Anne of Green Gables, Chapters Twenty-Nine and Thirty

In which Anne goes on a Big City Adventure only to end up ruminating on the importance and joy of home, or something, following which Anne's educational future is discussed.



Right off the bat, we've got Anne reciting part of a poem now little-known among the general populace: "Marmion," by Sir Walter Scott. It's apparently about one Lord Marmion, a rather obscure figure even at the time, and his involvement in the hilariously-named Battle of Flodden Field between England and Scotland in 1513. I apologize for not quite managing to read all the way through "The stubborn spearsman still made good / Their dark impenetrable wood" without snickering. At least I didn't "stop in ecstasy," like Anne.

Then, of course, we find Anne getting caught reading Ben Hur instead of her lessons. Ben Hur is of course now most well-known for its spectacular movie productions, especially the 1959 version starring Moses. I will not be featuring it on "Rob Reads to You." The other book Anne was caught reading, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hill, though, sadly seems to be fictional.

I've also determined that I love the phrase "meaner than second skimmings," presumably referring to skimming cream off the top of milk, and how little there is left the second time around. This is one I really want to work into daily conversation.

And, um, I think I may need to start keeping a running tally of voices I've done while reading these books, because come to the end-of-school-year scene I could not for the LIFE of me remember if we've heard Miss Stacy talk before or not. I don't think so? Pretty sure? If we have, and I did the voice real different this time around, it's 'cause she had a cold.

Finally we've got this installment's cover and... what the crap is this? It's all... sexy, and blonde -- I think it's mentioned once or twice, Anne has red hair -- and distinctly modern-day. Seems I'm not the only one to think this isn't such a great cover. In fact, I only found this because of all the outraged news articles. That's one of the things with public domain books, though. Anyone with a printing press can crank out a cheap paperback version, or even just an e-book version, and put it up for sale, regardless of how well they're presenting the material. It looks like this was some tiny, no-name publisher we're talking about, so it's not like one of the big publishing houses turned out this thing. And in fact, it looks like they've indirectly responded to the 400+ one-star reviews on Amazon, and have taken the cover down.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!