Saturday Pages: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott!!

Today is yet another later than usual Saturday Pages, I was just hooked up finishing one book and starting another and it took me a while to part me from the books when I woke up after my morning-nap-after-night-shift-at-work, but I'm finally here and there's a review up!

This Saturday's book is December's book for The Midnight Garden's Classic MG & YA Challenge and Readalong, and it is yet another challenge that I've managed not to flunk and that I will continue with over in 2015, since I've already bought the books for Jan & Feb!

After or before reading my review of Little Women, don't miss dropping by the discussion at The Midnight Garden!

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read the book for the first time when I was 12-13 and then saw the 1994 movie and I feel that most of my opinions on the story became influenced more by the movie than the original reading of the book, and that reflects very much on how heartbroken I was over Jo and Laurie.

But if there's something this re-read has showed me is that although some perceptions have changed from my first reading, some essentials have not changed: I adore Beth and suffer greatly for that sweet darling, I continue to understand Jo's struggle to be who she wants to be and her defiance of what is expected and proper, I still despise Amy with a burning passion, Meg is still a dear, Laurie is "a great chap" but he loses all points with his final choices and the social expectations and limits on women still make me see red with a white hot rage.

I appreciated in a different way the love and bond between the sisters and I found it to be quite probably the biggest highlight of the book for me. I didn't appreciate as much and was much more bothered by the moralizing in the book this time around. I don't mind some references to being a good person and being caritative and cheerful with what you have, but all the references to what a good woman should do or do not... again white hot rage. I know it's frame in its time period, but it always makes me happy that I was born on the age I was, despite the way still to go.

I wasn't happy how Amy seemed to get rewarded for sticking to the shape society chooses for women no matter how horrible a person she continued to be and that Jo being herself and not conforming to the square she was supposed to stay in, ended up being punished and had to try and settle somewhat with someone that will allow her a position but also some sort of freedom, but that doesn't seem like will make her really happy.

After the discussion at The Midnight Garden it also made me wonder if Jo's wants to be a boy were more than just her wanting the freedoms and choices that men had and she didn't have as a girl, or if it had a queer underside, with Jo feeling like she should have been a boy, therefore showing some trans qualities.

The book has gone a lil bit up on this re-read, from my upset 3 stars to 3.5 to 4 stars. A classic that has to be read.



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Saturday Pages: Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh!!

Hey there guys!

Today's Saturday Pages post is up considerably later than usual but not only I was massively tired and rather emotionally wrenched after a bit of tiring night shift at work, but also once I've been up and flaffing around the internet, I've been procastinating about a bit... but here it is!

After skipping last month's read cause I ended up being too busy, this month I've been back with the amazing ladies at The Midnight Garden and their fantastic Classic Young Adult & Middle Grade Challenge!

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Reading Harriet was once again part of the Classics Middle Grade & YA realong that the awesome ladies of The Midnight Garden have going on this year. I arrived late but I've loved joining and reading all these books that I missed on my own childhood. With some it's easier to see them with my own childhood eyes, but others are a lil more difficult and I end up reading them as my adult self only, and Harriet the Spy was one of those.

Harriet was a breath of fresh air if we discuss more usual characters in classic YA, because many of the ones that come to mind are too perfect children with their prayers, their chores and their telling the kids that are reading them to behave like that or else. Harriet felt more like a real child, like someone kids that aren't perfect can relate to in one way or another.

Harriet is girl that is different from all the girls I read about on most of my MG reads, she wants to be a spy and works very hard at it, keeping her notebooks full of her writings and observations, that hit me as mean without meaning to, born in a rather privileged family and with a nurse, Ole Golly, to take care of her. She loves her routines and will only eat tomato sandwiches for lunch at school.

When her latest notebook ends up in the hands of her friends and classmates she has to face the aftermath of all the mean things she's written about them, and is confronted with quite a few lessons about growing up at the tender age of 11.

Maybe I was a nicer kid back in my own childhood or maybe I was more prone to instrospection and self analysis on my own journals, but except for some very poignant comments here and there about life, most of Harriet notes on her notebooks came across as just nasty, without malice but showing a certain lack of empathy that could be simply part of growing up, but it seems to me that she fails to see how what she gets from her classmates and friends after the notebook is found is no more and no less but what she was writing in private.

I found this book to be a very fascinating read about the time period and the world that Harriet lived in, one of material privilege but of a lack of emotional support. Her parents though loving simply had left everything in the hands of the nurse and once Ole Golly leaves, they realize they don't know their own child.

Harriet in some aspects made me think of kids that although not fully, are somewhat on the autism spectrum with her difficulties of grasping other people's emotional responses or responding with empathy, her attachment & compulsion to write on her notebooks, her inordinate love of routines only broken when she's terribly upset and her tomato sandwich obsession. After talking to the ladies at Midnight Garden I also realized that there seems to be a certain queer subtext on Harriet's preferring her more boy-ish spy clothes to her more normal girly clothes. But all simply boiled down to Harriet being a character with which people that aren't exactly "normal" or "perfect" could relate to.

Of the secondary characters some might have seemed more cookie cutter typical, like the main mean girls that seem to only want to emulate their mothers and have tea and play bridge, but there are also others that are great as contrast, such as Sport, a boy so young that still has to be the brains and common sense in his household with a rather made writer father. And Janie with her love for chemistry and experiments that also made her not exactly the kind of daughter her well-to-do parents would have expected.

This was one of those books that have left me with more food for thought that fuzzy feelings, but both are equally important for me and equally necessary. Very well deserved 4 stars for this one!



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Saturday Pages: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle!!!

Welcome everyone to this week's Saturday Pages! Today both the books I will be reviewing are both part of group readings, but both were books I really wanted to read and just needed a lil push to do so!

The first one is the book chosen for May at The Midnight Garden for their monthly read-along! I had been wanting to read this one for a long time, since I had heard great reviews, so I thought it was the right time to finally dive into the book!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A Wrinkle in Time is one of those books that I had heard about many times and have been wanting to read for a while, but never seemed to find the time for it. It all changed when the ladies at The Midnight Garden chose it as their May read-along! I jumped at it and am I glad that I did.

This can be considered more middle grade than young adult I guess, but it was a joy to read and I think it can be enjoyed by anyone of any age. Some ages will feel the message hit closer to home than others, and some of its messages made me wish I had read it when I was 13-17...

Meg Murray is a girl that doesn't fit it too well at school. She's impatient, very intelligent but selective with the subjects she enjoy. She doesn't fit the mold too well, so she keeps on being chastised and laughed at. She has two twin brothers that do fit in at school and a younger one that is even more peculiar than she is. Her parents are scientists and her dad is away involved in a secret project.

Everything takes a turn for the wondrous when three odd new characters are introduced and Meg, her little brother Charles and their newly made friend Calvin end up going on a journey that they didn't expect and that changed their lives in many ways.

This book is full of science and it's addressed in a way that is magical but also vivid and understandable and solid and wondrous. Seeing science woven this way into the story and presenting the different and alien as new and positive and making us look at how we react at what's different was a joy to read.

I just adored this book and I keep on hoping I could just make my younger self read it! Well deserved 5 stars for this classic but ultimately, timeless book!



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