the background: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collecmy becoming-a-genius project, part 21!
the background: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.
DAY 1: USEFUL AND INSTRUCTIVE POETRY awesome. i love to learn, and i imagine i love to learn even more if i'm learning in the style of a 19th century tween reading a weird magazine. these all come with morals which is fun. more things should be more straightforward in my opinion. and sometimes the morals are just random phrases, like, "a present from Croft." and you're like, okay, i mean i guess he did warn me this was going to be nonsense. add one that's just making fun of shakespeare and we're in for quite a ride. rating: 3.5
DAY 2: THE RECTORY MAGAZINE tiny chunk today, which is ideal as i am working with a tiny chunk of time. very funny to picture the churchgoers picking up the rectory magazine expecting, like, jesus stuff, and just..."ugh. rector charles is writing his weird poems again." rating: 3.5
DAY 3: THE RECTORY UMBRELLA okay, so i missed a couple days. a few, even. see the WHOLE OTHER PROJECT I'M DOING SIMULTANEOUSLY for my various excuses. now we are arriving at the actual nonsense, which for right now is just real words spelled weird. there are also footnotes now which are very funny. i think if lewis carroll absolutely had to be okay with having his dumb silly poems explained, he would've been pleased to know the explanations were goofy. rating: 3.5
DAY 4: MISCHMASCH cutest funnest name. realizing today is world poetry day, and i should have just pretended i skipped former days in order to celebrate as thoroughly as possible. oh well. a poem in this has the word "muggle" in it. i am suing joanne rowling for every penny she is worth. ah the first stanza of jabberwocky is in here! is there a better nonsense word in history than "mimsy"? doubtful. rating: 3.5
DAY 5: OTHER EARLY VERSE mercifully, all three of these are relatively short. i don't deserve this but i do need it. like batman, or reverse batman, i can't remember. i am now also eating cake and drinking tea while reading, and feeling very alice-like. "Noodle dumb / Has a noodle-head / I hate such noodles, I do." what a way with words. gotta love poetry. and the last poem is about how cops are terrible at their jobs. lewis carroll said ACAB. rating: 3.5
DAY 6: ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! i f*ckin' love the poetry from alice. for years i had the row row row your boat mnemonic poem memorized and i would doodle it in the margins of my notes in classes, because i am very cool and normal. that one is not in this section since it's from through the looking-glass, but this ruled all the same. i'm so far past due for a reread. rating: 5
DAY 7: PHANTASMAGORIA today's section is over 100 pages long and that's not what any of this is about. desperate times, desperate measures: we're dividing willy-nilly again. this poem is a little ghost postulating on the rules of the ghost lifestyle and as such i love it. rating: 4
DAY 8: ...AND OTHER POEMS in case you were wondering if i would have to endure a thousand-page long political poem before getting to part 2 of ghost antics: yes, and are you psychic? AND THEN IT WAS ULTIMATELY CORNY ANGEL STUFF. GOD. at least we got a little liddell sisters mention. hehe. little liddell. didn't have much fun with this one today. even if there WAS a christmas poem. these aren't nonsense, they're just cheesy. rating: 2, maybe 2.5
DAY 9: PUZZLES FROM WONDERLAND oh hell yeah. today's set is like 4 pages long and wonderlandy in nature. a dream. rating: 4
DAY 10: THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE YAAAAAAASSSSSS. so many heavy hitters here. the aforementioned fav acrostic. tweedle dee and tweedle dum. the titular jabberwocky. walrus and carpenter feat those super cute oysters. 5 stars exponentially!!! rating: 5
DAY 11: OXFORD POEMS, WITH SOME MEMORIA TECHNICA well this sounds like a casual chill vibe. a fun time. the poetry equivalent of a tropical vacation themed darty thrown by a frat. rating: 3
DAY 12: THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK i am having trouble focusing today (sleepiness reasons) so i'm reading this out loud to myself like i am my own small child. can't tell if this poem is better than usual or if reading it aloud is just an exceptional idea but i'm having a blast either way. rating: 4
DAY 13: POEMS FOR FRIENDS, INCLUDING ACROSTICS, RIDDLES, 'CHARADES,' AND A CIPHER-POEM goddamn i hate riddles so much. they make me feel stupid constantly, and i build my life around opportunities to feel smart. when i was a camp counselor during high school summers, i once had a camper whose entire personality was riddles and i truly had to bite my tongue not to be some weird teenager snapping on a kid. a bit of an alternate villain origin story. let's see how this goes. i am firmly on the "don't judge historical figures by the socio-moral standards of today" side of things, but even i wish that bachelors hadn't been on childcare duty in the nineteenth century. lewis carroll wrote too many poems to and about little girls for my reading comfort, i'll say. not creepy. just annoying and boring. and i still have no idea what a double-acrostic is. rating: 2
DAY 14: SYLVIE AND BRUNO AND SYLVIE AND BRUNO CONCLUDED these are referenced a sh*t ton in the annotated alice, so i've always kinda meant to read them. let's see how it goes. well, now i've read all of the non-prose parts of lewis carroll's third-most and fourth-most seminal works. that's something. rating: 3
DAY 15: LATE COLLECTIONS just a handful more of the impenetrable confusing double acrostics written for specific small children to take us out. rating: 3
OVERALL lewis carroll has always been more of a one-off god-level artist of my heart than a favorite author, and reading this collection didn't change that perception for me, but it was still good to discover! and an important reminder that i have gone far too long without reading alice. rating: 3...more
maybe that shouldn't be surprising, considering it's basically just a collection of quotes from my favorite bthis, surprisingly, really did it for me.
maybe that shouldn't be surprising, considering it's basically just a collection of quotes from my favorite book under clever headings that allow me to call it self-improvement, in a pretty little volume with some of my favorite illustrations in it...
but i choose to be pleasantly surprised every time i like something.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite book.
I read it at least once a year, every year, and every time I get something new from it. I love thAlice's Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite book.
I read it at least once a year, every year, and every time I get something new from it. I love the writing. I love the characters. I love the silliness. I love that it works on the surface level as a whimsical children's classic and I love that it works thematically, symbolically, motif-ly (?) on multiple other levels.
And so maybe it is not surprising that I cannot stop picking up retellings of it, and I never like them ever.
Until now, ish.
I picked up this book, pretended that it had nothing to do with Alice, and...enjoyed myself?
I had a hard time focusing on it, to be honest, to the extent that I felt like I read an audiobook of this even though I didn't. It just never fully grabbed my attention, and I didn't like the characters enough to counteract that.
But I'm not writing a one-star rant review like I have for...every other Alice retelling I've read.
This was a fine book! That's progress.
Bottom line: Character development! Not for any characters in this, but for me.
------------------ pre-review
i actually...didn't hate this?
and all it took was pretending it had nothing to do with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
review to come / 3 or 3.5 stars
------------------ tbr review
i have never liked a retelling of my favorite book, but that sure does not stop me from picking them up...more
Here is something very funny and cool that doesn’t remotely make me want to scream for a thousand years: When authors write retellings of books they aHere is something very funny and cool that doesn’t remotely make me want to scream for a thousand years: When authors write retellings of books they apparently have never read.
This is a graphic novel that imagines there is a boarding school for children who have returned from magical worlds (and if you’re saying “Wow, sounds an awful lot like Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series,” you take that back right now. This book wishes it had a tenth of the creativity and fun and adventure).
The students of this particular school are Alice (of Wonderland fame), Wendy (fresh outta Neverland), and Dorothy (back from Oz).
If you told me that Andy Weir wrote this having never read any of those books, instead only having seen the movie adaptations of each one, I would say, “Only if the last time he watched those movies was a hundred years ago, and also he didn’t watch the movies, he watched the trailers, and not like in a movie theater where you’d be paying attention, but like they were playing before a VHS tape and he was fast-forwarding them to get to the movie he intended to watch, which was probably something very bad like Blade Runner, and so all he saw were random images.”
(On a sidenote, I just watched Blade Runner for the first time. Not a good movie.)
As anyone who has so much as accidentally read a word I’ve written knows, my very favorite book in the world is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it is the great curse of my life to pick up retellings of it thinking I will love them and then hating them with my life.
There are two things that every retelling of Alice does, and neither of them make any sense, and both of them make me want to weep profusely and shield Lewis Carroll’s ghost’s eyes so he never has to know what has been done to his work.
The first is the temptation to make Alice fight the Jabberwock. The most famous example of this is in Tim Burton’s ungodly nightmare of a film adaptation. This is dumb for two reasons: one, the Jabberwock does not exist in Wonderland. It is a nonsense poem that Alice reads. You know, in a book. Two, Alice is a child whose greatest act of destruction is accidentally kicking a creature named Bill into next Tuesday. But whatever.
The second is much, much, much more heinous. Whenever I think about it I feel the urge to shout, which I will convey in this moment by using all caps.
THE WHITE RABBIT AND THE MARCH HARE ARE NOT THE SAME.
THIS SEEMS OBVIOUS TO ME, FOR MANY REASONS. ONE, RABBITS AND HARES ARE DIFFERENT ANIMALS. TWO, THEY ARE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK. THREE, EVEN IF YOU ARE A COMPLETE DUNCE AND YOUR IDEA OF READING IS RIFLING THROUGH A BOOK AND LOOKING AT THE PICTURES, THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WHITE RABBIT AND THE MARCH HARE ARE DRAWN DIFFERENTLY, BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT.
THE WHITE RABBIT IS THE I’M-LATE-I’M-LATE GUY WITH THE POCKET WATCH WHO ALICE FALLS INTO WONDERLAND WHILE NOSILY CHASING. THE MARCH HARE IS ONE OF THE TWO ANIMALS AT THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY. THERE IS NO CAUSE TO CONFUSE THEM WHATSOEVER.
I am taking deep breaths and yet I refuse to be calmed.
At one point in this book, during a massive info-dump towards the end in which people are called in to dryly explain how the already-boring magic system works, one character says, “In fact, your own page, the March Hare, once fell into the girl’s world due to this effect.”
And, you know, just one problem there. THAT’S A REFERENCE TO THE WHITE RABBIT, AND THE MARCH HARE AND THE WHITE RABBIT ARE TWO DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. TWO DIFFERENT ANIMALS, IN FACT. TRULY WHY WRITE A BOOK USING SOMEONE ELSE’S WORLD AND CHARACTERS WHEN YOU CAN’T EVEN BOTHER TO UNDERSTAND THEM.
But that isn’t actually the only problem I have with this book. (Because of course it isn’t. I love to complain.)
The whole conceit of this is that Alice hates Wonderland, and that the villain of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (which is consistently referred to here as Alice in Wonderland - pet peeve. The title of the book is Alice’S ADVENTURES in Wonderland. The MOVIE, you dumb f*cks, is Alice in Wonderland) is Wonderland itself. THAT IS SO DUMB.
And none of these characters feel like themselves even remotely even at all (and the fact that Andy Weir decided to inexplicably make these three children Cool Teens instead can’t explain that away).
And on top of that, there’s no character development or world building or friendship construction or much of anything to make me care about this even a little.
But as if that weren’t enough cause for me to attempt to delete this from my brain forever: welcome to Grammatical Error City, population you while you read this book.
Bottom line: Never in the world has there been such a cool idea with such f*cking garbage execution.
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reading this was a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad idea.
did you know there are versions of this book you can read IN LEWIS CARROLL'S HANDWRITING?
unrelatedly, my life has just peaked
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This book is did you know there are versions of this book you can read IN LEWIS CARROLL'S HANDWRITING?
unrelatedly, my life has just peaked
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This book is a half-baked, unfinished, not-intended-for-publishing version of a now-existing book, and guess what? It’s still fantastic.
Your fave could, simply put, never.
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground is mainly impressive for what it had been - a story Charles Dodgson made up on the spot while rowing a boat, in an unparalleled feat of multitasking - and what it will become.
What it will become, obviously, is not only Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (inarguably one of the greatest children’s classics of all time, and that’s not even just me playing favorites) but DOUBLE THE LENGTH.
Dodgson never intended to publish this book!!! He just told Alice Liddell a story, Alice was like “hey that was an especially good story, can you write it out for me?” Dodgson is like ya sure give me a few months, I’ll do 37 pen drawings, and...here you go here’s a manuscript merry Christmas even though it’s November.
Smash cut to: the Liddells use that sh*t as a coffee table book because who wouldn’t, all their guests read it because who wouldn’t, and everybody tells Dodgson to publish it because who wouldn’t.
But at first he didn’t intend to! And then once he gave in, he just...doubled the length.
HOW DOES YOUR MIND WORK LIKE THAT!!!
This has less nonsense and wonder and whimsy and complicated quasi-logic in it than the book we all know, but that really just shows that Carroll’s mind was able to just COME UP WITH THAT. He just added poems and songs and the Mad Hatter and March Hare and Dormouse and their mad tea party and the Cheshire Cat and the Duchess and the baby who turns into a pig and a bunch of other things and made a masterpiece.
And really, that’s more impressive than if it could be found here, too.
Again I will say: Your. Fave. Could. Never.
Bottom line: I could live a thousand years and read a million books and never love any of them like I love Alice and her adventures in Wonderland.
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i honestly think i could live a thousand years and not find anything i love as much as Alice and Wonderland.
review to come
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i literally scream from the rooftops that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite book and i am only just now reading this for the first time.
who am i.
(shoutout to my roommate for knowing me better than anyone and getting me the best gift ever) (read: this book)...more
It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plus Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, plus a ton of critical analysiTHIS BOOK IS MY DREAM.
It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plus Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, plus a ton of critical analysis and fun facts and biographical info and poetry and background and cultural and period information and bonus illustrations and basically all you need or could ever want to know, except if you’re me and your love for and curiosity about Alice and Lewis Carroll and Wonderland will never be satiated.
And also it’s about a square yard and the font is tiny and it weighs about 30 pounds and takes an eternity to read.
I loved this so much that it made my heart hurt to finish it. My version of paradise is probably something like this, where I’m alternating between reading the original text I love more than anything and eloquent, wise, humorous elaboration on things I had never known. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
I guess you could say I grew…curiouser and curiouser.
I love myself.
Anyway, my bookmark for this book was a folded-up sheet of lined paper on which I wrote down the titles and works of art and research queries I wanted to know more about as I read. I filled up both sides of that sheet.
Absolutely every aspect of this book is gorgeous and curated and fascinating. I don’t really know how to review this because it basically transcended reading for me.
It was just a perfect experience.
Bottom line: If you love Alice like I do, or really really like it, you need to read this book. It’s a gift. That’s all I can say.
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i have never, in my entire life, cried in public over a book.
we are BACK (and a week late) for Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month.
however, this book is not long, and it's not intimidating, and personally i will be reading this AND the sequel at a chapter-ish a day.
join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here.
DAY 1: DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE as we start things off, i'll include the cheesy declaration of love i wrote when announcing this pick in our book club discord:
this is my favorite book of all time. this teeny tiny children's classic is so dear to me - whether you want a light fairytaley read or a thematically rich toughie you can analyze all day long, you can find either experience in this.
filled with whimsy, imagination, and the bittersweet nostalgia of dreams and childhood, i never tire of this - and i get something new from it with every read. at one chapter a day, this and its sequel (THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE), which i see as a continuation of the first more than a separate book, can be read in 24 days!
bleh. gross. look how sweet and earnest.
DAY 2: THE POOL OF TEARS it's actually day 8. i'm terribly slumped - the kind where it literally never occurs to you to read and then when it does you're like...am i physically capable of doing this? how did i ever make these words enter my head?
if anything can heal me it's this.
update: not yet, but we did get our first curiouser and curiouser...slay...
DAY 3: A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE the titular mouse's tale / mouse tail pun here...one of the greatest of all time i dare say...
DAY 4: THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL i don't know how the little EAT ME cakes manage to sound so good with virtually no description, but they do. maybe because these look so goddamn delicious?
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or maybe just because i like cake.
DAY 5: ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR folks...it's day 12.
i've never been slumped like this and at this point i am Frightened. my goodreads challenge is beginning to appear to stare back at me, like the void or one of those scary crusty small white dogs.
but this book is simply...everything.
DAY 6: PIG AND PEPPER the baby-turning-into-a-pig thing is honestly objectively terrifying. especially when alice is like "this baby is like a star-fish" and looks down and boom.
but! cheshire cat appearance. and "we're all mad here." huge quote for people with watercolor tattoos and hot topic graphic tees.
DAY 7: A MAD TEA-PARTY ICONS ALERT!!! a real heavy hitter. maybe my favorite chapter.
what can i say? not all my opinions are unpopular.
DAY 8: THE QUEEN'S CROQUET-GROUND monarchs, am i right.
DAY 9: THE MOCK TURTLE'S STORY well, it's actually day 14, so i might as well mess around and finish this book already. i wanted to relish it but my dumb suddenly-illiterate brain refuses to allow me to!
also: "Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was very ugly." vibes.
DAY 10: THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE this one is a ton of fun but impossible to compete in a universe that contains the walrus and the carpenter.
DAY 11: WHO STOLE THE TARTS? let's go to court!!!!!
sooooo important to remember that even in a nonsense-world, nothing is more illogical and annoying than outdated monarchical structures and the incompetence of the judicial system.
DAY 12: ALICE'S EVIDENCE and it was all a dream!!!
or was it?
or does it even matter at all?
(no.)
perfect book.
OVERALL i have this wholeeeee five star review below, but i'll quickly say that nothing makes me happy and fulfilled and whimsical like this book does. and that's my ideal way to be.
my favorite forever! rating: 5
------------------------ original review
THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK.
No qualifier. No excuse. No “one of my favorites.” This one is it, y’all.
Well, also Through the Looking Glass. But THAT’S PRACTICALLY THE SECOND HALF OF THE SAME BOOK. (And other examples of my inability to make decisions or commit in any way to anything.)
I currently have 18 copies of this book. I’ve attempted to read it at least annually for the past three years. And by “annually,” I mean I last revisited this book about nine months ago.
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But hey, it was a different year then, technically speaking.
How do I even review this? I don’t know where to begin. (Just a heads up that my obsessive personality is going to become verrrrry clear as this review progresses. I’m not proud. This is who I am, you guys. I was a member of the fandoms of some teen pop sensation or other for nearly ten consecutive years. I’m no longer thirteen but I still need an outlet. Honestly I’m quite afraid that if I don’t have an obsession, I’ll become a drug addict. Lots of pent up energy.)
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Well, I’ll say that I always, always, always feel enveloped by this book. I have never picked this up without feeling instantly submersed in Wonderland. And it’s really my favorite place to be. It’s hard to feel unhappy when you’re in the greatest setting ever created.
And oh yeah, there’s that. I firmly believe this is the most amazing and beautiful and confusing and curious setting of all time. It’s immersive, and it’s strange, and it’s so unique and fantastic and creative and I love it so much. I can come up with even more loosely positive adjectives if that overwhelming number didn’t suffice.
Wonderland is my Hogwarts. While many readers pray their letters just got lost in the mail, I’m constantly hoping I’ll see a white rabbit in a waistcoat and fall down, down, down into what must be the center of the earth.
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I love Alice and her curiosity. She may also be my favorite character ever. She’s funny and sweet and childish and such a blast to read about. Her reactions to everything are so, so funny. Her curiosity always outweighs confusion and fear. I’d like to wake up one day and be Alice. I’ll likely become one of those creeps who pays millions for plastic surgery in order to “resemble” some celebrity or other.
On an unrelated note, anyone have millions of dollars they’re trying to get rid of?
I’m also fiercely protective of this book. I constantly pick up retellings only to be utterly disappointed. (Like Heartless. Get out of here with your shoddy Carroll-stealing.) DO NOT, DO NOT! GET ME STARTED ON THE TIM BURTON FILM ADAPTATION. Horrific. Alice, an adult? Alice, engaged? Alice FIGHTING THE GODDAMN JABBERWOCK?
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But I do love the original animated Disney adaptation. There’s a certain quality to the book that’s captured within that film, which I haven’t found recreated in any other retelling or use of the setting or adaptation.
Oh, and one more thing, while I’m here.
THIS BOOK ISN’T ABOUT DRUGS, YOU SURFACE-LEVEL INTERPRETERS OF SYMBOLISM. It’s not that easy, boo.
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In the words of BBC News, “[the drug] references may say more about the people making them than the author.”
Lewis Carroll isn’t thought to have been a user of drugs, the Caterpillar was smoking tobacco, and the mushroom is no more magic than the various cakes Alice eats.
Honestly, the drug reading is simple and boring. It’s such a stretch to attempt to read each character as a different substance. And scrolling through countless quasi-psychedelic GIFs to find the actual ones was irritating, too. Ah, yes, real art: taking images from a 1951 children’s film but messing with the colors and movement until it looks like nothing more than a trigger for epilepsy. Enough, Tumblr.
[image]
Alice in Wonderland carries as much or as little significance as you want it to. It’s everything from a mindless romp in an imaginative land to a depiction of the effects of a ruthlessly authoritarian system of justice.
Just have fun with it.
And please, for the love of God, stop applying your weird psychedelic edits to a Disney movie.
Note on the audiobook: This time around, I listened to the audiobook, to switch things up. Scarlett Johansson read it. I loved her funny accents and hated her overly-acted narration. A mixed bag.
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Bottom line: This is my favoritest and I doubt it will be dethroned anytime soon. Come at me, every other book.
------------ reread updates
when I find myself in times of trouble Lewis Carroll comes to me speaking words of wisdom "just reread"...more
who asked for a graphic novel adaptation of a movie?!
this is almost entirely my fault. i didn't do enough research when i snapped this up for like $2,who asked for a graphic novel adaptation of a movie?!
this is almost entirely my fault. i didn't do enough research when i snapped this up for like $2, and just assumed it was a retelling of the book. it was not. it was of the tim burton adaptation, which i ABHOR. that movie is a crime against lewis carroll.
anyway. the art also wasn't my cup of tea, and i just found this to be really annoying the whole way through. felt a lot longer than 90-something pages.
bottom line: this book does not need to exist....more
welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2!
i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuatwelcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2!
i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuation of the first one, rather than a separate entity.
usually as, well, a copout so i can call both of them my favorite book of all time.
anyway! here we are for part two of a modified installment of Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month.
but because alice is not long to me, nor is it intimidating, and i consider both books to be like one thing, i'm reading both! welcome to that.
join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here.
DAY 1: LOOKING-GLASS HOUSE immediately we're off to the races. man, this slays.
the thing about this book (and keep in mind i have said "the thing about [an alice book]" and followed up with about 97 different statements in the course of my life) is that there has never been a more curious, more interesting, more charming character than alice - and yet she is perfect believable. kids are like this. it rules.
DAY 2: THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS iconic!!!!!!
i love to think that if flowers could talk, they'd be pretty and mean and prone to puns.
DAY 3: THE LOOKING-GLASS INSECTS talking flowers would be a tough act to follow by any stretch, but goddamn. BUGS are the best we can do?!
but oh my god oh my god. speaking of all stars...tomorrow we head to the dweebs.
DAY 4: TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE AYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
mandela effect because "tweedledum and tweedledee" sounds so wrong. feels like it should be the other way around. but then again i typed wrong as "swonr" on the first try so what do i know.
is there any word better than contrariwise?
DAY 5: WOOL AND WATER alice is forever the one exception to my talking-animal rule (that they're boring and dumb and should be left out of everything).
cue paramore.
DAY 6: HUMPTY DUMPTY a children's classic crossover fav!
DAY 7: THE LION AND THE UNICORN wordplay city!!!! imagine how hard this would hit if 99% of these poems and riddles and songs and sh*t were still in pop culture. it's like the SNL of the 19th century. but like, a good era of SNL.
DAY 8: "IT'S MY OWN INVENTION" and suddenly.......an icon receives her crown..............
DAY 9: QUEEN ALICE queen of my heart alice!!! queen of all characters of all time alice!!! queen of being the best there ever was and it isn't close alice!!!
life should have more dinner parties. and they should always be written like this: "dinner-party." and they should contain altogether more nonsense.
DAY 10: SHAKING no...
DAY 11: WAKING don't. :(
it's all over now. what a real and literal awakening. like a wake-up call.
DAY 12: WHICH DREAMED IT? i'm no poetry girl. but possibly my favorite poem ever comes at the end of this chapter.
OVERALL this has a little less of the nonsensical whimsy of the first alice and a bit too much animal chatter even for my taste, but this exploration of dreaming and childhood and magic and nostalgia is so charming and dear to my heart. i will love it forever. rating: 5
---------------- full review
It’s not fair that I have to review this book.
I mean, no one is making me. Technically speaking, I am in no way obligated to review this. But also, in a much more real important way, because I am the one saying it: I absolutely must.
Because I love this book so goddamn much.
BUT HOW AM I POSSIBLY EXPECTED TO PUT THAT LOVE INTO WORDS.
There’s only one way to do it.
By cheating.
Read my review of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so you understand the immensity of my love for these books (which I kind of count as one book, spiritually, and only don’t actually count as one book for reading challenge purposes).
But you still won’t really know how much I love these books, so you should probably read me scream more about it in my review of The Annotated Alice. And Alice's Adventures Under Ground, for good measure.
And also, you should read all of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, and the great love letters of history, and the collected works of Jane Austen. You should watch the bird scene from The Notebook, and the sad part from Titanic, and the scene in Say Anything when John Cusack holds the boombox over his head.
All of those viewings are just to have a good laugh, though. And also to jam the f*ck out to In Your Eyes, a musical treasure.
To reallyyyy understand, you should watch Booksmart and Safety Not Guaranteed and Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again!
Perhaps through all of these reviews and readings and viewings, you can gain a passing understanding of how much I love Alice.
Probably not, though.
Bottom line: I HAVE TOO MUCH LOVE IN MY HEART....more
UPDATE: I think...oh god...I think this book put me in a reading slump. ------------------------------- At a certain point, I really have to start blamiUPDATE: I think...oh god...I think this book put me in a reading slump. ------------------------------- At a certain point, I really have to start blaming myself. Do I have no idea of my own interests? Because I truly thought this would end up on my all-time favorites shelf, my first add to an as-yet-nonexistent 2017 favorites list. Is that not a fair expectation? After all, Alice in Wonderland is my favorite book, Marissa Meyer one of my favorite authors. This came in the best Owlcrate subscription box of all time. The rating is high. What went wrong for this book?
For starters, there’s not an ounce of Wonderland in this setting. Wonderland is a masterpiece, a marvel, a beautiful place where nothing makes sense and everyone is mad. This was just the Lunar Chronicles, with a shitty half-hearted attempt at a mid-nineteenth century twist and various direct quotes and concepts from Wonderland forced in.
This was an uncreative disappointment. Meyer takes her ideas from Carroll (“six impossible things before breakfast,” for example, is a recurring statement), from Edgar Allan Poe (a f*cking raven that randomly says “nevermore”? f*ck offffffff), from nursery rhymes (Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater receives shocking attention - to avoid spoilers I’ll just say its incorporation is unBEARABLY dumb). When Meyer is left to her own devices, the Wonderland-ness of it all is dropped entirely, only to be forced in through a name-drop of the Looking Glass or the “Tweedle twins” in a few pages.
This really was just an insult to the setting of Wonderland. The Caterpillar, the marvelous creature with his hookah, is a COBBLER. Why don’t you just hurt me physically, if you insist upon such emotional pain? There’s a street full of businesses, balls, a standard court system...It’s just the worst.
And I’ve decided I only want one thing from this world. (The real one, not Wonderland.) There is one difference I’d like to make, one change I need to instill, and I can die happy. This is about to get predominantly featured in my Goodreads bio, because that’s how important it is. And that goal?: STOP INCORPORATING THE JABBERWOCK AS A MONSTER INTO YOUR ALICE IN WONDERLAND RETELLINGS. I can’t even convey the sheer FURY this makes me experience. First Tim Burton, then Christina Henry, and now THIS? THE JABBERWOCK IS NOT A CHARACTER FROM WONDERLAND. THAT’S A POEM, YOU ABSOLUTE IMBECILES. When you make your Wonderland protagonist fight the Jabberwock, you’re spitting in the face of literature. Spitting. In. Its. Face. I am shaking with anger. It’s not even original anymore. It’s become cliché in addition to boring, stupid, and further Carroll-stealing. COME UP WITH YOUR OWN VILLAINS, YOU UNCREATIVE MISCREANTS.
I’ll force myself to move past the crimes against Wonderland that have been committed here and discuss the shortcomings of the story itself. For starters, it’s a trope. It’s a poor little rich girl story, a pretty teen member of the court throwing a tantrum over an arranged marriage. I just don’t care much about stories like this. Give me some stakes! Sure, she wants love, whatever, but like...can there be some risk to this boring plotline? Snore.
Plus there’s a surprise appearance from the worst romantic cliché of all time: the you’re not like other girls appeal, made famous by the manic pixie dream girl character archetype and everything written by John Green. I haven’t seen this piece of garbage in a while! A surprising amount of time, actually. But just when you’d think that all these old-ass weirdos writing books for us youths had finally caught onto something, here it shows up again. “You’re different from the other lords and ladies here. I’m sure that any other girl would have started throwing rocks at me if I showed up at her bedroom window.” As if their boring romance weren’t awful enough already!
Oh yeah, that’s another thing. This isn’t even a good love story, in my humble yet pretentiously delivered opinion. (Is it better if I’m aware of it?) Unless I’m misremembering or was in a relatively fragile emotional state for all four books + the novellas, the Lunar Chronicles series contained some stellar romancin’. (Get it? Stellar? Like, that series takes place partially in space? Okay, fine.) I didn’t get that here. As a reader, I felt like they met a couple of times and then I was suddenly supposed to buy them as a Titanic-level epic love story. Which I, like, didn’t. So.
And I didn’t even like either of the characters in the romance. Jest was super flat to me - is anyone else noticing a phenomenon in which an author makes a male love interest super physically attractive and mildly funny and then just dusts off their hands and says, have at ’em, fangirls? Like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Jest was a total snooze for me. Which is better than Cath, I s’pose, because that gal was on my last nerve for 90% of this book. (I guess I have durable nerves?) Is it weird to say I hate the way her mind works? I was sick of being stuck inside her cyclical, repetitive complaining. Plus she makes dumb choices, and goes from as cavity-inducingly-sweet as the in-depth descriptions of her pastries to having a legit anger management issue in a hot second.
Yes, the whole point of this book was to provide a backstory for the Queen of Hearts, letting the reader in on what happened to change her from ~normal chick~ (albeit not like other girls, lol) to total villain. And in some ways that happened? Those ways being that we were given a plotline. But the emotions changed in one massive leap. (Like the definition of bipolar disorder so misleadingly given in When We Collided!)
On a sidenote, can someone tell me what “Her cheek fluttered” means? Because that’s a line from this book. One that made me, alone in my room, go What?
But this book was also just boring. It never grabbed me. Maybe that’s because I found both the setting and the characters lacking. It honestly could be my fault. But heaped upon all these other problems I had, I didn’t even get to have a good time while reading this. It just felt sooooo long.
In terms of positives, I liked that Jest wore eyeliner. More of that in male love interests, please. #EveryoneWearEyeliner2k17
Bottom line: This was another instance of Meyer giving a villain a meh backstory through the loss of love, but this one’s problems hit me closer to home. If you don’t worship at the altar of Alice as much as I do, you may be able to get past some of its flaws...but this was one of the most massive disappointments I’ve been hit with in a while....more
Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.
I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. TherReview: 1.25/5
Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.
I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. There is something about the idea of a retelling in which Alice has escaped from an asylum that so fits the wondrous aura of the original book. Yet this did not stick to any of the plot-points, truly. Which was very disappointing. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a narrative from the nearly unrelated curiosities of the original Alice in Wonderland—Tim Burton certainly struggled—but it seemed like the only thing this attempt did was take some names.
It seems that this is not the only shared factor between Tim Burton’s adaptation and Christina Henry’s. Both focus upon the plotline of Alice defeating the Jabberwocky (which is somewhat ridiculous if you think about it). Both require a certain blade to kill it. Both have weird sexualizations of the plot points, which is so odd because the original Alice is a CHILD. (Especially Henry’s—the entirety of the book was centered upon human trafficking for prostitution and sexual assault.) Both have significantly aged Alices, perhaps to fit this. Maybe Henry was adapting Burton’s take on the book rather than the book itself. It all came off as very plagiarized.
Things, specifically, that bugged me about Henry’s take: Alice travels with her middle aged mental-institution-next-door-neighbor, whom she is in love with for some reason? He, to the best of my detection, is not modeled upon a character. The Rabbit is a villain, the main one, and does not share any attributes with the original White Rabbit. In fact, it seems that Henry may have intended the Rabbit to mean the March Hare? Everyone in the book is a villain and there is a strange incorporation of characters from Through the Looking Glass, but not the important ones (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and the chess pieces, for example, go undiscussed. Maybe in the next books). In general it was so frustrating to try to compare this book to the original, because it didn’t add up. And that is all the fun of retellings!
After 291 pages of unspeakable violence, the ending of this book was unbelievably anticlimactic. We follow Alice and Hatcher, her extremely old, my-only-character-trait-is-I’m-a-crazy-murderer love interest, as they battle their way to the two “boss” characters: the Rabbit and the Jabberwocky. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say we encounter these guys for a total of the last dozen pages. Very frustrating.
God, I’m so upset by how much I hated this. What a cool concept, entirely dashed.
Bottom line: if you like very violent books, you may like this. If you like retellings, you will not. I sure didn’t. ...more
it is my curse in this life to read and dislike every retelling of my favorite book.
so i did the absolute bravest thing i could do: reread this one, wit is my curse in this life to read and dislike every retelling of my favorite book.
so i did the absolute bravest thing i could do: reread this one, which i had near nonexistent trace memories of from youth.
and...it didn't go well. maybe "bravery" is just a nice way of saying "why did i do this, why did i think this was a good idea, this was never going to go well, am i unconsciously seeking out unpopular opinions to bolster my imaginary reputation as the edgy mean girl of goodreads, etc."
regardless, this book's central thesis is that my favorite book of all time was a big lame lie, so this wasn't exactly a recipe for success.
and it ultimately was much lamer than it ever thought my favorite was!
bottom line: not for me. in fact, almost expressly created against me....more
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