Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott · first published 1848
27% recommend73% neutral
Louisa May Alcotts classic novel, set during the Civil War, has always captivated even the most reluctant readers. Little girls, especially, love following the adventures of the four March sisters--Meg, Beth, Amy, and most of all, the tomboy Jo--as they experience the joys and disappointments, tragedies and triumphs, of growing up. This simpler version captures all the charm and warmth of the original.
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There are definitely some odd choices on there. An obscure dime novel by Louisa May Alcott? How did that "shape America"? Her Little Women deserves a place on the list, certainly, but I'm not sure about this one.
on “Books That Shaped America” ↗…featured in several end of year lists: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe and Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Reading aloud with my 10 year old daughter: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Penguin’s 150th anniversary annotated edition with a Patti Smith foreword). Enough said about how influential this experience is for both of us.
on “Ask HN: What book(s) had the most impact for you in 2019?” ↗…reading as a top family practice from our parents, and we're passing it along. Every day we read to the kids ... it's been about 14 years now of that. My daughter in particular was deeply shaped by the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - it gave her a aspirative vision for life, particularly as a future wife and mother -- and her vision transcends her family of origin, in a very good way.
on “Retro-Tech Parenting” ↗A few more great books that beget great films: * The Silence of the Lambs * The Shining * Shawshank Redemption (novella but I'll allow it) * Brokeback Mountain (same) * No Country for Old Men * Little Women (there are a few versions to choose from but I would choose the 1994 adaptation myself, thought he 2019 version was very good) * Requiem For a Dream * Lolita * Roots (mini-series but I think we should…
on “The Godfather almost never happened” ↗…http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the... Relevant excerpt: 'As is often the case, though, such "abuses" have a long and esteemed history in English. The ground was not especially sticky in Little Women when Louisa May Alcott wrote that "the land literally flowed with milk and honey," nor was Tom Sawyer turning somersaults on piles of money when Twain described him as "literally rolling in wealth,"…
on “"RIP Good Times": Silicon Valley's Cuban Missile Crisis” ↗…people's work -- it wasn't until I started mentoring that I realised how little of this some people do naturally, and I still don't know the reasons why that is. On a side note, and having just re-read Little Women, I have a thought about hacking and poverty. When you are poor, you have to be creative. How much of that mindset overlaps with what makes a good hacker? How many hackers grew up in disadvantaged circumstances…
on “I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a "hacker"” ↗…- Discworld (Pratchett) - The Diamond Age (Stephenson) - Neuromancer (Gibson) - The Shadow Rising - Wheel of Time (Jordan) - Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) Books that I plan on reading in 2020: - Little Women (Alcott) - Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Evans) - A Walk in the Woods (Bryson)
on “Ask HN: 2019 Winter Reading List?” ↗…Melville "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain "The Hound…
Little Women is 0.07 more difficult than Ulysses. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/louisa-may-alcott/little-w... The "very difficult" books are mostly political theory, including the famously challenging Communist…
on “Books of the Century by Le Monde” ↗11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
…counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because…
This is literature, not history. The times were simple because the author made them simple. Whether the author's fictional world comports with historical truth is beside the point. The world of Little Women is objectively simpler because we are limited to the information given to us by the author. We don't see the complexity because it is denied us, something true of all historical fiction. People and…
on “Why 'Little Women' Endures” ↗…the profile of a "white" family, but my take from your comment is that you spend way too much time thinking about tribal identity politics. If I'm writing a short story (let's say it's fan fiction for "Little Women") about a family in a New England village in the 1860s, images that include non-white people in them are going to look absurd and be ahistorical. Your assumption that the only reason to prompt for an…
on “Google's Culture of Fear” ↗This reminds me of the year I really got into reading (5th - 6th grade), and I remember reading: Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, Julie of the Wolves, the Babysitter's Club, The Giver, Holes, and Captain Underpants. I honestly could go on and on.…
on “The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading” ↗Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Our daughter counted AK as her favorite book for years, though now I suspect she'd choose Little Women or any of the last five William Gibson books as her fav. She's read many of these books multiple times. Of course, she's never had a reading list to do, so I'm sure it helps that she chose them on her…
on “The Mensa Reading List for Grades 9-12” ↗