Jezebel – Little Women : The Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves – little women – As websites go, Jezebel is not my cuppa. But I do like Lizzie Skurnick’s FINE LINES column about the novels that made an impression on her as a kid. This week’s column is on Little Women, and while I disagree with the bit about Meg “fading to domestic obscurity,” I really enjoyed this piece.
Thanks for the link about “Little Women.” I am reading “Little Men” at this time. I reread “Little Women” a few years ago and remembered how much I loved it. I am trying to read her other books. Why I didn’t read them years ago I have no idea. My daughter, who turns 7 this summer, read an abridged version recently and enjoyed it. What’s your (or others) opinion on reading such copies. Generally, I push the originals, but is there any harm in introduing children to classics this way? I read abridged versions and then read the originals later if I enjoyed the story. I may be asking a rhetorical question, knowing your response to your publisher’s decision to abridge your books. From a writer’s viewpoint, it may be insulting. I’ve never thought about that side of things.
My girls enjoyed the prairie dog story . . . we had a similar escape at our Columbus Zoo when they opened the markhor exhibit. Luckily the keepers were watching for it, and kept the poor beast from “escaping” into the tiger exhibit!
Another link for you . . . I’d love your (and your readers’) thoughts on this one:
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
Twitter Updates
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Thanks for the link about “Little Women.” I am reading “Little Men” at this time. I reread “Little Women” a few years ago and remembered how much I loved it. I am trying to read her other books. Why I didn’t read them years ago I have no idea. My daughter, who turns 7 this summer, read an abridged version recently and enjoyed it. What’s your (or others) opinion on reading such copies. Generally, I push the originals, but is there any harm in introduing children to classics this way? I read abridged versions and then read the originals later if I enjoyed the story. I may be asking a rhetorical question, knowing your response to your publisher’s decision to abridge your books. From a writer’s viewpoint, it may be insulting. I’ve never thought about that side of things.
Posted on June 29th, 2009 at 6:34 amMy girls enjoyed the prairie dog story . . . we had a similar escape at our Columbus Zoo when they opened the markhor exhibit. Luckily the keepers were watching for it, and kept the poor beast from “escaping” into the tiger exhibit!
Another link for you . . . I’d love your (and your readers’) thoughts on this one:
Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22891
Posted on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm