Review: Great Classics
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2013
This is a review of the first three works.  I skipped Little Women as I have read it many times and seen at least two movies plus a theatrical presentation.  I read Good Wives, which I did not realize before was a separate book.  I always thought it was a part of Little Women.  Anyway, I enjoyed it very much.  While I remembered the gist of the story, there were so many details that had slipped from my memory.  Somehow I thought that Jo wrote a book called, My Beth, and that was what touched off her writing career and played a part in her romance with Mr Bhaer.  I don't know where I got that from as either the story had changed, or I got the My Beth part from one of the movies I saw.  Anyway, this book, Little Women - Parts One and Two - has been an endearing classic for quite a few generations of women, young and old.  I watched the movies together with some of my older granddaughters, and they too fell in love with Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.I then moved on in my Kindle reading to Little Men.  I found these stories to be as endearing as I remembered them to be from my childhood.  Valuable moral principles are set forth in a natural, nonthreatening sort of way.  I wish our youth of today could be influenced by these wholesome stories as were previous generations.  Perhaps this Kindle edition will prove useful to that end.  However, I think one would have to start when the children were quite a bit younger than previous generations were when introduced to Little Men.  I was sorry to see that this title included a great number of typos which took some thought to determine what word was actually intended.  I will write another review when I proceed further into the collection.  I am giving these three stories five stars, although I probably should delete a star because of the many typos in Little Men.I think Jo's Boys was a new book for me because I can't remember reading these stories before.  Any lover of Little Men should read this sequel which takes place ten years after Little Men.  It follows the boys and girls of Little Men into their adult lives.  Very good advice is given by Aunt Jo as her boys and girls grow up.  It also gives a glimpse of the northeastern part of our country around the turn of the 20th century.The book entitled Moods struck me as a very strange book.  It is very different from the other books I have read by Ms Alcott.  It is more of a psychological study of her characters and certainly has a different ending than I would have expected.  It would be interesting to know at what stage of life she wrote this one.