The next book will be 'Just Kids', the memoir of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe when they were young and before they were famous. It has gotten great reviews and was awarded the National Book Award.
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (3.5)
Many in the book club had read ‘Little Women’ in their childhood, so a big question was: did we feel the same way reading it as an adult? The responses were quite interesting. Most of us appreciated the characteristics of the girls more when we were young, but found their language and antics a bit cornier as adults. We also recognized the theme of family more strongly now. One of the group (we’ll call her Lawyer-K) even found it tougher to read as a mother – she associated more with Marmee and found her to be so perfect as to be intimidating. We assured her that the situation was far more idyllic than humanly possible, both in terms of the mother’s and the girls’ behaviors. The morals of the story (family=good, money=bad) came across as very clear and even a tad heavy-handed to the adult readers. Overall many of us had good nostalgic feelings about rereading the story, even if they were slightly different feelings from our younger selves. There is something for people of all ages to appreciate in the cleverness of the post office and the Pickwick Portfolio, particularly when compared to the entertainment available to kids ‘these days’. What imagination can do when there is no TV or computer available! Our rating of 3.5 is an average of the group’s ratings (from between 3 and 4).
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