A Blog Award

 Brenda from Curling Up With a Good Book gave me The {Booker} Award recently and I'm so excited about it! I love receiving blog awards and the rules for this one are great!

Thank you so much Brenda for giving me this award.  I appreciate it!

The Rules:

1. This award is for book bloggers only. To receive this award the blogger's blog must be 50% about books (this includes writing blogs or reader blogs).

2. When you accept this award you must also share what your top five all time favorite books are. Going over five is encouraged.

3. You must pass this award on to five to ten other book blogs that you adore :)

_________________________________________________

So here are a few of my All Time Favorite Books...

Source:  Goodreads

I absolutely adore EVERY book in the Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  They just make me happy!

Source:  Goodreads

I love the Anne of Green Gables Series and pretty much anything written by L.M. Montgomery.  This book is the first book I fell in love with as a child.  I loved Anne so much, and still do I might add (:

Source:  Goodreads

I am a huge fan of Louisa May Alcott, and Little Women (along with Little Men and Jo's Boys) are among my favorites of all her work.

Source:  Goodreads

I just LOVE this book!

"If he loved  you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day."  (Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights)

And with writing like that who wouldn't!

Source:  Goodreads

I don't see how anyone who's read this book couldn't fall in love with it.  Such a powerful story!

__________________________________________________

I think you'll notice a recurring theme in the books above...all women authors & all historical fiction.

Louisa May Alcott: Writer, Feminist, Abolitionist

Book list 171-180
171.Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
172.Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik  (6/9/2010)
173.Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks
174.Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
175.The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Neffenegger  (11/1/2010)
176.Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
177.Sounder by William H. Armstrong
178.Little Women by Louisa May Alcott  (1/16/2011)
179.Little Men by Louisa May Alcott  (1/21/2011)
180.Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott  (1/26/2011)

I had seen the movie, "Little Women", years ago and loved it.  I have owned a hardback copy of the book for even longer.  I'd say I've had it for fifteen years, yet I had never read it until this year.  I don't know why really.  My reading list is forever long and always growing, and I guess there was just always something else to read.  Why after fifteen years did I decide to read it this year?  The answer is very simple--my sister read it.  I am very lucky to have a sister who loves books as much as I do.  I can't tell you how many books I've read at her suggestion, and Little Women happens to be one of them.  I'm glad I finally got around to reading it, not only because I love the book, but because it opened the door to a new author that I truly enjoy.

Numbers 178, 179, and 180 on this portion of the list are all Louisa May Alcott books.  This series of books about the March family is one of my favorites of all time.  It's right up there with The Little House and Anne of Green Gables series.



Louisa May Alcott
Source:  www.wikipedia.org



Source:  www.vonniesbooks.blogspot.com

Source:  www.coverbrowser.com

Source:  www.openlibrary.com

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania.   She was the second of four girls and a tomboy.  Her sisters were Anna, Elizabeth, and May.  Her mother's name was Abigail, and she was educated mostly by her father, Bronson Alcott, who was a noted transcendentalist.  Some of her father's friends were fellow transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller.  Bronson Alcott along with a friend, founded a commune named Fruitlands.  It was a 90 acre farm with a run down house and barn.  No animal power was used in the growing of their food, they ate no animal substance, drank only water, took cold baths, and used no artificial light.  It lasted seven months.  Louisa May Alcott's book, Wild Oats, is about her time at Fruitlands.

According to Dictionary.com, transcendentalism is...
"A movement in nineteenth-century American literature and thought. It called on people to view the objects in the world as small versions of the whole universe and to trust their individual intuitions. The two most noted American transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau."
(Source: {http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transcendentalist})

Bronson Alcott
Source:  www.wikipedia.org

You can learn more about Louisa May Alcott and her father in the book Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father.  I haven't read this one, but it's on my list.  You can also learn more about Bronson Alcott and www.alcott.net.

Source:  http://www.amazon.com/

Louisa May Alcott was a feminist as well as an abolitionist.  She died on March 6, 1888, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Louisa May Alcott Grave Site
Source:  www.travelpod.com

Beth from Little Women...
"Love is the only thing we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy."