Little Women

This is a great book to read if you want an old fashioned story to enjoy. Four sisters and their parents are the main focus, and the reader gets to journey through their lives with them. Growing up, loves, losses, joys, rebelliousness, piety, sorrows, marriages, births, deaths, riches, poverty, all of it.

Until my 3rd child was born, I read this every year...and still cried when .....died. I read this out loud to my daughter when she was 10 and we were sleeping on a friend's couch because of derecho power outage at home....we used up all my friend's tissues!!!

A sweet, innocent story. Worth a read.

I feel the innocence reading this book and it's the good feeling.

I loved it as a child, and I still appreciate the wit and characters, but it seems to me less relevant than it used to be - I always used to wish myself into the past, but, stuck in the present, I am aware of how things have changed since then.

A childhood favourite. I'm a sucker for chick lit.

It really is so good though. I mean, it's hardly action packed as it's mostly about four sisters and their struggles to conquer their own flaws. Meg is vain about her looks, Jo is a bit of a tomboy and has a temper, Beth is shy and Amy is selfish and spoilt. It's more interesting than that though - it's about their relationships, feelings and little dramas as they struggle to grow up and improve themselves.

It just seems to involve you somehow. The characters are all so real, each with their own personalities that jump off the page that you care deeply about what happens to each and every one. It's weird though - I don't like Jo much and everybody else seems to. There isn't a main character exactly, but it's told from her POV more than any other and she just... irritates me. She's always being petted, much more than Amy who's meant to be the spoilt one, and never gets in trouble for anything, however dangerous her prank may have been.

I do like Beth though, she's by far my favourite. She's so gentle and sweet and never gets the recognition for it. Also, for some reason I keep picturing Amy as a very young Kirsten Dunst. Oh. I've just gone and researched the film and Amy is played by Kirsten Dunst. Huh. To be fair though, I didn't picture her as she looked in the film, more as Dunst a la Interview with a Vampire.

I could still do without the preachiness as it dates the book a little, but the sisters' genuine affection for each other is still wonderfully touching.

My copy of the book told me that Louisa May Alcott didn't actually want to write the book in the first place and didn't like it when it was finished. She was pressured by a publisher to do so and she consented in order to have a book of her short stories published also. 'I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters.'

Mmm. This is a bit dated but I do really recommend reading it. It's so nice that it can't help but cheer you if you're feeling low.