Betsie Ann > Recent Status Updates

The oft-quoted line from the 2019 version of Little Women, where Jo says, "We've got minds as well as hearts... I'm sick of being told (love) is all a woman is fit for!" is actually from Rose in Bloom, and not Little Women at all. It is a nod to Louisa May Alcott's larger body of work, but it aggravates me that Greta Gerwig used it when an entirely different character says it, and Rose's story has never been told.

Revisiting my childhood.🥰

So far this is beat for beat the same as the movie. Which takes the surprise out of reading a book- I don't want it to be the same as the movie- I want it to be so much richer and more detailed- to have all the things moviemakers decided weren't important enough to include. Maybe that will still come. It's early days yet, or rather early pages yet.🙃

Not my usual fare- literary fiction has bitten me a few too many times. However, this is genuinely intriguing.

Thoreau definitely liked to hear himself talk, but I knew that going in, so who am I kidding?

I am trying to be reasonable. I am far removed from the author's experiences, but her descriptions of her relationship with Bogie are sad, almost painful to read. She admits she poured her love for an absent father into her relationship with Bogie. She wanted to give him all he'd never had- poor hopeless romantic. I'm sorry, but this is going to be added to the "daddy issues" pile. Lauren Bacall, join Grace Kelly.

A beauty and the beast reference? Nope, doesn't work. Not in YA, and definitely not here. There's a big difference between teenage angst and the yearning and impossibility that is that classic fairytale.

Curiosity killed the cat.
I've heard about the controversies with this series, so I wanted to find out for myself. I'm actually enjoying it so far.
One annoyance, among several so far- why do all the men in books smell like pine? Isn't there some other scent we can come up with? This is a clear example of "checking your brain at the door." The banter is sparkling, but realism and consistency aren't its' strengths.

This is slow-going, unfortunately.

It is an interesting choice on the part of the author to make the oppressed "redcloaks," and the military "whitecloaks." During the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks were the Reds, and those who supported the government were the Whites. If the author is presenting the Affinites as the peasants and the ruling class as the Whites... well, I have questions. For this parallel to work it has to be nuanced, and this isn't.

"Are they the theologians? Why, I took them for...six white geese..."

I honestly don't get the hype so far. Maybe Stephanie Garber books just aren't for me.