Procrastinating on everything

So much I should be doing today, but darn it all, they're playing another Star Trek movie marathon on tv. I am powerless!

Gerald Durrell

When I was young enough for bedtime stories my parents read a lot of the usual children's books, but dad also read me some of Gerald Durrell's books: My Family and Other Animals, and Birds, Beasts and Relatives.  He did edit out a few bits, as I discovered later on, including where the young Jerry sees a neighboring woman give birth.  Over the years I went through all of dad's collection of Gerald Durrell's books, but for some reason have yet to read any of Gerald's older brother's books (Lawrence Durrell).

For more information about Gerald Durrell's zoo, and the conservation trust, go visit:
http://www.durrell.org/

The first book

"She was as angry with herself as with Anne, because, whenever she recalled Mrs. Rachel's dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with amusement and she felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh."

Anne of Green Gables (AoGG) is the best book to start this blog with, as it is not only the most memorable book of my childhood, it remains one of my favourite books of all times. I will likely return to this book, if this blog goes well, as well as the other Lucy Maud Montgomery (LMM) books, since they played such a big part of my reading life. 

I must have read AoGG for the first time when I was around 7 or 8 years old, after my great-aunt gave me a lovely hardcover copy of the book. Not long after I received one of the sets of AoGG, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island, and all these books are well-worn (and only later in life did I realize that the hardcover was likely a fairly early edition, drat it). 

Maybe this wasn't the best book to start with after all. There's a lot of emotional attachment to this 102 year old book and its immortal heroine (more or less what Mark Twain said about Anne). It's a comforting book, no matter how many times I've read it.