Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

[Tami]

We are going to have one thread for each book as now Goodreads has made a spoiler tag that you can use to put before anything that is a spoiler. Use your discretion as to what would be a pretty big spoiler and label it. Please put up to what page the spoiler is for.

To create the tag simply do this:

< spoiler> Blah blah blah spoilery stuff < /spoiler>


*Take out the spaces in both of the spoiler tag.

It will look like this:


(view spoiler)[This is a spoiler. Spoilers should be labeled so you don't ruin books for others. (hide spoiler)]

Discuss away...

[Niel]

I like how Lewis Carrol used some of the weirdest creatures I have ever heard in this book.

[Paula]

I remember reading this book when I was little but I've never felt really connected to it like other childhood books. I decided to re-read it for this. I didn't really enjoy it. I'm not sure why, it just got really annoying and I skipped through most of Through the Looking Glass.... oh well

[Kimberly]

I probably enjoyed this book more because I was in the stage version of it, which was a lot of fun. Good memories.

[[deleted user]]

I LOVE this book. My bedroom is even themed after the book. (NOT the movie, although some of the decorations are from the movie) The funny thing is, I really don't like Alice herself at all. I think she is a spoiled little brat, who needs to learn to be more polite to people when they don't have the exact response you want from them. I very much like the Chesire Cat. I laugh every time I read the caucus race! It's so silly and random I can't help but smile! Also, I love the tea party scene so much! My friends and I like to find the strangest and most unique tea cups and mugs and have tea parties. It's lots of fun!

As for through the looking glass, I did enjoy it, but not as much as the adventures in wonderland. I did, however, enjoy the chess match. I love any stories who include a chess match in it!

[Niel]

I agree with you Amy about Alice being spoiled.

[Tami]

I only recently read these for the first time. I was expecting them to be a little more fluid? Not sure if that was the right word but it seemed to me the stories just didn't seem to flow right for me.
That said I did like the books, but I love my Disneyfied cartoon version way more!

Side note: Did anyone know that Lewis Carroll was accused of being Jack the Ripper at one point?

[Paula]

Tami - I didn't know that! That's crazy, how did people come to that conclusion?

[Tami]

I don't know. I was reading something last week, that they finally think they know who Jack really was, and had a sketch. Anyways, at the end they said this wasn't the first person to be accused, and listed about 4 others and Lewis Carroll was one of them. :)

[Niel]

Yeah I watched a documentary about Jack the Ripper. Lewis Carroll was accused because of his irregular private life and he was with many women.

[Niel]

What was everyone's favorite part, mine would have to be the the Mock Turtle's story.

[M]

I did a paper on Lewis and his Alice. :P

I like both the Adventures and Looking Glass. Though I liked the first book more, I did enjoy the ideas behind the second book too. I loved the near beginning scene when Alice is in the garden, meets the Queen and they just run on forever.

[Niel]

I have never read the second part, I have to though.

[Julia]

Me too, Ai. I had to read this last year for a paper for my Philosophy class. I have to say, even though it didn't blow me away as I'd expected, I really enjoyed it, particularly the less known Through the Looking Glass.

[V]

So many people wrote papers on this book. I wrote a paper on it for a math college course, about the logic equations that are presented in the book. The copy that my dad gave me long ago actually showed all the chess moves for each part of the story, as Lewis Carroll was a chess maniac.

I think Jonathan Miller made the best adaptation of this book and his comment on the story is quite apt: "Once you take the animal heads off, you begin to see what it's all about. A small child, surrounded by hurrying, worried people, thinking 'Is that what being grown up is like?"

This is an idea that really fascinates me, the indifferent observer, keenly moving throughout the world. Alice is a girl moving through a meaningless world trying to find meaning where there is none. It reminds me of Albert Camus' absurdism.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite stories, probably because my dad pushed it on me so much. I get a little more out of it with every read.

[[deleted user]]

I found this bit in my children's literature book for school, and we are reading about the history of children's lit right now. I think this little bit explains whyI enjoy this book so much :)

"According to Cornelia Meigs et al. (1969), the revolutionary nature of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, when compared with earlier books written for children, is due to "the fact that they were written purely to give pleasure to children…Here…for the first time we found a story designed for children without a trace of a lesson or moral""