WIKA "Little Women"

What I know about Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:

Well, firstly I know that it is not about a group of women who suffer from dwarfism.  That came as a bit of a disappointment when I was nine and first tried to read that classic.

My wife surprised me a bit today by purchasing me the first hardback of this series of 100 Books You Should Read Before You Die.  It's quite nice actually, and purchased from The Hermitage, a shop here in Denver that sells only hardbacks, rare, and first editions, which is the only place I'd ever buy books if it were possible and my budget allowed.  That place is simply put one of the greatest treasures I have found second only, perhaps...and mostly due to nostalgia, to Parnasus in my hometown.  Miss Lilian, the owner, believed in me as a writer before I ever was even sure I wanted to be.  She noticed me reading Keats one day and marveled (I was 17 at the time).  But I digress...

I asked my beloved if she mentioned to the shop owner about my little project.  She replied that she did and he called it a "Noble goal."  Yeah, I'm not sure how to take that either.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott.  This is yet another of those books that was somewhat forced upon me as a child.  I didn't get it at the time and barely remembered.  Why read a book about girls and love and parties when I could read Treasure Island or Gulliver's Travels?

I know that I half watched the movie version with Christian Bale as the love interest...who if I remember correctly everyone thinks he loves the one girl and really wants another or...something.  There was a bit of a love polygon going on in there...perhaps a rhombus.  I only watched the film because I had made a girl that I liked watch Gerard Depardieu's Cyrano Debergerac, in French with little yellow subtitles, and so she responded that I then had to watch Little Women.  I still maintain that Cyrano is in the 10 best foreign films of all time and the single most romantic film I've ever seen.  She disagreed and soon after we parted ways.  Not because of her choice in romantic cinematography, of course.  It had more to do with the fact that I was directionless in life and her parents had a talk with her.  Fair point now that I'm a parent myself, but back then it stung a bit.

I'm looking forward to Little Women with a bit of optimism having been delightfully surprised by Pride and Prejudice. 

Pax,

W