Wicked

[dxmachina]

So, I finally finished Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. It was okay. It didn't impress me as much as it has some folks. I didn't really buy the Wizard as Emperor storyline. Plus it annoyed me that Glinda is still ensconced in the wrong part of Oz. She's supposed to be the Good Witch of the South. I don't care what the movie said (it annoyed the crap out of me when I first saw the movie as a child), all of the characters in Wicked appear to be drawn from the book, not the movie. I don't know. It's one thing to view events subjectively through the eyes of a different participant, but if you're going to go to all the trouble of amplifying a fictional world, at least get the canonical facts right.


I've started Jim Bouton's Ball Four. It's been a couple of decades since I last read it. My original copy is long gone, loaned to someone who never returned it. Last year I picked up a new edition containing a lot of extra material. More later.

Comments

[hereward.livejournal.com]

I'm in a baseball book mood too. I'm re-reading George Will's Men at Work, and about to read Dan Okrent's Nine Innings. I never did read Jim Bouton's book. I might try to get that next.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Haven't read Men at Work yet, although I've meant to. I picked up Nine Innings at a used book store not long ago.

[makaidiver.livejournal.com]

I finished Wicked about a week and a half ago on books on tape and keep meaning to write about it. I found the animals and the Animals stuff really disturbing, but then, I would. It was a biography of a fictional character and that's it - no particular themes or loose ends tied up. I found it to be an odd book, but very compelling & vividly realized.