This is quite possibly the most random book I have ever read in my life. Call me old fashioned but I expect a book to have an actual point… A beginning, middle and end with highs and lows and varying pace but this book had none of that. There was no point whatsoever and I’m utterly befuddled on how it became a classic. It read like a freaking acid trip with Alice plodding along like an entitled brat from one random encounter to another. Nothing is explained, nothing seems to have a particular purpose… It’s like random word vomit jumping from one scene to the next.
It begins abruptly and it ends worse than the series finale of Lost.
However! I was bemused from beginning to end and actually laughed out loud a few times.
If I’d been reading this book instead of listening to the audio, I’d have struggled to get through it but listening to it in the car to and from work was not a chore for Miriam Margolyes' narration was absolutely superb! She was animated and really breathed life into the characters giving each their own accents and inflections and varying her tone and pace to suit the story.
Her narration generated a sense of enthusiasm for the text that I feel I wouldn’t have managed to conjure up on my own so I highly recommend listening to it if you fancy falling down a rabbit hole!
When Alice steps through the looking-glass, she enters a very strange world of chess pieces and nursery rhyme characters such as Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledee and Tweedledum and the angry Red Queen. Nothing is what it seems and, in fact, through the looking-glass, everything is distorted...
I haven't read many of the classics (or if I did, it was so long ago I don't remember lol)
ReplyDeleteI remember liking the chesire cat (from the animated movie) but that's about it.
Karen @ For What It's Worth
I'm not big on classics but I'm trying to read/listen to a few more of them.
DeleteUh yeah. It was a DNF for me, whatever version of it I tried to read. I like things which make sense. The Disney movie was also a bomb for me.
ReplyDeleteAnne - Books of My Heart
I liked the live actions is so much as I could watch them but neither the live actions much resembled the books... They just had the characters and a few key settings.
DeleteIt's always amusing to me to hear what people think of classics like these. They often sound so random and not something most people would really love if published today.
ReplyDelete-lauren
www.shootingstarsmag.net
I find that with classics too... That maybe we've just lost whatever it was that made them resonate over the course of time or something.
DeleteI read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 10-12 years ago and wasn’t a fan. Like you said, it just felt so random a and absolutely nothing seemed to make sense or have purpose. And then it ended. I don’t even think I would have liked it as a child. Ha!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I didn't read it as a child... It would have put me off reading, lol.
DeleteI read these when I was maybe 8 or 10 years old and enjoyed them. I wonder if that makes a difference? Maybe kids are just more willing to roll with whatever the author writes? I re-read them at some point and still enjoyed them but I agree that Through the Looking Glass is definitely the weaker of the two. Sorry these didn't work for you!
ReplyDeleteI can roll with a lot but these just seemed to lack any purpose or plot... But to each their own! :)
DeleteI DNFed Alice when I read it a few years back and I agree with your comments. I didn't like Alice and thought she was a brat and found the story too jumbled up for me. I never read the next one.
ReplyDeleteI had the audiobooks because the kid listened to them (and loved them) so I listened while cooking... All I can say is thankfully they're short!
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