Recent reading
Dec. 1st, 2021 08:44 am- Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux, which is what it says on the tin. Interesting to learn more about Louisa May Alcott, and the history, cultural impact, and society's shifting views of Little Women. I wasn't entirely persuaded by some of her analysis of the book itself, but you can't win 'em all. This book came out before the 2019 movie did, so I'm curious about what Rioux thought of Greta Gerwig's adaption— reading her takes on the other film adaptions, I kept thinking that it both fixed some of her complaints and included elements that she commented positively on in other adaptions?
- Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, which I'd started after re-reading Little Women back in Jan. 2020, but set aside after maybe a third of it and just... never picked back up. I tried again mostly because Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy piqued my interest in reading Jo's Boys, the third (or fourth, depending on whether you count the two parts of Little Women separately, which is apparently more common outside of the U.S.?) and last of the March family novels; I thought I should re-read this one first. It doesn't hold up as well as Little Women, imo. It's frequently charming, but I found the overall preachiness rather grating.
- Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, which I'd started after re-reading Little Women back in Jan. 2020, but set aside after maybe a third of it and just... never picked back up. I tried again mostly because Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy piqued my interest in reading Jo's Boys, the third (or fourth, depending on whether you count the two parts of Little Women separately, which is apparently more common outside of the U.S.?) and last of the March family novels; I thought I should re-read this one first. It doesn't hold up as well as Little Women, imo. It's frequently charming, but I found the overall preachiness rather grating.