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

by Lewis Carroll

Series: Alice's Adventures (Omnibus 1-2)

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8,95097128 (4.22)75

Member recommendations

  1. Anonymous user recommends Random Magic by Sasha Soren, "Strong link to the Alice books. From the Amazon description: When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, (see more) young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes. Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is. Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Struths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time."
  2. infiniteletters recommends Random Magic by Sasha Soren
  3. kiwiflowa recommends The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley
  4. Kerian recommends The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
  5. joyfulgirl recommends The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
  6. elbakerone recommends The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
  7. Jesse_wiedinmyer recommends Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
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Showing 1-5 of 94 (next | show all)
Mr. Carroll did a great job with both stories. I greatly enjoy every time I read them. ( )
1 vote Anagarika | Nov 3, 2009 |
I decided to read Alice in Wonderland as an attempt to see if Lewis Carroll was high on drugs while he wrote this book. Obviously, he wasn't; that does not, however, devalue the levels of his writing. Carroll's writing is strong, but Alice in Wonderland is just too devoid of substance to be considered literature. ( )
  06nwingert | Oct 31, 2009 |
An engaging fantasy that is best read in full because the language is as important as the plot and the poetry. ( )
1 vote TheoClarke | Oct 30, 2009 |
thoroughly enjoyable, consistently baffling. Carroll relies perhaps too much on the fanciful characters interpreting Alice's idioms literally, but there's lots of genuinely fun stuff here, and almost all the poems work well within the text. I think I liked "Through the Looking Glass" better because it was less random (i.e. themes are consistent thorough, chess and signifiers) and yet more bizarre. ( )
1 vote phette23 | Oct 19, 2009 |
This summer I flew seven hours and twenty-seven minutes across the Atlantic Ocean to Oxford, England. I studied at Pembroke College in Oxford University and saw Alice’s door myself in Christ Church Cathedral. Alice was a popular topic in Oxford. All the tourist shops had Alice shirts, Alice totes, Alice pencils and so I deemed it fitting that I read Alice in Wonderland during my month stay away from home.

To my surprise, I like the Disney movie better than Carroll’s written work. The words just seemed like “mumble-jumble”, as my mother would say, and didn’t make any sense. At one point Alice asks herself, “Would a cat eat a bat? Would a cat eat a bat? Would a bat eat a cat?” while tumbling down the infamous rabbit hole, and throughout the book there were instances like this that seemed a little unnecessary. I found that as I was reading Carroll’s unnecessary flow of drug-induced consciousness, my own mind wandered to what I would do the next day, what meal they were serving in the cafeteria and how much was left on my international calling card. To say the least I was extremely disappointed.

I did enjoy some of the stories, particularly the poem about the walrus and the carpenter (which had always been a favorite of mine during my Disney movie watching days), but there were too many little stories jammed together. Too many characters were fighting for attention and page space in the novel and Alice just had too exciting of a dream, especially during Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking Class was calmer when it came to plot and every event tied in to the other. I could definitely relate to Carroll’s analogy of the chess board quads. It was an interesting way at looking at the decorative grass squares on campus that were prominent in the Oxford culture (only the Fellows at Oxford could walk on the grass).

Turning the last page, I didn’t understand why Oxford was so enamored with Alice and her adventures, even if it was inspired by the spires of the college. Carroll does have an inventive imagination, but I think it would have been better if he had expanded on just a few ideas instead of jamming them all together into one story. He could have written an entire series instead of two books and maybe spacing out the incidents would have helped them flow, making it easier for the reader to enjoy. I can understand why the Disney experts decided to only take part of the story to make the children’s movie. If they had included everything, it would have been far, far too much. ( )
2 vote ALDUNN | Aug 25, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
Quotations
"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter; and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like; they're both mad."
"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at this distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!"
Off with his head!
I'm very brave, generally . . . only today I happen to have a headache.
Last words
Disambiguation notice
This is a combined edition of "Alice's adventures in wonderland" and "Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there". Please don't combine with a copy of only one of these.
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Canonical titleAlice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Original publication date1865 (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), 1871 (Through the Looking-Glass)
SeriesAlice's Adventures (2.1|Omnibus 1-2)
People/CharactersAlice, Cheshire Cat, The White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, The Mad Hatter, Dinah (show all 43)
Important placesWonderland (fictional), The Looking-Glass World (fictional)
Awards and honorsLOST Book Club
First wordsAlice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, "and wh... (show all)
Quotations"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter; and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like; they're both mad.", "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at this distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!", Off with his head!, I'm very brave, generally . . . only today I happen to have a headache.
Last words(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0451523202, Paperback)

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:16 -0400)

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