Glad to be home December 31, 2007

I’m sooooo glad to be home! My husband and I spent a week at his parents’ house for Christmas and believe it or not, this is the first year in my entire life that I haven’t gone home at Christmas. While I was at the in-laws’ in the States I spent my time reading my first book for the Canadian Book Challenge. I think it’s absolutely amazing that I still love L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables just as much now as I did as a little girl. I think it’s the nostalgic quality that gets me, but I can’t really put my finger on it. I was a bit surprised at the racism and classism (is that a word?) at the very beginning of the book but the rest of the story completely eclipses those elements in the end. Montgomery’s description of the nature surrounding Green Gables reminds me of my own farm upbringing and all of the time I used to spend exploring the ravine behind my house. I think the most striking thing about the story though, is that now that I know about ADHD I think that Anne has it! I realize that a character in a book can’t have a neuro-chemical disorder unless the author says so but Anne’s dreaminess, imagination, and multiple scrapes are exactly how I was as a child! Maybe that’s why she’s so loveable…because she is so flawed. In any case it’s a good thing that Montgomery wrote several Anne books because I just want to keep reading about Anne. Whether or not I have time to do that with five English courses on the go is another matter altogether!