I try to read a few classics or pseudo-classics every year and the first one I tackled for 2014 is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because all of Lewis Carroll’s work is in the public domain, which means it is free, baby, free. And the ebook edition I read is based on the original 1865 edition that includes John Tenniel’s wonderful illustrations.
Here’s one of them, courtesy of the Wikipedia article. I love these. Yes, enough to marry them.
Having never read either of the Alice books and getting the ebook edition, which weights exactly zero of anything, I had no idea the story was so short and finished it in a day. As befits the literary nonsense genre it belongs to, the story is filled with absurd imagery, copious amounts of word play and puns a-plenty. My biggest surprise was probably how daft Alice is, often having long and odd conversations with herself and obsessing over her size, among other things.
This was a pleasant read but one that did not leave me necessarily hungering for more.
