Your challenge: read one Louisa May Alcott work a month and share your thoughts. Were you brought up with Alcott as I was? Did you read her and put her aside because of her preachiness that seems out-of-place in our modern world? Are you now old enough to appreciate her?

I’m hoping that you, my faithful friends, are willing to climb on the Alcott bandwagon with me. Comment or send me an email (gotmyreservations@gmail.com) regarding your participation, and read one of the biographies. Each is good in its own way and will get you started on your Alcott journey.

January 2012 Prompts after reading an Alcott biography

January 2012 Louisa Salon

Here’s the schedule for The Louisa Challenge in the order that she wrote them; free online books can be found at The Literature Network, but your local library will probably have hard copies of most of these titles. Louisa would approve of your actually holding the treasured book in your hand. Some of them are also available from Project Gutenberg, and Kindle has free copies of Little Women and An Old Fashioned Girl.

January:  Little Women – originally serialized as Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy followed by the second half of the story as Good Wives (1869)

February 13 Prompts after reading Little Women

February 2012 Louisa Salon

February:  An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870)  – you’ll find out in this one why my name ends in “ie”

THE LOUISA CHALLENGE STALLED OUT — BUT I PLAN TO BEGIN AGAIN WITH VIGOR IN THE FALL!

March: Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys (1871)

April: Eight Cousins (1875)

May: Rose in Bloom (1876)

June: Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out (1886)

Join our digital book club at any time. Watch for my once-a-month post with prompts for commenting; the Linky will go up on the second Sunday in each month.

I leave you with a photo of my well-used copy of Little Women, published in 1947. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where it came from, but since it’s older than me, I’d guess it was passed down from my mother. I’m actually going to be reading Louisa from my Kindle!