Thursday, June 15, 2006

Dangerous Reading


Valancy made up her mind that, if the rain held up in the afternoon, she would go up to the library and get another of John Foster’s books. Valancy was never allowed to read novels, but John Foster’s books were not novels. They were “nature books”—so the librarian told Mrs. Frederick Stirling—“all about the woods and birds and bugs and things like that, you know.” So Valancy was allowed to read them—under protest, for it was only too evident that she enjoyed them too much. It was permissible, even laudable, to read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was enjoyable was dangerous.

From L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle (1926).

2 comments:

sassymonkey said...

That is one of my favourite books. :)

SFP said...

That John Foster gets around. He's on a sampler Danielle (A Work in Progress) cross stitched and displayed on her blog a few days ago.