Maud

One of my goals for 2010 was to re-read the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery. I succeeded at that (hooray!), and went on to read Emily of New Moon (just the first book of the trilogy; that's all I had), and a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery. (I also have a collection of her short stories entitled Among the Shadows that I intend to read before the close of the year.) This was an interesting project for several reasons. I read the Anne series several times as a youth, and I enjoyed looking back at myself through this reading and discovering what I remembered and what I had forgotten. It was neat to immerse myself in a sense in turn-of-the-century (by which I mean the dawning of 1900, even though we've had the turn of another century since then) life on Prince Edward Island by reading ten books set there. Time passes as the Anne series progresses, though, so in the final book I got to see the Canadian women's experience of WWI and I found that really interesting. Finally, it was neat to understand how autobiographical so many elements of these stories are by reading Maud: The Life of L.M. Montgomery by Harry Bruce.