Thursday, April 23, 2009

Through the Looking Glass

When I read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland earlier this year, I already knew that I wanted to read Through the Looking Glass as well. So when I saw that it was on The Literature Network and could be read online, I went for it.

Through the Looking Glass was just as charming as the first Alice book. In this one, Alice ends up in the world on the other side of the glass in the mirror - a world where nursery rhyme characters exist, where chess pieces are real people and where everything is done backwards or in the wrong order. Alice's adventures and the people she met in this world were great. Simply great.

I am once again amazed by Lewis Carroll's imagination. Seriously, how can you come up with stuff like this??

Some of my favorite quotes:
However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant.
and
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
and
'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. 'I said there was nothing LIKE it.'

Ha ha. If you need some cheering up, these are the books for you! :-)

Challenges: 2nds Challenge, 999 Challenge, Decades Challenge

8 comments:

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

I love these books so much. Maybe I'll try to re-read them sometime soon. I have kind of a technical question for you--how do you break your quotes up with the lines? I really like the look of that but haven't been able to figure it out. On my latest post I settled for *** to break up my sections and nothing for the quotes. :( Any suggestions?

joanna said...

Hi Trish - it's the blockquote function in blogger - there's a button where all the other buttons are, the italics one etc... Should be easy, but let me know if you can't find it!

Lezlie said...

Alice in Wonderland was my favorite of the two, but they were both such fun to read!

Lezlie

joanna said...

Lezlie - I'm not sure I could decide if I had to choose one!

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

Hmm--tried that. Maybe it just doesn't work with my template. It will put the quote into block format, but I don't get the nice little lines. Oh well!

joanna said...

Trish - you only get the lines once you publish, they don't show when you're working on it. Have you tried that?

Carl V. Anderson said...

If you ever get the chance I highly recommend the book The Annotated Alice. In it the author goes through both stories and reveals inspirations, private jokes, and other things that are hidden in these books. It is amazing and really makes one appreciate Lewis Carroll's talent even more.

joanna said...

Carl - that's a good idea, yes, I'll try and get that. I'm sure I missed most of the hidden stuff!