'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, #1)' by Lewis Carroll, published by Penguin Classics in August 2012 (first published in 1871).
Rating: 2.5 Stars
I first picked up this book in 2012 when I thought it'd be a good idea to start reading classics, even though I had only been reading books for a couple of months.
I ended up borrowing a stack load of books from the library, Alice in Wonderland being one of them, and was eager to dive into the books as soon as possible. I started by reading Alice in Wonderland thinking that it would be an easy read to start off with, with it being a children's book and all, but after a couple of chapters, I gave up. I felt that the language was just too hard to understand and the story was hard to follow. Because of this, I ended up becoming greatly afraid of all classic books and ended up returning all of the books back to the library the next day.
Recently, in January, I thought it was time to try reading what people believe is a beautiful classic. I purchased it and was fairly eager to start reading. With it being such a short book, I was expecting to finish it all in a day or two, but to my surprise, that did not happen.
Alice in Wonderland is an adventure story about a girl named Alice who finds herself stumbling upon a talking rabbit wearing a waist-coat. She follows this peculiar rabbit down a rabbit hole, where she suddenly finds herself in a fantasy land of talking animals and all sorts of different creatures that Alice has never seen before.
It is a story I am sure everyone is aware of. There have been many movie adaptions of this classic novel, one of them being a Disney animation film.
I grew up knowing the story of Alice in Wonderland off by heart. If someone had asked me everything that happened in the story, I would know, even though I wasnt even particularly fond of the movie. Nevertheless, because it was part of my growing up as a child, I wanted to read the book, to give myself a new perspective on the well-known children's novel.
I was deeply disappointed when I read this book. I was hoping that my views on it from three years ago would have been because I was not used to reading at that time, but as soon as I started reading this book again, I found myself feeling the exact same way about it as I did before.
The writing was hard to get used to, there were times when I fully understood what was happening, but there were other times when things would be described that didn't need describing. To be completely honest with you, it bored me. In fact, it bored me so much in the first few pages that I ended up falling asleep after not even 15 minutes of reading.
I did enjoy the story, as I did when I was a child, but I only started linking it from when Alice went to the Duchess's house onwards. I thoroughly enjoyed the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and the Cheshire Cat, but before all that, I felt that all of Alice's misadventures were all a bit random and all over the place. Nothing from that first half of the story made me want to stay, but the second half -- while also being slightly boring at times -- was more of what I was expecting from this story. Some humor, some conflict, and something to keep you going.
Most of the characters featured in this novel are very memorable. They each have their own little quirky personalities that could possibly only exist in marvellous Wonderland.
I quickly was able to fall in love with most of the characters, but one that I was surprisingly disappointed with was the main character, Alice.
With her being the main character I expected to love, but that did not happen. I found that her personality was rude and thoughtless. I understand that she is only a child, but it would get tiring when she would repeatedly insult some of the animals and interrupt others when they were telling a story.
The fact that this occurred multiple times didn't make read ing this book any more enjoyable. If anything, it made it harder for me to keep picking up again.
I do not completely regret reading this because it gave me more of an insight into what people would read in the past, but at the same time, I feel that reading this didn't have any significant impact on me. I think I will eventually read Through the Looking Glass because it would be interesting to see where else this story could go, but I don't think I am prepared for it right now.
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