Anne of Green Gables (by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

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After finishing my re-reading of the ‘Emily’ books by Lucy Maud Montgomery last month, I decided I would reread her better-known series, starting with ‘Anne of Green Gables’.  I was slightly surprised to find that I reread this older children’s/teenage classic as recently as 2018, on my Kindle. But although I remembered the basic outline of the book - one I have read several times over the decades - and most of the characters, I had still forgotten a lot of the detail.

I hadn’t, however, forgotten the wonderfully written first paragraph of the book, describing a brook that twists and turns until it reaches Rachel Lynde’s house. There it runs entirely smoothly; not even a brook could misbehave in front of Mrs Lynde. It’s an excellent example of ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ a person’s character, although it could easily be missed: it doesn’t really make a very exciting start to the book, and is probably the longest single sentence I’ve ever come across.

Rachel Lynde isn’t the most important adult in the book. Her friends Matthew and Marilla, a brother and sister in their early sixties, are the real heroes. Marilla works hard to look after her house, Green Gables, while Matthew works on the farm. The story is set in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. He’s a reticent man, but realises he’s getting older and can’t manage on his own. So, after discussion with Marilla, they decide to adopt an 11-year-old orphan boy from an orphanage. In 1925, when this book was published, adoption was evidently a rather more straightforward procedure than it is these days.

For one more day (by Mitch Albom)

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Some years ago, I read and liked two previous books by Mitch Albom - ‘The five people you meet in heaven’, and ‘The first phone call from heaven’. Not sufficiently that I added other books by this author to my wishlist, but enough that when I saw ‘For one more day’ in a thrift shop, towards the end of 2024, I decided to buy it. It then sat on my to-be-read shelf for nearly eighteen months…

I picked it up to read a couple of days ago, and finished it today. It’s a short book, quite small too, and just 160 pages. It’s set in the United States, introduced by someone who says they are a journalist, who happens to come across a former baseball player called Chick (officially Charles) Benetto. Then Chick decides to tell his story, beginning with the fact that he tried to take his own life…

He recounts the fact that he’s divorced, he lost his job, he’s become an alcoholic and he’s alienated from his beloved daughter. He didn’t even hear that she was getting married until she sent him a notification, after the event, with photos. He’s heartbroken to feel that she is ashamed of him, and deeply hurt - he didn’t even know she had a serious boyfriend. 

My best friend's girl (by Dorothy Koomson)

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I’m very much enjoying rereading my collection of novels by Dorothy Koomson. Since I only previously read them once, and most of them fifteen or more years ago, they feel like new books. But there’s the added bonus that I know I previously liked them. 

I’ve just finished ‘My best friend’s girl’, which I first read in December 2011. As ever, I had entirely forgotten the people and the storyline, but I soon found myself hooked. The main character, who narrates the story, is Kamryn. She lives in Leeds and is single; we soon learn that this is due to her breaking up with her fiancé Nate less than two months before their wedding, due to his being unfaithful.

Kamryn has also totally lost touch with her closest friend Adele. She’s blocked her online, and refuses to read any of the letters she’s sent. But on her birthday, opening a large number of cards, she realises that one of them is from Adele, with an urgent note inside: Adele is very sick, and wants Kamryn to visit her. 

The secret dreamworld of a shopaholic (by Sophie Kinsella)

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It’s nearly twenty years since I put aside my prejudice against so-called ‘chicklit’, and started reading books by the late Sophie Kinsella. Yes, they’re quick, easy reads. Yes, the characters can be irritatingly naive or irresponsible. But they get under my skin… and the writing is excellent, with quite a lot of ironic humour. So I decided it was time to reread them. 

I started with the author’s best-known book, ‘The secret dreamworld of a shopaholic’, which I first read in 2009. I had remembered the outline: Rebecca Bloomwood is a compulsive shopper who gets more and more into debt and ignores letters from her bank and credit card companies. But I hadn’t remembered any of the details, or how the book ends.

The narrative, told in the present tense by Becky herself, is interspersed with letters from her bank manager. She blames her problem on having been given a generous overdraft when she started work, which she’s never managed to pay off. And she is addicted, in a way I find hard to understand, to shopping. 

First term at Malory Towers (by Enid Blyton)

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I finished rereading the ‘St Clare’s’ series by Enid Blyton in March last year, and decided to take a break from Blyton books for a while. But I spotted the Malory Towers books on my shelves; they were my absolute favourite as a teenager, when I would read them yearly. I realised that I did reread ‘First term at Malory Towers’ as recently as December 2022, but I didn’t subsequently read most of the rest of the series. So I decided to start over. 

Despite having read this book probably dozens of times over the past fifty-five years, I had forgotten the early chapters, and a lot of the details. So I enjoyed it over again. It’s a quick read - intended for girls aged 9-11 originally, with around 150 pages. I’m not sure quite why I like these books so much; they’re not the greatest writing, and are somewhat formulaic. Many of the characters are somewhat caricatured, too.

But they’re still good stories, at least in my view. This one features 12-year-old Darrell Rivers, who is a new girl at a boarding school in Cornwall, Malory Towers. We see her saying goodbye to her mother at the railway station, then meeting some of the girls in her form on the way there. She’s a fairly sensible girl who has been looking forward to going to this school for a long time.