Little Women

Follow the story of the March sisters, as they learn to live without during the time of war, and as they grow up.
Each sister has something that they struggle with, and as we follow their stories through this book, we see them grow, mature and become more than the children we meet in the beginning.

This is such a sweet story, full of dreams, hopes, unrealistic and realistic goals in life. As each one moves through the different times of their lives, they find they must not only be unselfish, but help others along the way. Some of them find that money is not everything and cannot bring true happiness, while the others find ways to content themselves with the rise and fall of life.
Put this one on the must read list, you wont want to pass this one up!

This is another one of those “childhood classics” that I managed to miss reading when I was actually a child. I'm still trying to decide whether or not this is a good thing. I think that, had I tried reading it as a child, I would have been just a bit bored by the story overall. But as an adult reader, I find I am probably less forgiving of things I perceive as flaws in the writing.

Coming to it as an adult reader, I can see why it is viewed as a classic, and I enjoyed reading it, but I also don't think it would really be publishable today. The pacing is somewhat uneven–it seemed that just when things would start to pick up a good pace we would be treated to another “now gentle reader” moment, highlighting the moral lessons we should be learning from the story, and also bringing the forward momentum of the story to a halt.

I had problems with Beth as a character, mostly because I don't feel she really was a character. Of the main characters, she is the only one whose viewpoint we don't really see. We are told she is sweet and perfect and wonderful and beloved, but the only real evidence we have of these things is circumstantial at best: Beth is wonderful because we are told she is wonderful. Consequently, the major plot points that hinge on Beth all struck me as a little bit fake, which was rather unfortunate.

I liked John and Laurie and Professor Bhaer, and I enjoyed the romances that came with them (though again, it seemed like we got an awful lot of preaching and moralising whenever something interesting was about to happen).

I'm glad I read it, and I may very well read it again at some point, but probably not for several years.

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Some edition-specific notes:

The Barnes & Noble Classics ebook edition is, for the most part, quite good. It comes with quite a bit of supplementary material in the form of a biography of the author; historical background of both when the book was written and the time period in which it was set; and approximately twenty pages of endnotes and footnotes, all hyper-linked within the book itself.

I would have preferred to see the information about the author and her history placed at the end of the text rather than the beginning. Ditto with the introduction, which, like most such introductions, assumes the reader is already familiar with the text.

The proofreading of the ebook text is...spotty. As far as I can tell it was typeset by scanning an existing print copy of the book, using OCR technology to render the text. On the whole, this works perfectly well, but there are a number of places where words are split oddly (e.g. “beg inning” instead of “beginning”), or specific letters were not translated correctly, leading to spelling errors (e.g. “tor” instead of “for”).

So I made the mistake of reading three books at once while also moving and reading far less than usual. But the last time a book took me a month to read I think I was still in the Kumon reading program in second grade. For me this book was really enjoyable and gripping, but it was just an incredibly slow burn.

To speak to the edition I bought, I got the original novel with pictures from the new movie inside. The book itself is a hardcover that is modeled to look like the one Jo receives in the movie. I think it's a really nice edition overall, and although it isn't leather-bound like the one Jo gets, I found in while walking around Walmart after seeing the movie for $11. For a hardcover that's awesome.It was a slow burn particularly because this edition used like 10 or 11 point font and each page felt super long and I felt like I was carving out my reading time in two to three chapters instead of getting far more done like I always do.

I was drawn to reading this classic by seeing the movie. I went in without any knowledge or expectations (I haven't seen any of the million other movies) simply because I liked the cast. Greta Gerwig did a fantastic job adapting this hefty family drama into a feature film. I think she did a good job of infusing more feminism into the feature and cutting out most of the religion, which was one of my only gripes with the novel. However, Alcott's inclusion of religion is very understandable for the time and subject matter involved, and I do not think it was overdone at all. I think the writing was elegant and beautiful, while still remaining easily legible and understandable.

I think this is another one added to the list that continues my theory that Victorian era female writers were better than the incredibly famous men of the era.