Happy October, friends! Here in Wisconsin the air is crisp and the leaves are beginning to change colors. This week has been particularly beautiful—blue skies, chilly mornings, mild afternoons. To quote Anne Shirley (always and forever), I'm so glad we live in a world where there are Octobers. That quote may be overused—you may even roll your eyes—but I'm a millennial and there's nothing like the comfort of a familiar quote-turned-meme and an ode to sweater weather rolled into one.
(for those who are unfamiliar with the SNL sweata weatha skit, enjoy)
As a celebration of Anne and her favorite month, we wanted to put our CLASSICS edition of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES on sale. If you haven't purchased a copy yet, now's the time! And as the editor of the book, I thought maybe I'd just drop a little sneak peak in this blog post to wet your whistle.
This is a selection from the introduction in which I explore themes in ANNE. Here, I discuss the focus on beauty:
Hardly a page goes by without Montgomery waxing poetic about the velvety purple sunsets or the golden-soaked afternoons of Prince Edward Island. PEI is a real place in the real world, but Montgomery’s descriptions are otherworldly, turning the island into a wondrous, magical, deeply nostalgic realm. Avonlea becomes as precious and vivid in the imagination as Narnia or Middle Earth.
And the beauty of the island is a dynamic companion to Anne’s limitless imagination. Her dreamy nature was surely cultivated at first out of deprivation—from neglect, abandonment, and servitude. It was her imagination that saved her, gave her hope and a future to look forward to. But once she has her necessities taken care of, good clothes to wear (even if they’re not fashionable), food to eat, a warm room to sleep in, and people to call her own, her imagination springs ahead of her, at every turn deepening an already rich world. But like her obsession with beauty, too much imagination has consequences. Anne has to learn to control her fertile mind, because more than once it runs away with her and gets her into trouble. But it’s also her guileless imagination that both sets her apart from and endears her to everyone in Avonlea.
And just to prove my point about beauty, here's the full—and in-context—quote about Octobers, straight from the pages of the original text:
October was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.
Anne reveled in the world of color about her.
"Oh, Marilla," she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, "'I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill—several thrills? I'm going to decorate my room with them."
I hope this little taste of the introduction to ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and quote from the book have tempted you to pick up our edition for yourself. To take 10% off your hardcover or paperback edition of ANNE and all our Anne of Green Gables-themed merchandise, follow this link to our website and use the code OCTOBERS10 at checkout!
(Remember, too, that our Buy Me a Coffee members get their regular 15% discount on everything in Shop the Nest!)
Thank you again, to all of you, for supporting our little bookish corner of the internet! It gives us a thrill—several thrills—to know you're in the nest with us.
Until Nest Time,
Katie