Through the Looking-Glass

This follow-up to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another simple 150-page book originally intended for children. Lewis Carroll was once again fantastic at nonsensical story-telling and wordplay. This book was very different, however, from Wonderland. In Looking-Glass, Alice isn't simply wandering around; she's on a mission to reach the eighth row of a gigantic chessboard so that she may become a queen. Chess references abound, and chess really becomes the centralizing theme of the book. The Red Queen can sprint at breaking speeds while the Red King remains stationary for the entire story; characters try to "capture" each another; knights put on horse-head helmets before doing battle with one another. The book is also full of plenty of memorable poems and quotes. There's "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," for example, both making their debuts right here in Carroll's Wonderland follow-up. I think Alice's Adventures was ultimately more memorable than Looking-Glass, but there's definitely plenty of timelessness in both novels. I heartily recommend both, and to anyone. They're like 300 pages combined (still on the short side, if anything, compared to most contemporary best-selling books). Someday I'll see the new Tim Burton movie, which is apparently loyal to neither Wonderland or Looking-Glass but is some sort of mixture of both.