I am not ashamed to say that I am one of those people Dr. Campbell was talking about who border on obsession with the book Little Women.

I have read Little Women ten times since first picking it up in fifth grade. The first copy I read (I do have another copy, simply because the first one is old, and precious) was a cloth-bound deal that my Great-Grandmother stole from the Concord (ironically where the March family is said to live in the 1994 version of the film) Library in New Hampshire sometime in the early 1950s.

I feel an overwhelmingly strong connection with this book. Each word is comforting and familiar to me. And I can identify with the March family all too easily, seeing as they are a model of my own. I have a twin sister who embodies both Meg and Beth at the same time, right down to Meg’s vanity of her hands (my sister is strangely obsessed with her own hands, and quite vain of them, something I have never understood about her or Meg) nad Beth’s fear of unknown people (another thing I have never quite understood about my sister). My little sister is Amy in nearly every sense of the word, the only exception being that she has red hair, not blonde. And I, as many people who have read the book before me, am most closely tied to Jo, probably because I was a tomboy as a kid, and the fact that I am currently a scribbler. It was actually Little Woman that made me realize my dream to become a writer.

At the risk of sounding absolutely insane, I am going to put myself out there and say that I am attached to this book like I am to nothing else in the world. And I’m not sure what it is. I think the writing is wonderful, the characters are absolutely perfect and believable (they are the sort of people you can get to know and root for), the lessons hidden (and more often than not, blatantly in-your-face) within the book I believe to be important, and Alcott’s commentary within the book can be absolutely hilarious. Yet, I still don’t know what it is about this books that drew me in at the tender age of nine.

The one thing that baffles me most about my love for Little Women is the fact that it is completely not my scene. I am not a religious person. As a matter of fact, I am an atheist. But the constant Christian morals and biblical references do not bother me in the least. I hate female main characters, and never write stories that have them. My favorite author is Stephen King. And I think that a movie is made infinitely better with an explosion or two.

So why am I so utterly, completely, and totally hooked to this book? The world may never know.