Friday, December 2, 2011

The 306 Greatest Books #101 - Little Women

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Little Women by Loisa May Alcott. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Observer, and BBC Book Lists.  



Typically when Little Women is mentioned, it is often regarded (at least in my mind) as a little girls/ chick lit novel. I had tended to stay away from this book for that very reason and it might have worked out for the better. The way I read it was very slowly, about 10 pages or so a night, to my daughter, over most of the year. In this way I had a chance to grow with the characters as they were growing and watch my daughter grow as well. I become connected to them in a way that doesn't usually happen to me and when one of them died, I really felt the loss. This book was one of the better books I have read in a while and although it would probably still be considered a chick-lit novel, I found the characters very engaging and the writing to be far superior to many books written for the same age-level. As the characters got older, the language in the book also seemed to be getting older, to the point that at the end I didn't know what several of the words even meant, or how to pronounce them. In the end, I would recommend this  book, especially as a family read-time book. I had a great time reading it to my daughter and I could feel many families would enjoy a similar experience.

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