Thought I'd mix things up with the reading challenge categories this time. Number five, and I've decided to read a book for the Banned Books category! Yes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a banned book. Banned in China for the polymorphisation of animals. Incidentally, the copy I borrowed from work had Through the Looking Glass in it as well, however I read it as one wonderful book.
I absolutely love this book(s). It is just so absolutely nonsensical and fantastical, you couldn't ask for anything better. I have to admit that out of any world created by any author in the whole of literary history, I would choose to visit Wonderland... I mean who wouldn't.
In the first of the two novels, Alice spots a white rabbit checking his pocket watch and exclaiming he's late, though what he's late for he will not explain. Bored of reading and listening to her sister, Alice follows the rabbit down his rabbit hole into an entire other universe of the strange an bizarre. Along the way she meets animals who can talk, playing cards who paint roses... literally, and a Queen with a penchant for executing people.
In the second book, Alice, once again bored with every day life, delves through the mirror in the drawing room, arriving in a back to front world where she becomes a living pawn in the biggest game of chess you could ever imagine. It's thanks to Through the Looking Glass that we have the well known characters of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as well as the poem Jabberwocky, and a great other iconic Alice in wonderland, images that Disney stuck into the film.
No word of a lie, I could read this book over and over again, thousand times. I already know 99% of the poetry off by heart. This tops out at my favourite book of all time and if I could I would make this compulsory reading everywhere! No one is ever too old for the magic of Wonderland, so whether your 5 or 105 year old, pick it up, read it. Then read it again, and finally give it to your friends before reading it a fourth and fifth time.
This right here is quality literature, a masterpiece of English writing. The basis for all grounded childhoods and a gateway into the imagination of children and adults everywhere!!!
I haven't read this book. It's been on my reading list for absolutely ages. I will get around to reading it, one day ...
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