"Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" & "Through The Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll - Book Review

For anyone who still has the advantage of not yet watching any movie adaptation of these books, I highly recommend that you read the books first! For everyone else who has watched the movies first, don’t worry, most of them get the stories on point. I read the same storyline that I’ve watched in the movies. The only difference is actually having the text in front of you and understanding what it all means. An obvious advantage of the books is that they explain why Alice does certain things, or why she’s constantly confused. These books were, obviously, amazing reads.

Anyone who has never even heard of these books, here’s the gist. “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” and “Through The Looking-Glass” are novels written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The first story is about a girl named Alice that falls down a rabbit hole and has the most peculiar things happen to her, like talking animals and making a river out of her own tears. The sequel is “Through The Looking-Glass” in which Alice walks through a mirror and takes a journey through a world that is made up like a chess game.

What I find so wonderful about the stories is how fantasy and reality don’t clash, they seem to dance together. They are written through the eyes of an 8-year-old child, so she’s constantly being confused by the events and characters around her, and never sure what to do next, so she’s constantly in need of help. It’s very much like what a true 8-year-old goes through daily. Sometimes they feel big, sometimes they feel small, sometimes they think they know, sometimes they don’t know what they know. And the poems will just leave you with a mouth full of awe. I suggest reading these books for the wonder they’ll bring.

Favorite Quotes:

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland

“Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”

“What do you mean by that?” said the caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

“and the moral of that is--‘Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.’ ”

Through The Looking-Glass

“You shouldn’t make jokes,” Alice said, “if it makes you so unhappy.”

“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be: and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

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.

“Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

“I shouldn’t know you again is we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one his fingers to shake: “you’re so exactly like other people.”

“That’s just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have meaning--and a child is more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn’t deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”

“It’s too late to correct it,” said the Red Queen: “when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.”

Spring Rolls

Today could have been the best day of my life, but I decided to light a candle for the crumbling wind within me. I look at the light forcing its way through my closed curtains, and I think of the first Spring I can remember. I was six and rolling down a hill that had just finished growing again. Her plush skin was rubbing against my own, with bare legs and arms. I didn't notice when my skin hardened and reddened, or the way I couldn't really see, because my eyelids had puffed into two baby blowfishes. I was allergic to her, but I was having such guilty fun falling down the hill, as if I was her toddler and we were playing our own games. My mother saw me rolling down that day and told me to stop. I did, and watched the other kids take it away from me.

There is no reason for me to deny missing that day. I walk in the park, or in crowded places, and I pretend that I’m rolling down its hills, or letting ice cream cones melt down my hands. I have to pretend because I’m supposed to hate the stickiness on my fingers after I finish, and no one wants to walk with someone that looks like a breathing disease. So I put a bow on my head and polish my nails while throwing away old t-shirts. I flutter my hair. I know every other reason, except the reason. I put a bow on my head because I have to remind young men I can still be innocent; I polish my nails to hide the roughness of my hands from my past obsession with monkey bars. I throw away old t-shirts when they become too childish.

When Spring rolls around, I’m always reminded. Of days when I was forced to leave something there.. that I never thought I would lose.

Yourself And Me

It’s 12:45 and I’m getting drunk on a Thursday afternoon

Every gulp is stinging emotional scars that I never finished sealing

I’m being reminded of you

The past is the past if you believe in starting over

But I’m not over

Goodbyes or rainy mornings

You forgot how I found you when I was looking for myself

And you cried in my presence while I asked who were the tears for

Who were you lovin, who made you into their own swing door

I wanted you more for how hard you could love

I only laugh with you in the second bottle of tequila

Because, you see, that’s when we held hands for the first night

And that’s when I told you I wanted to be the only one to see you nude

When the darkness decided to pull us down and crush grass blades

The second bottle brought the ballads out of us

While your saxophone fingers vibrated inside places even I couldn't touch

Third time’s the charm

Or just another broken Mayflower

‘Cause I promised to drink in order to forget

But all I've done is write greetings for you addressed to myself

I've ruined every moment to remember all the good times

It’s been 15 months and 25 poems

450 days of unsociable feelings that deny their existence

There is a state of neglect you've left me in

Shredding phrases you came up with into slips to crumble into

Because I've deleted your number

But I’m still waiting for a call

I’m still wondering where you decided to go

To escape from me

Drunken letters for a sober heartbreaker

I've loved you far too long with far too wide desires

Longing for the seconds I've lived inside your mouth

Over tablecloths eating with your secret lover and snacking on her couch

Numbing headaches with bitterly concentrated water

Leaving traces of foolishness on my neck and licking the hurt from it

Ending under dirty words whispered into drunken memories

Yes

I waited on you because of how hard you could love.

Tree Trunks & Twigs

It was nighttime in December. We were at the end of a ride, all of us wishing to go home, but not saying anything for fear of being the first to ruin it. The SUV wrapped around six insecure girls talking about what they wish they could do differently, because such girls existed, but it wasn’t us. I was trying to join the conversation, but I was too high to say anything without the thought that I would be hated after I opened my mouth. All I could manage was loud laughter sounds to hide my lack of words. I was useless for the moment, but I hid it well.

The run slowed into weight problems. I was sitting in the backseat on the passenger side, looking at the neck of the girl in front of me while she spoke.

"If I wouldn't be showing bones, I wouldn't consider myself skinny."

She said it with such ease, letting the words walk over her like talking trombones. Of course, the lot of us yelled sounds at her, why, she was already skinny! But after a minute of telling her she was pretty, we let her go back to her abyss. Because that’s what we do, you know. We hold hands of those who’re broken, just to let them go when they start tugging. Yeah, we did our part.

She said desperate words in such joyous silence, it was hard to tell the difference between attention searching and soul breaking. None of us knew a way to explain how much stronger a tree trunk is than its fallen branches. The worst moment isn’t when you lose a friend, but when you manage to let a stranger feel like wasting away.

Even after all of the conversations that we ended up having after that, I still think I should have left my insecurity of being hated aside, because she’s still feeling like a failure, and I’m still thinking that I could have shown her the difference between a tree trunk and a twig.

Dear Loyal Readers

I am so sorry for not posting lately!! I've been writing a story, so all of my time has been invested in it. Thank you for constantly checking up, I promise to have another piece up by this weekend. Also, I will be bringing back monthly book reviews, so keep a lookout! This month will be "Alice In Wonderland" and "Through The Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll. Most of us have watched some kind of movie adaptation of these stories, but I think it'd be much more fun to read them. Join me on this journey if you wish to do so.

L.B.Bueno

Solitudo Solitudinis

Crawling on the underside of flying airplanes

finding sleep in dead experiences

Sliding fingers through coffee tables

looking for a stranger’s mahogany skin

Stealing glances from retail store greetings

in exchange for pawn shop small talks

With a sore throat scratching away abandoned grunts

left from cocktail parties’ cookie crumbs.

If/When

I've gotten into avoiding You all mornings

Screened your calls, and wiped the dust from my knees

Sometimes it’s good that money refuses to grow inside apple skins

And the paranoiac nations keep rising like ashes

Always on the run when You bend Your back to pick up cotton

Counting on You not counting the pennies and starting with the quarters

The chase won’t seem worth it

It's not that there's better things to do,
Just that things are better,
Slight change of words slightly changed my life
Although it takes more to change my mindset
I'm still scared when I hear Your tone in stranger’s syllables
The letters have never stopped trembling
In words like “coffee” or “vividly”


I've been meaning to not talk to You

I'm proud for sticking on a promise for so long

Only You know how badly I carry them in back pockets

Of days when I held a hand out for someone I prepared myself to break apart

Yet, this one You know touched different

This one I kept wrapped around my fists,

Holding on to remind myself of the times You missed

Karma doesn't end with demi-gods

It doesn't feel like I'm the one that needs saving

But You beg my moral values tell me otherwise

I’m wrong for not calling

While flying things justify You

For wanting to watch me burn alive

Unconditional romance

& pretty mood swings.