Last month our famous little Dinner Club With a Reading Problem met to discuss Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. It was a grand time, filled with cookie decorating, food eating and eating again, and several fantastic hours of laughter and hugs. Heart-warming stuff, you guys. Seri hosted us and cemented a new holiday tradition!
Something tells me I have already told you that much already.
The unfortunate secret, though, is that on that first weekend of December I was all caught up in other books and other projects and wading in the deep pool we call “Christmas” and did not finish this fine book in time to properly explore it with my comrades. What a shame!!! This is among the loveliest, most soul nourishing things I have ever read.
So here we are now, the first bright weekend of this fresh young year, and I have finally polished off what I agree is a masterpiece. My reflex is to review it like any other book, but reviewing this work seems at best redundant but, more accurately, arrogant.
Still, this is such a finely layered and solid piece of classic American literature and such a wholesome boost to my spirit personally, that some thoughts beg articulation. Will you please bear with me? And if you have read this fine volume before will you pretty please join this belated discussion??
How to divide my myriad thoughts on these 578 pages? There’s just so much worth keeping from this. More than many other books, for sure. So over the next week or so I will be peppering this little page with what beauty I can extract from Little Women and distill into my own words.
- Wisdom form Mrs. March, the matriarch.
- The extensive list of other literary works cited in this work.
- Life themes that sprout and grow as the March children do the same.
- How Little Women might relate to our study on Proverbs 31. (I bet you thought I had abandoned that again, huh? Well I didn’t; I only decided too do it naturally, bot hurriedly.)
- Character analyses and how different people identify with different March sisters.
- How does modern romance compare to the romances then?
- How Little Women helped expand my vocabulary.
All of that to say that I have more to say, later. And all in the midst of a thousand other things, so I do hope you will drop in now and then this month!
Have you read Little Women? Did you read it as a student? Who was your favorite character? How can you imagine it applying to modern life? Are you interested in doing a little guest post about Little Women? It would totally earn you honorary membership int our book club!
“I’d no idea hearts could take in so many;
mine is so elastic, it seems full now…”
~Jo March
xoxoxoxo