriously, did any of you spend a lot of your childhood in a state of permanent anger at the existence of modernity? Like, cars and paved roads and sneakers made me SO MAD. I wanted to live in my fake-historical / fantasy world, which was full of fluttering gowns and dirt roads and horses and the like. Everything I saw that didn’t fit offended me.
In some ways I was relieved by it, like the fact that we had cars instead of horses, because I felt very bad about the poor horses’ suffering (thanks, Black Beauty). But I was also anxious about all the new problems we’d created (cars may mean no horses pulling heavy carts and being whipped, but also meant pollution). So everything just felt terrible in various ways.
It’s just a different sort of pollution because not to put too fine a point on it, horses shit. A lot.
I was also very annoyed that our house couldn’t possibly have been haunted by previous owners and the tragic events of years past because we bought it brand-new and it had been finished maybe three weeks before we moved in.
Plus it was a tract home in central California and kinda lacking in Gothic mystery.
Yes, I definitely did. But then I grew up and realized that I actually wanted a career and the right to own my own property and air conditioning (maybe not that relevant in Canada but definitely a must in VA)… So, I am ok with it now, but I really wish I could dress like the 1950s actually.
Oh, a/c is absolutely a must in most of Canada unless you’re WAY up north. It’s usually more than 30 degrees (Celsius) here in the summer.
The way I got around this was convincing my mother to let me volunteer at our local history living history museum, where we got wear petticoats, embroider things, “attend” school in a one room school house, but still get to use a normal bathroom. It was magical.
Perfect! Because yes, indoor plumbing is an essential exception.
I was a docent at a living history museum, too, and it helped a lot.
ABSOLUTELY. I was desperate to live in old buildings, and I hated jeans and sneakers and wanted a bonnet or at least a straw hat with a ribbon. I refused to wear pants (except in gym where it was mandatory) and only wore dresses and skirts through elementary school. I’m a little more tolerant now, but still very happy to live in a 100-year-old apartment building with fancy moldings and high ceilings, and I’m decorating it mostly with Ikea pieces that ape furniture from that time.
Are you… me? At age seven I insisted on “dressing for dinner” which mainly meant wearing my favorite forest green corduroy dress with puffed sleeves.
Oh my Gawd, I did that too! Maybe so!!! (I mean, for me it was a dirndl, but same difference really.)
YES. I spent a good chunk of childhood wanting to be a “little old-fashioned girl”, as I put it in my head. As it happened, I DID live in a rather beautiful part of the world (small New Zealand city surrounded by lots of rolling green hills and the sea), and I also happened to live across the street from a field (!) with sheep (!!) and two horses (!!!) in it. Yet all these tantalising touches just made the enduring existence of paved roads and buses and computers all the more enraging. I was so close to the old-fashioned life – yet so far away … It led to a very strange melancholy that I remember clearly but haven’t thought about in a while.
Also, Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat are really depressing, right? Not just me?
(one of the first “scholarly” books I ever bought was The Fragrance of Sweet Grass by Elizabeth Epperly)
Also, I often feel kind of. . .left out, by that bit in Emily Climbs where it talks about the moment “everyone” has when they become a girl instead of a child.
In retrospect, they’re horrifying. As someone who was basically Pat as a kid, I didn’t see that on first read.
LIMPID POOLS
that is all
Stuff about Lucy Maud Montgomery has always been among the highlights of the Toast. Thank you for this; it is great.
That as an adult woman, I would be judged mostly on the skill of my housekeeping, and people would comment on the cleanliness of my dishcloths and quality of my ironing rather than literally every single other decision I made starting with my clothes and ending somewhere around the way I chose to orient staples in paperwork.
The first time my parents came to visit after I’d moved out and into a flat with my boyfriend, I felt that it was Very Important to clean thoroughly, remembering Marilla and Mrs Lynde going to visit Anne after her marriage and the latter checking that the bread box and the scraps pail were correctly filled.
(My mum did not, oddly enough, peer into either of those containers while visiting me.)
I clean the hell out of my house to passive-aggressively one up my sisters-in-law, who are both conservative Christians and think a woman’s place is in the home but are not that great at housekeeping or decorating. Their own passive-aggressive judgment of me has kind of made me a little nuts, so I get my digs where I can.
the first time my now-in-laws visited i cleaned obsessively and felt SO vindicated when i later learned that my husband’s father had been surprised by (to the extent of commenting on!) how clean our apartment was. then i felt like a shitty feminist.
Not a shitty feminist, just one who knows how to use tropes to her advantage!
With LMM as my guide, I cleaned obsessively the first time my mother-in-law was coming to visit my new home. Afterward I was so pleased when my husband said that his mother had remarked on how clean the house was. I said “wow! a compliment!” and he said “not exactly…what she said was the house is so clean it looks like nobody lives here.” Can’t win.
That housebuying and keeping and cooking is delightful, tbh.
Did anyone read Kilmeny of the Orchard? I spent like two years using the name Kilmeny for characters in my fiction writing after that and lamenting that I didn’t have long black hair.
In hindsight though, what a letdown: man falls in love with young mute woman, only her love for him can “cure” her, bla bla bla.
That book is turrrrrrible. I try to forget I even read it.
I keep trying to read it again every few years out of nostalgia for my childhood wish for long black hair and I wonder how bad could an LMM book be anyway, and am always like D: D: D:
I only recently read the book for the first time, and yes. Awful.
Did anyone else think a lot about Anne’s question to Matthew (would you rather be divinely beautiful, dazzlingly clever or angelically good)? I did. As a child and teenager I couldn’t see why anyone would pick anything other than dazzlingly clever, but now I am sometimes tempted by the thought of being angelically good. (I think I resigned myself to the fact that I would never be beautiful at a young age, so struck it from the list immediately.)
but like! no one really cares how clever anyone is as long as they’re capable; you can always BE BETTER if you want to (but who wants to?); divine beauty is the only one of those that is fully out of your control. i still wants it.
I angsted very hard over this as a teen, because I couldn’t decide whether I would rather be an amazing writer or a really good (ethical / moral) person, and I was afraid the fact that it wasn’t an easy decision meant that I’d never be really good. I’d forgotten that my feeling I *must* decide between those things probably came from Anne.
And yeah, I didn’t consider the possibility of beautiful, presumably because that ship had already sailed.
During my college years, the powers that be put up large sheets of paper in the stalls in the women’s restrooms at the library in hopes of encouraging intelligent graffiti, and I left this very question as a poll. I believe “dazzlingly clever” won out.
Nope, didn’t agonize. It was dazzlingly clever or nothing for me. 🙂
I am frankly surprised that this comment got through. Have you never heard of humor? If you don’t think it’s funny, don’t laugh. Simple as that.
YOU’RE ALL SHININGLY BEAUTIFUL
That I and my friends will dreamily quote Tennyson, Blake, and Virgil at the drop of a hat….
I have been looking for something like this since I started reading The Toast, and now I get it on the second-to-last day. I don’t know whether I’m happier or sadder.
100% certain I am not he only person who trolls Ravelry for cotton warp tobacco leaf spread patterns, and seriously contemplates making them.
“That as an adult woman, I would be judged mostly on the skill of my housekeeping, and people would comment on the cleanliness of my dishcloths and quality of my ironing rather than literally every single other decision I made starting with my clothes and ending somewhere around the way I chose to orient staples in paperwork.”
Ow. Too close to home.
what am i going to do without all of this, without all of you? i need you in my life.
This reminds me of a thought that frequently occurs to me: that everything in real life is a smaller, shittier, tawdrier, tackier, more ridiculous version of everything I ever read of in “serious” books as an adolescent.
This reminds me of a thought that frequently occurs to me: that everything in real life is a smaller, shittier, tawdrier, tackier, more ridiculous version of everything I ever read of in "serious" books as an adolescent.
Truth. I managed to pick up some bizarre attitudes about sex from the books I read – I really thought that sex should be a surprise on one's wedding night. To the point that I kind if thought I'd ruined the surprise when I read an explicit sex scene in a friend's romance novel when I was 14. Looking back, I'm sure it wasn't explicit by today's standards, but there were thrusting hips and spreading thighs and it was the first time I understood how the bodies and body parts lined up during heterosexual sex.
I am on Twitter as @SonshineMusic. I'm not on Reddit because I can't figure it out haha
Speaking of LMM (for the LAST TIME, perhaps), I want to discuss this exchange from Anne of the Island about Patty’s Place:
“You LOVE it,” said Miss Patty with emphasis. “Does that mean that you really LOVE it? Or that you merely like the looks of it? The girls nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements that one never can tell what they DO mean. It wasn’t so in my young days. THEN a girl did not say she LOVED turnips, in just the same tone as she might have said she loved her mother or her Savior.”
Anne’s conscience bore her up.
“I really do love it,” she said gently. “I’ve loved it ever since I saw it last fall. My two college chums and I want to keep house next year instead of boarding, so we are looking for a little place to rent; and when I saw that this house was to let I was so happy.”
How are Anne’s feelings about a house she has never been inside closer to love for “her mother or her Savior” than they are to another girl’s fondness for turnips? Surely this is also just such an exaggerated statement? If I were Anne I would go bright red and slink out in mortification.
There is never a last time to talk about LMM!
I kind of agree with you on that–although I know the idea is that Anne just ~*~loves~*~ the place in a more “I love it for what it is” than “I love that you could tear it down and build a gigantic place here on Spofford Avenue,” which is what I’m sure a lot of other people would think. But no, I don’t think it’s possible that Anne could have loved Patty’s Place that much having never stepped foot inside it! (As someone who has looked at a lot of houses, Anne: sometimes you can’t smell the cat pee until you’ve stepped inside.) Who’s to say that another girl didn’t LOVE turnips with an unearthly vim, and had a passion for breeding new varieties or making turnip bisque, or whatever?
Come on, Anne.
This is amazing
It was a long time ago and we're no longer coworkers. Thank goodness. He was creepy for many other reasons.
It was a weird conversation. He told me I reminded him of Anne and I was like, omg, I looved those books growing up. And he was like, books? There were books?
Now sing it to the tune of Greensleeves. You will be such a hit at parties!
That is a good question. My guess is that some boys do. But I don't know any. The boys whose reading habits I know about did/do not read Anne (mostly my brother, my nephews, my cousin and my husband – which is not a big sample). I've noticed that my 9 yo niece is really not interested in reading about boys and only reads stories about girls but her younger brother is still willing to read stories about girls – although he'd frankly rather read about oceans and sea mammals.
Something else she didn’t lie about… sometimes life shoves your face into an ant’s nest.
Why, he's been known to enjoy a glass himself, as you well know, Rachel Lynde.
That I will find a kindred spirit who will be my bosom friend. That’s literally ALL I want from life. A fellow geek I can cosplay with and scream about our fictional favourites.