The internet has really revitalized my interest in the books. I love finding out all the "what happened to" stories, although some of them are very sad (Cap Garland, Laura's first crush, died in his mid-20s when the steam engine on the tractor he was working with blew up). Ida Brown got married to the guy she was engaged to at the same time that Laura got engaged to Almanzo and then moved to Sacramento. Lena, Laura's "wild child" cousin in On the Shores of Silver Lake, was an elderly woman in the early 1940s who happened to be reading that book when she recognized herself in the book and then contacted Laura's agent so that the two cousins were able to connect again for the first time since the events of that book.

I'd told him I went to a Quaker college and he was trying to imagine me going to classes in a long black skirt with apron and cap.

Hah, that would be awesome. Um, as someone who didn't go to one (though now I'm picturing my college with everyone wearing Catholic school uniforms...)

I loved the pig bladder scene and Little House in the Big Woods...and wanted to try the crispy pig tail (?), she made it sound so yum!

Sounds like pork rinds, without the preservatives (never read the books, sorry).

Toddson! I ... can't believe that.

My old hardcovers of Little Town and Silver Lake are gone somehow. But Sara has all of my others, except for The First Four Years, which I had in paperback (and loved!). I don't know where that went, either.

The pig bladder balloon and Laura and Mary changing the straw ticking in the mattresses were two of my favorite scenes. Oh, and Laura rocking the desk and getting in trouble, and her first year teaching.

One of the main things I love about the books was LIW's ability to make her main characters so intimately detailed and believable, which is a sadly rare thing in children's books, IMO. Obviously, it was because the characters were her family IRL, but the way she made Laura into a real girl, with real foibles and childhood/teenage struggles and traumas, even though she lived in such a different time and place from me, just enthralled me as a kid, and continues to do so today.

Also, I love the later books, especially Little Town on the Prairie, partially because of their really cool illustration of the various fads and social events that preoccupied the teenaged Laura, just like any teenager today. Her fervent wish for calling cards because her more financially settled classmates had them, her nervousness over her first dinner party (where she had the second orange in her life), her disdain for the painful restrictions of fashion ("Drat these hoops!" she says as they blow up her hips while walking to school, and the fact that she refused to wear her corset to bed despite Ma's warnings that she'd never have a small waist)--all make me see someone I would have loved to have had as a friend.

and wanted to try the crispy pig tail (?), she made it sound so yum!

There are a couple of places you can get that here!

I would love to find the books in first editions. I do have a few second editions of the Macguffey readers just because of their appearances in the LIW books (I picked up the Fourth and Fifth Readers at an antiques store near Dayton, OH, which is the area where they were published). If I could ever afford it, I'd love to find an original Garth Williams illustration from one of the books, but they are so sought after that I think I'll never be able to get one.

ETA: Thanks for the McClure rec! I just added it to my Amazon wish list for later purchase. Looks like fun!

My mom thought Mormons and Amish were the same for a while. I have an internet friend who I've known for years, her family is Mormon, and my mother honestly spent months wondering why she had a computer.

That's awesome. I think I was confused about Mormons for a long time after reading The Great Brain series...

My next school project is a paper on a specific religion (it's up to us which one we want to pick, as long as it's not our own). I decided to do mine on Shakerism, although I did briefly think about maybe doing it on the Mormons.