(I skipped Farmer Boy and stopped after These Happy Golden Years.)
I hadn’t reread these since I was a kid, when Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite books for ages. They’re as good as I remember them, though the racist attitude towards non-whites no longer sails over my head.
It’s interesting to watch how the books turn from the “what life was like then” of Little House in the Big Woods (which Laura wasn’t actually old enough to remember — I think the family left when she was 3, not 6) into actual stories in the later books.
I like the later books in the series better now than I did when I was 7 or so. I always liked running-around-the-frontier Laura much better than sewing-a-new-dress Laura. That said, why did Almanzo put up with Laura long enough to marry her? She wasn’t very nice to him at all. One wonders if there were no other eligible girls in town.