Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Some Goodreads librarian hijacked the original main entry for this book and made it about some late-nineties adaptation by some rando, so here I am re-adding this book that I last read in year 7. Fun fun. (Jul 2019) ( )

I bought this book because I saw another book tuber with it on her shelf. I love love love the art style and re-reading the story in adulthood is always fun. ( )

This is a reprint of the 1898 first edition sixpenny series. Earlier reprints occurred in 1899, twice, 1900, 1902, 1903, 1905 and 1906. 1907. This copy has lost its covers but not its charm.The second half of the book is full of annotations in pencil and ink that suggest the text was used as the source of a dramatic version carried out by previous owners, one of whom may have been called Sworder, a name that is in the top right hand corner of the makeshift utilitarian front cover.

Here is a story I have always heard about, but never got to read or even see one of its film adaptations. I placed it under the banner of 'ILS 516 Modern Fantasy' because just as Young et al. (2020) stipulate, any work of modern fantasy has its author known (p. 148). Since this was around the time I had begun to exhaust the stack of books I checked out before my library closed, I decided to take a chance on the audiobook version for us LION cardholders. I did just that and felt that as good as Scarlett Johansson is at reading this book, it is really disappointing there are no sound effects.

See, my personal measuring stick of an audiobook is Stephen King’s The Mist. My dad used to have it on cassette being told with so-called ‘3D Sound.’ This basically meant that the text had sound effects accompany it. So, if a part of the story took place during a rainstorm, you actually hear the rain in the background of the conversations. This made the book literally come to life in a way that could not be achieved from just reading it.

I was hoping that because this was a fantasy story, there would be sound effects added too. For example, one perfect usage would have been when Alice falls into the pool of her own tears at the beginning; there could have been the sound of her falling into water. Yet, not a single sound effect is used. Ultimately, even though I really liked the story itself, I am disappointed it did not take advantage of the audiobook format more. ( )

This book was mentioned on Episode 2 of Checking Out. Listen here! ( )