Book Review: Little Women and March

Recently a friend asked if I'd read "March." I hadn't so she lent it to me along with the book that it's spun off from, "Little Women." I actually had never read the classic, so I decided to read it first to familiarize myself with the characters before reading "March." So, here are my opinions of both books:


"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott:
In one word: lovely. This book was so good! It's obviously a very old book, but I was entranced with it in the same way I was with "Twilight," except to a slightly lesser degree of obsession. It captures the essence of the time so well. Girls were so different then. They had much more class overall and were much more modest and polite on the whole. The sisters' innocence was so captivating to me and made me want to be more like them. The old language they use is awesome to me. While reading the book I found myself referring to nice men as capital young fellows and using many more old timey phrases without even thinking about it. One thing that I found funny was in one part, the girls were laughing about this guy using a word that they deemed as old-fashioned. The funny thing was it is a word we use all of the time, although I can't recall it right now.

Anyways, the book basically covers nearly a decade of the March family's life, focusing really on the four daughters. The author actually based Jo on herself, so she does seem to be kind of the main character at points. She was definitely my favorite character though. For anyone who's familiar with the character Jo and knows Claire Colmans, she reminds me so much of Jo. I told her that they need to do a Little Women play at her school and she needs to play Jo. It would be perfect!

This book covers everything from love to loss. It's neat to see the girls mature and grow into women in this great classic novel. I could write more, but I'll stop here and move on to........


"March" by Geraldine Brooks:
Although this was a good read, I was sorely disappointed. I wasn't disappointed in the book itself, but more the main character. This book is about the father of the March family, who is off at war for most of the book "Little Women." He's a decent man, but in Little Women, you read about him through his daughter's eyes. He is much more idealized and reverred. He's a great man who would do anything for his family. If you want to maintain that view of the character then don't read this book. You really won't be missing much. Some might say that's a bit harsh, but it's just my opinion. In "March," he's somewhat of a coward, an adulterer (big no from me), selfish, and a bit more self-centered. On the other hand, he's also very giving, kind, has a good heart, and does love his family very much. I know it's hard to think how someone could be all that at once, but he is. I guess my dilemma was that I read LW, which really is meant for the young, full of goodness and morals and great characters, and then I went right from that to a book meant for a much more mature audience, filled with the hard experiences that life brings.

Good aspects of the book are the eye-opening and heart wrenching stories about slavery and post-slavery attempts during the Civil War. Although the specific stories are made up, I'm sure similar things happened during that time. It's good to think about things like that once in a while, though, because it's a wake up call to how blessed and fortunate we are. People went through such hardships to get us where we are now. It really gives me such a grateful and sympathetic heart. I did love that aspect of the book. God has blessed us so much!

So, both are good books. Definitely read "Little Women" if you haven't, and if you have some time on your hands and want to find out about Mr. March, then read "March" too. Although, I wouldn't recommend it if you want to maintain a high opinion of the character.

Twilight was so good I'm still talking about it

I was gonna sit down and write an interesting post, but I don't really feel like it any more. I also remembered that I was going to write a little (ha!) review about the Twilight series after I finished reading all of it, but I never did. I can't sum it up in words. That's how good it was. If you talk to me about these books I will be like "Yeah, I loved the part when Edward....oh, but then there was how Bella....wait, do you remember how she......" and so on and so forth, continually interrupting myself and tripping over my words trying to explain all the best parts and how good it is and how well written it is.

Anyways........it was great, and I can't wait for the next movie to come out. By the way, has anyone read the first part of "Midnight Sun." For the one person who might not know, this is the book that Meyer (the author) started writing as a part of the whole Twilight thing. It's the first book, rewritten from Edward's perspective. Well, she postponed it indefinitely because a copy of it leaked out. She says that after one whole year goes by and she hasn't heard anybody say anything about it, then she'll pick it back up again and finish it and publish it. I guess she figures that everyone will have forgotten about it by then? Not likely.

She did end up putting what she had written on her website, and I succumbed to the temptation and read it, and it's so good. So much more stuff happened in the beginning of Twilight on Edward's side as opposed to Bella's. It's so interesting and actually gives you even more information about the characters and vampires and such.

Well, I really could go on and on about this, but I will stop now because I have to make Riley's invitations for her 2nd birthday party. Will share later.

Grace

I haven't really had much to post about recently, but then I remembered a book that I read a couple of weeks ago. After reading the first Twilight book I got on this reading kick, but didn't have access to the second one yet. Well, I ended up reading like three books in three days. They were good, but not books that I'd normally read that fast. I think the reason I read them so fast was because I really wanted to read New Moon (Twilight, #2) and didn't want to be in the middle of a book when I finally got hold of a copy of the twilight book. Sad, but true.



So, I'm here to review the best of the three that I sped through. It was Richard Paul Evans' new book, Grace. My mom is a big fan of this author, and she's gotten me to read all of his books. They're all pretty short, but very, very good, and once you read one, it's hard to stop. This one was about this 16 year old girl, Grace, who runs away from an abusive home. The main character, whose name I've forgotten, runs into her and offers to let her stay in a little clubhouse that him and his brother built. Anyways, it's a really sweet book. It's sad, but also inspirational in a way. Grace has been through so much and still has such an upbeat attitude and is just a cool girl all around.

Let me note one thing I noticed though in all 7 of the books I've read in the past few weeks. Yes, seven! That's crazy! Okay, we'll count the Twilight series as one book because it was written by the same person. So four books. Three out of the four were written by women. In all of the books written by women, the guys were hot and the girl's were kind of average-looking. In the one written by the man, the girl was hot and the boy was dorky. Go figure. I definitely think there's something there. I mean, women like writing/reading about hot guys and men like writing/reading about hot girls. I need further evidence to back up my theory, but I'm sure it's true.

If you want a synopsis or other information about this book go here. I just found this while looking for an image.

Twilight Finally! Edward......wow!

I finally caved and read Twilight. I love reading and I don't know why, but when something gets so popular, I somehow get myself to thinking that I wouldn't like it. I know this makes no sense. The more people like something, the less likely I am to like it? Logical? No. I did the same thing with Harry Potter, but then I saw the first Harry Potter movie, and then read all the books as fast as they could put them out. And I loved them!

The surprising thing is that I love Twilight even more! I read the book in a very short amount of time, just a week ago. (By a very short amount of time, I mean within a period of hours. Yeah, it's that good. You probably already know this though, because I'm sure most of you have already read it.) Anyways, I already miss reading it and want to read it again. I've never wanted to reread a book right after I've finished it, but now I do. I just started the second one today and am trying to pace myself. That's why I'm taking a break to write on this blog. Not that there's a million other things I need to be doing right now.

This post was supposed to be my "book review," but instead I seem to be gushing over how much I enjoyed the book. I probably sound like a teenager. By the way, I went in the library to check out some books because after reading Twilight, I've gotten on this reading kick. So, I asked the librarian to suggest some good reads and she said that since I liked Twilight, I might want to go look in the teen section. Thanks! A nice good kick to my trying-to-be-an-adult-raising-two-kids-while-living-with-my-parents self-esteem. Oh, well.

Review:

Everyone should read this book, obviously. I think one thing I enjoyed about it is that the main character, Bella, is so relatable. She's so normal and the fact that this amazingly gorgeous, supernatural, and seemingly perfect Edward wants only to be with her has great love story written all over it.

There's more I could write about it, but I think I'll save it all until I've finished the whole series. Which won't be long, considering my recent track record of book reading.

The Shack

Just for fun, I've decided to make my own little personal book review everytime I finish a book. So, I decided to start with "The Shack" by William P. Young, which I read back in the summer. Now, I've read a few other books since this one, but I've been seeing A LOT of people with this book. So, I thought I'd give my two cents about it.

If you're expecting a deep, profound review then you will probably be disappointed. Sorry, this is all my weary and tired "mommy brain" could come up with at the time.

I kind of had mixed emotions about this book. It was a great book as far as being profound and inspiraional and such. On the other hand, though, I found it quite boring and repetitive. That might be too harsh of a description. It wasn't repetitive as far as content, but just the format. For example, there would be a whole chapter on the main character's conversation with one of the God heads and then the next chapter would be another conversation with another form of God, and so on and so forth for most of the book. The conversations were really deep and interesting and quite inspiring, but I got so bored with reading through a conversation just to be met by another one in the next chapter. I was like "come on and tell us what happens to the little girl." I'm even getting bored writing about the repetitiveness. (Please keep reading, though.)

The first few chapters of the book really pulls you in with the little girl that goes missing. If the book didn't start this way and just started with the "conversations" I probably wouldn't have finished it sadly. I'm glad I did though because it was really good. The ideas that the author put forth were so thought provoking.

The author did such an amazing job making God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit so personal, and I actually felt closer to all three. I think putting them in the forms that the author did was one reason for this closeness that I felt while reading the book. It was a good reminder that God wants that kind of closeness with us, and I think I tend to seperate myself from Him sometimes.

I think it's really important to keep in mind, though, that this book is fiction because I can see how it would be very, very easy to get sucked into it and forget that it is fiction and really is just one man's thoughts on what God would say, although I do seem to agree with him on a lot of things from what I can remember of the book.

Normally, when I read a good book like this one I would recommend it to many, but I really don't think this book is for everyone. I can see how it would be easy for someone to get pulled into it and claim it as gospel, as many did with "The DaVinci Code."

So, I loved it and disliked it at the same time if that's possible.