1868
3 books
- You settle in with the four March sisters like they're your own family, and Jo especially (stubborn, ink-stained, always scribbling in the attic) stays with you. Fair warning that it's cozy and openly moral in a very nineteenth-century way, but it earns its tears honestly.
- Dick himself is what carries it: a wisecracking bootblack who jokes about his "mansion" on Fifth Avenue while sleeping in a crate, then quietly starts saving his pennies and learning to read. It's earnest and predictable, sure, but his good humor makes the moralizing go down easy.
- You get the whole mystery told by different narrators who keep giving themselves away, and Betteredge, the old butler who treats Robinson Crusoe like scripture, is worth the price alone. It's long and takes its time, but the puzzle itself plays completely fair with you.