A Swiftly Tilting Planet
by Madeleine L’Engle
Rating: *****
Read 9/29/2013

I’m spending a month away from home for work. I thought it would be lovely to listen to old favorites, and have whiled away many contented almost-sleeping hours listening to Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Enright. Then there was this. Which, don’t get me wrong, I love unreservedly. But in a strange place? In the middle of the night? There’s not a lot of sleeping going on.

This book conjures up my childhood, with the spectre of nuclear war, more cogently than nearly any other fiction I’ve read. L’Engle’s dialogue may be wooden, but her characters manage to overcome that and take up root in one’s psyche.

I can’t say anything objective about this, I don’t know why I even try.

Little Men
by Louisa May Alcott
Rating: *****
Read 9/16/2013

9/2013 Yup.
1/2012 Listening to an old favorite on audio is a wonderful experience. There’s something so comforting about somehow sharing this with the narrator, who whispers softly into my ear as I fall contentedly asleep. This one’s my second favorite of the series, behind Jo’s Boys. I love the boys, I love the grown Little Women. I don’t like The Princess, though, I find her unbelievable and repellent. Dan, on the other hand, is my beau ideal in every particular. And I think that it’s in this book I found my justification for my staunch defense of Alcott’s choice to marry Laurie to Amy and give The Professor to Mrs. Jo. Laurie and Jo would never have been happy, and Plumfield is perfect.

Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
Rating: *****
Date read 9/17/2013

I have whole swaths of this by heart, and somehow don’t much mind the preachifying and compartmentalizing of sex roles. Probably because I read it so young, love the characters so much, and know how to place it in the context of its times. And oh, how I love this book. The narration here is tip-top.

I revisit this book much less often than I do the third in the trilogy, but I am going through them in order this time, and I’m glad I made that choice.