I'm pretty sure most know the story of Alice in Wonderland. Girl falls asleep and dreams of falling down a rabbit hole into an unusual world with very unusual characters. And then Through the Looking Glass, where Alice goes through her mirror into a reversed world where she plays her way across a giant chess board. But reading the annotated version was pretty cool, because there were a lot of notes that were interesting. I had no idea about a lot of the things they talked about, such as the little "death jokes" that I would not have seen otherwise. It was almost disturbing...heh.

There were a lot of fun little wordplays and puns throughout the two stories.

I wanted to find out more about Lewis Carrol. And I did. (See below)

I felt very strange-it's a lot different reading Alice in Wonderland when you truly know how strange a person its author was.

Lewis Carrol, oddly enough, was pretty much a pedophile. (By the way, his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). I found out that he would take pictures of little girls naked and stuff like that, and hated little boys. He had an especial obsession with a girl called Alice Liddel. It's odd, but most people just don't know that Lewis Carrol was a pedophile. Whenever I would randomly tell someone that, they are like "wait...the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland 'liked' little girls? Woah!"

I also never knew that he was very much a mathematician, and a lot of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have mathematical-related concepts throughout them.

It is refreshing and light, at least, if you don't pay attention to all the comments. And if you do, it's very weird because who knew there was so "much" in those books.

Here are some quotes.



"...Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way."



" "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh you ca'n't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be, " said the Cat. "or you wouldn't have come here." "



" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused. "I don't think-"

"Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter. "



" "Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outisde. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And when it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; a nd perhaps it says 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows - oh that's very pretty!" cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. "And I do so wish it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy in autumn, when the leaves are getting brown..." "



" "There's the tree in the middle," said the Rose. "What else is it good for?"

"But what could ti do, if any danger came?" Alice asked.

"It could bark," said the Rose.

"It says, 'Bough-wough!'" cried a Daisy. "That's why its branches are called boughs!" "



" "I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk."

"Put your hand down, and fell the ground," said the Tiger-lily. "Then you'll know why."

Alice did so. "It's very hard," she said; "but I don't see what that has to do with it."

"In most gardens," the Tiger-lily said, "they make the beds too soft - so that the flowers are always asleep."



"What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while - and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at ehr feet - but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about."

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Created Feb 22, 2003 at 12:41pm • Submit your own review...