So, having read a bunch of novels of late featuring unlikable protagonists of the friendly neighborhood psychopath variety, I decided that I needed a good dose of wholesome, and undertook to reread Little Women and its sequels. I last did so somewhere between 1984 and 1986. I remembered the vast majority of Little Women’s plot, if it can be said to really have one, but not that it was quite so preachy or that Marmee would bust out in really long answers every so often. Still, it’s a good book.

I’m reading Little Men now, which I remember less of, and was very amused by its definition of “something dreadful”. Demi and Daisy, who are Meg’s children, are playing with a toy stove Daisy has been given. She made flapjacks for Demi’s tea and each has left the room for a moment. The narrator tells us that SOMETHING DREADFUL happened then. Did Demi come back with a hatchet and attack his sister? Did they conspire to do in their cousin Bess? Did they kill some other twins and assume their identities?

Nope! What happened was…
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