lunabee34

1. ( spoilers for Daredevil season 3 episode 4 )


2. We started watching Umbrella Academy. ( spoilers for episode 1 )

I'm intrigued to see where it goes.

3.

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So, it's a mixed bag. Lots of didactic messaging and gender essentialism and racist descriptions of Chinese people. However, Alcott is also ahead of her time in her disdain for the cult of invalidism, her insistence that smoking is bad for the health, her belief that girls should get plenty of physical exercise, and her belief that girls and boys should interact with each other regularly and learn from each other.

Despite the frequent sermonizing, I really like this book because Alcott draws the characters so well and makes me care about them. Now I just have to wonder which of her cousins Rosy grows up to marry. LOL



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1. ( Into the Drowning Deep )

Does anyone know if Rolling in the Deep adds anything to the story? Is it the short story that is the germ of Into the Drowning Deep, or is there more to it? Also, does anyone know if she plans a sequel?

2. Thank you for sending me this, executrix!!

Hidden Louisa May Alcott: 2 Volumes by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First of all, the two sections of this anthology are prefaced with scholarly essays by one of the most important Alcott scholars who actually discovered (along with a colleague) the texts Alcott had published under aliases. I get the same sort of thrill of scholarship and discovery that I get when reading A.S. Byatt's Possession; how marvelous to figure out an unknown thing, to be the first to put your hands on some document or fact. Thrilling!

Next, the stories in this anthology are what Alcott called her "blood and thunder" stories, and they are melodramatic and racy with Gothic trappings, but they are also surprising in a couple of ways. Two stories portray a pretty realistic picture of drug use (suggesting, of course, that Alcott was familiar with laudanum addiction and with eating hashish). Many of the stories contain familiar gothic tropes like being locked in a madhouse against one's will, inheritance problems, "ghosts," murder, revenge, etc, and while some of them end on a happily ever note that seems contrived in some cases, in at least one story the villainess wins, and in at least one other story, well--let's just say another story ends in such a completely unexpected way that it's best not to spoil it at all.

Anyone who knows Alcott primarily through the Little Women series would be delighted to see another version of her in this anthology.



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