First things first, I've lost the dust cover from my copy, and there's no cover art for that edition on Goodreads, so I can't show you the actual edition that I read. Just know that it's hard cover and illustrated and was given to me by my parents for Christmas in 1989. So I was six the first time I read this. And I fell almost instantly in love with the world that Montgomery creates.
As you probably guessed from the above statement, Anne Shirley and I have had a very long history together. Between Christmas of 1989 and probably the middle of 1991 when we moved home from Canada, I was ALL ABOUT Anne of Green Gables. Weirdly, I don't think I ever saw the famous 1980s adaptation, but I *did* win a family pass to see the musical version live on stage in Toronto, and somewhere in the depths of my bedroom, I still have the soundtrack on cassette tape.
I begged my parents to let us go on a family holiday to Prince Edward Island, and honestly? I'm still a little upset that they refused...
ANYWAY.
I hadn't read Anne of Green Gables in at least 20 years. After we left Canada, my attention was shifted towards other things. So rereading it as an adult was an interesting experience. I can see why I loved Anne so much as a child. She's utterly endearing from the moment she turns up. She's smart and funny and full of imagination, but she's also kind and wants nothing more than to be loved and have friends. But as an adult? There were numerous moments when I sided with Marilla and her "OMG THIS CHILD NEVER SHUTS UP" moments.
While the characters are universally fabulous, the writing isn't always the greatest - the fact that any time Matthew speaks, he starts with "Well now" drove me absolutely nuts in the end. It occasionally feels like Anne's living life from one major mishap to another (Diana getting drunk, dyeing her hair green, putting liniment in the cake, floating down the river in a sinking boat), but in reality those events take place months or years apart. It's easy to miss the passage of time as we leap from season to season in a matter of paragraphs. As a result, we go from Gilbert Blythe pulling Anne's braids and calling her "Carrots" to that ship-tastic ending (with about five years passing in between) in a mere 200 pages.
All in all, I loved revisiting Avonlea, and there's a reason why this book is such a classic. And if someone wants to have puffed sleeves come back into fashion, that'd be great, because my inner child still desperately wants a dress with puffed sleeves.
Have you read it? What did you think? And, more importantly, HAVE YOU SEEN THE MUSICAL???
So apparently the last time I joined in with Top Ten Tuesday was in AUGUST, which is utterly insane... Anyway, seeing as I just got back from almost a month of travel, it seemed appropriate that I talk about all the places I want to go to thanks to books. This topic's kind of appropriate, actually, because I read a couple of books set in London while I was there, and everything made SO MUCH MORE SENSE when I was able to picture the places they were talking about and how you'd get between them. This is probably something that happens all the time for people who live in London and New York and other cities with a million and one books set in them. But when you live in Melbourne? Yeah, not so much... *sigh*
Anyway, here's my top ten:
1. Hogwarts!
Please, like you'd say anything else. If there was one fictional place in all of time and space that I could go to, it would be Hogwarts. No contest.
2. Italy
Every YA book that features a trip to Europe seems to feature Italy in some way, shape or form. I blame J. Meyers and her book Anywhere for this one.
3. Scotland
Sure, it's grey and rainy like ALL THE TIME in reality. But I just want to gooooooooooooooooooo. And yes, Outlander may be partly responsible for this...
4. Discworld
Yeah yeah, another fictional place, I know. But despite all the war and the unexpected dragons and the murder and the general ridiculousness, I think Discworld would be a pretty fun place to hang out.
5. Canada
I may have lived there as a kid, but I haven't been back in 20 years. I've read a few books set in Toronto or Vancouver recently, and reading about places that I only vaguely remember is making me want to go back. Like, a lot.
6. San Francisco
This one is courtesy of Lola and the Boy Next Door and The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet.
7. Prague
This has been on my go-to list for a while, but I don't think there's anything that pushed it up the list faster than reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone.
8. An island off the US coast
This is nice and non-specific, but between several YA books set in small island towns and one of the books I'm reading at the moment, I really want to go to an island. I'm not fussy about which one.
9. Paris
You'd think this would be on the list courtesy of Stephanie Perkins, but it's not. It's because of Joanne Harris' The Lollipop Shoes (published in the US as The Girl With No Shadow), which is set almost entirely in Montmatre.
10. On a crazy roadtrip
There are so many great roadtrip books out there, and I just love them. The problem, however, is two fold: a) I don't drive so going on roadtrips is dependent on the driving abilities of others, and b) in Australia, you have limited options. If you want to roadtrip from Melbourne to Sydney, your options are the Hume (twelve hours of indescribable boredom where the highlight is a submarine like 200km from the coast) or via the coast, which adds approximately a thousand hours to the trip and you go through a million small towns with practically nothing to see.
There's definitely no getting to an intersection and being all "Ooh, if I go left, I can do a small detour and go through [historically significant or beautiful place] while if I go right, I'll have to go through [amazing city with fabulous food]!". Nope. And God help you if you want to drive to Perth, because then there's literally one option and it involves days of driving and nothing to see... So a crazy nothing-planned-out roadtrip with friends in a place where there's actually stuff to stop and see? Uh, YES.
On Friday night, I went to a rather unusual event. Well, unusual for Melbourne at any rate. Australia's not really big with the winter sports, on account of a freezing cold day = 12 degrees C, which isn't exactly conducive to ice and snow. You know? So when I saw that there was going to be an exhibition ice hockey match between Canada and the USA, I jumped at the chance to go.
While it may have been a good 20+ years since I lived in Canada, this doesn't mean that I won't cheer for them when given the opportunity. Apparently the rest of Melbourne felt the same way. Because when the US team skated out, there was a smattering of polite applause and then some awkward silence. When the Canadians appeared? The roof practically lifted off the stadium.
Then they had some "promising local talent" come out to sing the two national anthems. She was not only flat, but forgot the words to both of them and kind of made things up that were vaguely right but not really to fill in the gaps until she worked it out. So that was cringe worthy fun... Thankfully, they shooed her off the ice and got down to business pretty quickly.
There were fireworks and staged fights and mostly I ended up being insanely impressed at how quickly the umpires were able to get out of the way of the puck and/or large men in tons of protective gear that were hurtling towards them.
At the end of the first period, Canada were ahead by a good four goals and things were looking good. Then they brought out the most ridiculous piece of equipment in creation. No, it wasn't a Zamboni. Apparently they didn't think it warranted finding one for a whole two nights of professional level ice hockey. Instead, a bunch of guys came out with ice scrapers, and skated around sweeping the ice for about ten minutes. Then they brought out some kind of golf cart looking contraption with a water tank on the back of it. Said water tank was connected by hoses to a bunch of (what appeared to be) towels, and they drove around the rink using the wet towels to smooth the surface of the ice.
It was probably the least effective method they could have found. And, considering it was like 23 degrees in the stadium (at least up where we were sitting!), play had to be delayed until the slightly ridiculous quantities of water they put down had frozen.
The US made a comeback during the second period, and the commentators interviewed an AFL player and asked well thought out questions like "What do you see as a the major differences between AFL and ice hockey?". The entire stadium did a confused dog head tilt at that, because:
1. One takes place on grass, the other on ice.
2. One involves kicking an oval shaped ball, the other hitting a puck with sticks.
3. One requires tiny shorts and a sleeveless jumper, the other 10 kilos of protective padding and a pair of metal blades strapped to your feet.
One might, in fact, say that the only similarities between the two sports is that they're played in winter and are fast moving...
During the second break, they claimed to have a special prize to award and called out a couple of seat numbers. Except it turned out to be less special prize and more "unexpected proposal", which ended up being insanely awkward because she a) nearly fell over on the ice in her heels, and b) didn't respond for a good three minutes. Nothing says romance like proposing in front of 10,000 complete strangers!! O.o
Then a bunch of very tiny children in very long hockey jerseys came out and skated around at top speed. And then they got to meet all the players, which was pretty adorable.
The third period ended up being the most exciting, because it ended up being a really close match, and it was only the last ten minutes or so where they were actually playing at their full capability. I'm not sure whether it was the ice or whether they'd been told to take things slow for the dumb Australians who aren't used to ice hockey, but I rather wish the rest of the game had been played with the same speed and skill.
As it was, Canada emerged victorious through some great work on the part of the goalie, and through a wonky power play by the US which saw them replace their goalie with an attacker, leaving Canada one player down but with an open goal to shoot at.
And then they made it snow in the arena. Because obviously...
On the whole, it was an excellent evening. I got to sing O Canada at the top of my lungs, boo a Collingwood player, and watch some pretty excellent sport. Now if only they'd had Timbits for sale, it would have been perfect... *sigh*
Have you been to see any unfamiliar sports? Did you have even the faintest idea what was going on? Because I sure didn't...
When I heard last week that Michael Clarke Duncan had passed away, I immediately knew that I needed to rewatch this week's movie. Okay, so it's partly because the only other movie I own with him in it is Armageddon (don't judge me - it's in a box set), and blurgh. But mostly because I love the crap out of The Whole Nine Yards, and Michael Clarke Duncan is awesome in it.
Reasons why The Whole Nine Yards is awesome:
1. Matthew Perry. Chandler was always my favourite on Friends, so it's perhaps not surprising that Matthew Perry tops the list of reasons why this movie is awesome for me. But he is fantastic as the dentist trapped in an unhappy marriage who accidentally finds himself involved with a bunch of hitmen.
2. The constant attempts at getting a hamburger without mayonnaise on it.
3. Bruce Willis. He's great as the hitman with morals who moves in next door.
4. Jill's fangirling when she meets Jimmy.
5. Rosanna Arquette as Oz's bitchy French Canadian wife.
6. Duct taping the dead guy's head to the dental x-ray machine.
7. Michael Clarke Duncan. He gets some truly spectacular lines, and generally gets to be a badass.
8. Beepers and pay phones. LOL FOREVER.
9. Amanda Peet as Oz's dental assistant with a secret desire to become a contract killer.
10. Telling Jimmy's entire backstory through a montage of newspaper headlines. It works perfectly, AND it's a great time saver! (And one of the photos of Bruce Willis that they use is from Die Hard 2. Ahahahaha)
11. Oz leaving for work and stopping every few metres to bash his head against the steering wheel.
12. Matthew Perry's facial expressions.
13. Oz's reaction when Jimmy's sitting in Frankie's hotel room with a gun.
14. When Jimmy tosses Oz a beer and it goes flying past him and into the river.
15. When Oz sits on the pile of tyres and they slowly collapse to one side.
16. Oz's reaction when he walks into his hotel room to find Frankie Figgs sitting there.
17. "They All Laughed" playing during the credits, accompanied by dorky dancing.
18. Oz attempting to look nonchalant when the police turn up at his office, and nearly tipping his chair over backwards.
19. The scene where Oz is trying to drill a patient's tooth, but his hand keeps shaking wildly.
Plus, the following quotes:
- "Every red blooded American knows, the only condiment you're supposed to put on a hamburger IS KETCHUP!!"
- "See you at your office." "Okay. Give me an hour. Oh, and don't forget the corpse!"
- "Yes, this is Doctor Oseransky in room 519. I'm going to need a bigger bottle of scotch."
- "He's a little upset. I've managed to upset a mass murderer..."
- "You like living in Canada?" "No, I... I live here with my wife."
- "Who are you going to believe? A contract killer or your wife??" "Do I have to answer that?"
- "You're a DENTIST?" "'Fraid so." "Are you suicidal?" "See, now, why would you ask that??"
- "You know, I can't think of nothing finer than a fine named woman holding a gun. And you just aaaaaaaall kinds of fine, ain't you?"
- "Why did you have to kill him??" "Well, I had to kill one of you..." "Then you definitely made the right decision!"
- "I would really hate to have to kill you. I'd hate it more than mayonnaise. And you know how much I hate mayonnaise."
- "You know what? I'm not gonna listen to this any more. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna go!"
- "By the way, I'd be happy to do your wife for you." "Do her?" "Tap her." "Tap her?" "Whack her." "Whack her??? Ohhhhh. Oh. See, I thought you meant, you know... *makes hammering motion* Because she told that, you, you know, hit on her." "*laughs hysterically*"
- "It's a little hard to maintain a friendship with someone who's trying to kill you."
- "Have you vomited recently?" "A minute ago, I was just going to brush my teeth..." "I'll wait."
- "Don't tell me. Let's go tell Janni." "Okay. You mind if I piss a little blood first?" "Please, by all means!"
- "I take it you're not Canadian?" "Only by marriage."
- "This has been good. I'm glad we got to know each other." "You know what? Me too." "You can go now."
- "You know, I got this same car." "Really?" "No."
- "This would be sad if it wasn't so pathetic."
- "Aah, that's room service. Before I vomited, I ordered scotch."
- "I'm gonna keep the Coke and the fries, but I'm gonna send this burger back. And if you put any mayonnaise on it, I'm gonna come over to your house, I'll chop your legs off, set fire to your house, and watch as you drag your bloody stumps out the door."
- "The guy's been in prison for five years. He's desperate. He'd sleep with a meat grinder."
- "Dammit, Jimmy. Why the Hell did you have to go and move in next door to me?" "Oz, do you know what kind of soil they have in this back yard? I've been here two days and I've got little tomato plants..." "OH. MY. GOD."
Okay, so I managed to make this way more about Matthew Perry than about Michael Clarke Duncan. But Matthew Perry DOES have a tendency to awkwardly steal the show in whatever he's in!
So. Thoughts? Also? If you haven't seen it, don't accidentally rent the sequel, The Whole Ten Yards, which was completely and utterly terrible. Don't say I didn't warn you...
Yesterday, the lovely Deidre of Decoybetty tagged me in this. It's totally awesome and allows me wibble on about travel, even though I'm currently freezing to death in Melbourne. (HEY MELBOURNE - IT'S SUMMER, YOU NUMBSKULL!!! TURN UP THE TEMPERATURE!) Ahem.
A: Age you went on your first overseas trip. I'm pretty sure my first overseas trip was when we moved to Canada when I was four. The longest I've gone since then without going overseas was from October 1998 to September 2002.
B: Best (foreign) beer you've had and where. Yeah, I don't like beer. But there was a moment in Guatemala when it was so hot that my brain melted out of my ears and I decided that the only thing that would cool me down was beer. So I'm going to go with Brahva (not to be confused with Brahma) in Rio Dulce, Guatemala.
C: Cuisine (favourite). Mexican. Hands down. Although I'm also partial to Thai food. NOM NOM NOM.
D: Destinations, favourite, least favourite and why. Favourite? Either London or New York. Because history and museums and nerdiness, oh my! Least favourite? It's a toss up between Salem and Philadelphia. I found both of them disappointing. Or Quito, because I was by myself for five days and was too chicken to venture any distance from the hotel for fear of getting lost and then mugged. Yeah...
E: Event you experienced abroad that made you say 'wow!'. Flying over the Nazca lines in a teeny tiny plane.
F: Favourite mode of transport. I'm quite partial to trains. But mostly I tend to wander around on foot. Because it's free and I'm a cheapskate.
G: Greatest feeling while travelling. Seeing a new place for the first time.
H: Hottest place you've travelled to. Well, technically as I was living in Canberra at the time, it would be Melbourne on Black Saturday. It was around 47 degrees C in Melbourne that day. That's around 117 degrees F. (If you want to experience it, turn your oven on to the lowest setting, and open the door.) Other than that, it would be Guatemala, where it was a millionty degrees with something like 95% humidity. It was pretty unpleasant. Luckily, the amazingness of Tikal made me (partially) forget that it was hot and damp as a fat old man in a sauna. #gross
I: Incredible service you've experienced and where. The good people at Covermore travel insurance. They were AMAZING when Ness got sick in Peru. I've never been so glad to talk to a bogan with an ocker accent in my entire life.
J: Journey that took the longest. I think technically there was a trip home from Canada for Christmas one year when I was a kid that took around 48 hours door to door. But I don't remember any of it. So I'm going to go with flying from Melbourne to Lima. Or, more accurately, Melbourne to Sydney to Auckland to Santiago to Lima. My flight to Sydney left at around 8am and we arrived in Lima at 11.50pm Peru time. Which means it was about 4pm the following day in Melbourne. Fun times!
K: Keepsake from your travels. I seem to have a habit of not really thinking through what I buy overseas. Which is how I ended up buying a blanket in Peru during the first WEEK of a nine week trip. It's really hard to pack a pack around a BLANKET, as it turns out. Guess how many times I've used said blanket? NADA. Not my best purchase ever. What I *do* buy as keepsakes that are a good idea? Bookmarks. Because then every time you open your book, you go "awwwwww, good memories..."
L: Let down sight, where and why. Anything in Salem, Massachusetts. Epic waste of time.
M: Moment where you fell in love with travel. It was either one of the millionty museums I went to as a kid, or watching movies I shouldn't have been allowed to watch because we were on a plane and it was on a giant screen. That's how I saw Pretty Woman when I was four!
N: Nicest hotel you've stayed in. I have no idea what it was called, but when I was a kid, my dad went to a conference in Zurich. And the rest of the family tagged along for the ride. When we got to the hotel, it turned out they'd put us in the penthouse. Which had floor to ceiling glass windows giving us a panoramic view of Zurich. It was pretty awesome.
O: Obsession - what are you obsessed with taking pictures of while travelling? Landscapes. And museum objects. Every time I get home, my mum looks at my pictures and goes "BUT WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE?!?!" Whoops.
P: Passport stamps - how many and from where? In my current passport? 17. From the UK, the US, Peru, Machu Picchu, Ecuador, the Galapagos, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico and Thailand. If you add in two of my three old passports (I couldn't find my very first passport. SAD FACE.), there's a total of 41 stamps, representing 16 different places.
Q: Quirkiest attraction you've visited and where: The big anything. Australia is littered with giant fibreglass crap. Here, for instance, is the big Ned Kelly in Glenrowan.
R: Recommended sight, event or experience: A Broadway show in New York. It's totally worth every penny.
S: Splurge - something you have no problem forking over money for while travelling. Once in a lifetime activities. Whether it's taking a helicopter to the Grand Canyon, flying over the Nazca Lines, riding an elephant, or going to the 20SB Summit to meet up with a bunch of random internet strangers!
T: Touristy thing you've done. Stood with one foot on each side of the equator.
U: Unforgettable travel memory. The Inca Trail. It may nearly have killed me, I may have cried like a little bitch until Ness yelled at me to stop because I was going to make her cry too, and it may have resulted in me almost getting stuck using a squat toilet when my quads cramped up. But it was totally worth it.
V: Visas - how many and for where? Surprisingly few, actually. A student visa for the UK, a residential visa for the UK from when I lived there as a kid, and a visa for France from back when Australia was cranky at France over nuclear testing in the Pacific, and so they made Australians jump through a million hoops to get into France. If I could find my very first passport, there'd probably be a residential visa for Canada in there too.
W: Wine - best glass of wine you've had while travelling and where. Much like beer, I don't drink wine. But I did have some pretty spectacular cocktails at La Boca del Lobo in Quito, Ecuador! (And if you're ever in Quito, you should check it out. It's a seriously awesome restaurant!)
X: eXcellent view and from where. Okay, first of all? Writing 'excellent' like that made me cringey. Secondly, here's a Peruvian volcano, complete with a vicuña in the foreground.
Y: Years spent travelling. 28, more or less. Sure, it may not all have been internationally, and it wasn't CONSTANT travel. But I don't think there's a single year in my life when I haven't boarded a plane/gotten in a car to somewhere or other!
Z: Zealous sports fans and where. We're pretty sports mad in Melbourne. I mean, we have a public holiday for a horse race, for crying out loud! But I'm pretty sure that no one in Melbourne has ever had to barricade themselves into their house in case the soccer hooligans get out of control as a friend had to do when she lived down the road from the stadium. So I'm giving the prize to Leicester, where I did my study abroad.
Earlier today, I read Bi's blog post about having an idiotic squirrel stuck her window well. And it reminded me of a rather ridiculous story that I realised needed to be shared, because that's how fucking over the top this story is. (Right about now is the point I should mention that I don't actually remember any of this, because I was five at the time... But I've heard my parents tell the story often enough to give you the gist of it!)
Waaaaaaaaaay back in 1988 (and if that's the year you were born, please keep it to yourself), we moved from Melbourne to Toronto. After eight weeks in an apartment, we finally moved into what would be our house for the next two years (I think).
The house in question
I don't remember much (again, because I was five), but I *do* remember that there were a shit ton of squirrels living in the roof of that house. Because the little bastards used to run up and down outside my room at stupid o'clock and wake me up. Obviously, we didn't want squirrels in the roof, so my parents called a pest control guy. Squirrels were a total novelty for us, so we didn't want them dead, just elsewhere.
The pest control guy turned up with something like 25 cages, which were baited with peanut butter. He put them in the back garden, and within about 10 minutes, they were filled with stupid little squirrels. Every day, he'd come back, change the full cages for empty ones, take the full ones out past the city limits, and set the squirrels free there.
This went on for God only knows how many days. #squirrelsaredumbyo But one day, we came home and all the cages were empty. And not in a "the pest control guy changed the cages" kind of a way...
It wasn't until we were either moving house or leaving Canada (I have no idea which, it's kind of irrelevant though) a few years later that we finally found out what had happened. In 1988, a little film called Crocodile Dundee II came out. And apparently none of our neighbours were home each day when the pest control guy turned up. So they'd leave for work seeing cages filled with squirrels, and come home from work to see the cages empty. This fact, combined with the antics of Mick Dundee on the big screen, led our neighbours to think that we were TRAPPING THE SQUIRRELS AS FOOD. And so the teenaged son of one neighbour climbed over the fence into our garden and set all the little squirrels free so that they didn't end up 'chucked on the barbie'.
