The other day on the Guardian’s book blog, Sam Jordison reminisced about his childhood reading, and I was vaguely amused to find his ‘distant’ childhood was quite recent. Didn’t comment on it, as that would have been ageist, but I feel that any historical musings need to be a little, well, more historical. The 1960s, for instance, and not the late 1980s. It seems the young Sam was mainly concerned with losing his marbles. No, I’ll check that again. Losing at marbles. Slight difference.
But what I couldn’t resist commenting on (read complain) was Sam’s totally incorrect view that ‘Anne of Green Gables (is) a bore’. I’m the first to admit that Sam is entitled to his opinion, however faulty, but to be allowed (Guardian editors can be strict) to state it as a fact, was a bit much for me. And it was only as I brought the subject up that anyone else noticed. They’d all been too busy discussing the main theme of his blog, a book I don’t know, so can’t say anything about. As I feel the whole point of a Guardian blog is to get a little off topic with the comments, it was clearly high time to defend Anne.
I’ll leave Blyton alone, and Willard Price, too. Dahl and Carroll are good, but not necessarily geniuses. You don’t have to like Anne, but she is no bore. Considering how popular she is, I was shocked to find that no fan jumped in to say anything at all. Where were you all?
Plates of biscuits and glasses of Ribena? Go and get them yourself, Sam! Oh, and I’ll have a mug of Earl Grey while you’re in the kitchen. Please.
And I’m of the opinion that you can go home again. Not to Kirrin Island, perhaps, but Prince Edward Island still works for countless elderly women. And me.
Confession. I have never read Anne of Green Gables – one of those gaps in one’s reading that sometimes happens – but now I definitely will! Off to brew a pot of tea…
I’m most flattered by a very nice blog… Even though I of course disagree… Perhaps I should admit to a certain bias against Ann, based on the kind of sentimentality I disparage on my blog… viz, my younger sister used to love watching the 1980s TV programme about her – driving me from the living room in a sulk, probably not wanting to watch anything so girly…
Caroline, how very brave of you to admit this! I have ‘not read’ loads of stuff, and some things I wouldn’t dream of even trying. I revisited Anne when the prequel was published last year, before interviewing Budge Wilson, and she still holds her head up high.
Sam, I can’t believe you have based your unfair prejudice on the television series and your younger sister!! The television wasn’t bad, but nothing compared to the book(s). I had intended to ask if you’d actually bothered to read Anne, and then you haven’t even bothered with the television series. If you had read the book, you’d know how seriously Anne takes that last ‘e’ (missing above…).
Equally, I don’t like being given the extra ‘e’.
Anne is supremely cool. I particularly like the bit in one of the books where she talks about why she’s going to university and emphatically denies the allegation of Josie/Gertie (I can’t remember the difference) that she’s just going ‘to catch a man’.
I, too, love Ann, despite being dragged on a practice holiday to Prince Edward Island (Ann country) en famille when I was 14 — practice for a possible trip the following year to England. Which we (four sisters) failed miserably. I particularly remember my father shouting “Look at the view, damn it!” as we drove through New Brunswick.
But I digress.
My only criticism of Ann is that when I read books 1-5 aloud to my daughter, I had to edit LMM as I went. A little too purple for both our tastes, but then, I err on the side of Elmore Leonard.
It’s Anne, Meg!!! Though good to know you love her.
I love purple.
I’me re-reading the Anne books right now and re-enjoyed the first one hugely (I’m on Anne of Avonlea now and finding it not quite as good…)
It’s funny how landscapes in children’s books take on mythical status – Prince Edward island, like the States in the Laura Ingalls books, was as exotic and unlikely to me as a child as Narnia – I believed in them without thinking they were actually real places it was possible to visit, and had my own totally made-up ideas of what mayflowers or June lilies or gophers looked like (I still have no idea what those flowers are..)
I always wanted to visit PEI, but I’m less sure about that now. Suspect I might be disappointed. It’s supposed to be quite touristy and full of Japanese Anne fans. And let’s face it; the books are set long ago. It can’t still be the same.
Still want to see Kirrin Island, though, but that may be more like Narnia.
“As I feel the whole point of a Guardian blog is to get a little off topic with the comments, it was clearly high time to defend Anne.” Great.
I didn´t meet Anne when I was a child. Don´t know if they were translated too late, or my local library just didn´t have them. I know I would have loved her, though, my bookish daughter does, and she has read aloud so many fine phrases and paragraphs that I feel I know her quite well.
Never judge a book by its TV series!
All I know is that the Swedish translation was the first in the world, in 1909. Remember it well. But I didn’t read it at school because I thought the title was one of the most stupid sounding book titles I’d heard.
Girly? Sam! Anne had guts. She walloped people. Grew up to be a writer with all the odds stacked against her – and she even managed to do it with red hair (like me). I loved her so much I sort of copied her hair catastrophe, aged 10. I didn’t dye mine green but I read in my mum’s 1950s ‘Homemaker Encyclopedia’ that if you rubbed a teaspoon of olive oil onto your hair it would give it a deep, lustrous hue. Dreaming of dark chestnut, I poured an entire bottle of cooking oil over my head. Took a fortnight of tears and my mother’s ferocious scrubbing with Fairy Liquid to get it out. I was sent out to play with my anorak hood up during a heatwave to cover the shame of my ‘dirty-looking’ locks which were still stubbornly auburn (if anyone says red I’ll wallop them Anne Shirley-style) at the end of it all. But I did grow up to be a writer.
An inspiration, that Anne Shirley.
Hopefully Sam will soon see the error of his former beliefs.
Julie, oil is better with food than on your hair. Salad dressing and such like. So where did the blonde hair come from, then?
Hairdresser says redheads don’t dye, they just fade to strawberry blonde. I think that’s what happened. No bottle blonde involved. And no bottle of oil or salad dressing has been near my head since.