Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
This is the novel that the musical Wicked is based off, and this book is in itself based off The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. From the title, you can assume that the novel talks about the life and times of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West... obviously.
The novel is split into five sections. The first section, Munchkinlanders, was quite boring because Elphaba was still a baby. After that it starts getting much better and more interesting, with the Wicked Witch of the East and Glinda the Good Witch of the North starting to appear. The fifth section, The Murder and Its Afterlife, starts off with Dorothy landing in Oz. That section was a bit boring in terms of how it was written, because Elphaba is older and the narrative is much more different compared to the previous sections, but it's still quite interesting because it correlates with what you know in the original children's book. I really like how the majority of chapters are written from a perspective other than Elphaba. It's kind of like piecing together the puzzle of Elphaba through the accounts and perceptions of others.
I also really liked the themes in this book, mainly evil and good and whether or not anyone can truly be evil. They have questions like:
“One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?”
It's so thought provoking because you see how much Elphaba really wants to be good and change the world and fight and protest for minority rights, but because of everything that happens in her life, she ends up broken and eventually gives up, and her actions get all misinterpreted and people start naming her The Wicked Witch of the West.
Wikipedia describes it nicely:
"It also sets the reader thinking about what it really is to be wicked, and whether good intentions with bad results are the same as bad intentions with bad results."
I originally planned to only read this book from its series, The Wicked Years, because I wasn't sure how good and how popular the other books are, but now I think I'll definitely have to read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz again, and then follow that up by the rest of the books from The Wicked Years.
And since I was reading it on my e-reader, I've come to really appreciate the NOOK. I think all e-readers have this, but I find it so useful to be able to highlight phrases and if you want (but I never) you can even add notes to your highlights. They also have the ability to bookmark various pages and even look up words in the dictionary, which really helped with this book because my vocabulary is terrible.
Also, September 4th was my dad's birthday!
Since he is a Hawthorne fan, we got him this huge Hawthorne hat along with a Hawthorne mug. Look how happy he is:
Sorry, he was laughing too hard I couldn't get a steady pic of him. Okay who am I kidding, I have Parkinson's when it comes to taking pictures and the fact that I was laughing didn't help at all..
Before I end...
ELECTION TOMORROW!
I'm not sure if you guys heard about Vote Compass, and it's a bit late for this now, but it's a cool thing that asks you questions about your views on different stuff and how this relates to the political parties in the upcoming election.
These are my 'weighted' results:
I'm not sure what to make of this because in the political landscape, I'm closer to Labor, but then apparently I agree more with Liberal... so I'm not too sure...
I really can't imagine Tony Abbott as our Prime Minister, even though that's the predicted outcome. I think I may end up voting for either Labor or Greens first then the other second, then Liberal third but I'll make up my mind on the day once I read all the instructions.
Anyway so lately I've been doing more drawings! I tried to do it every day but I think I skipped out on about a week's worth of drawing, but here are some of my personal favourites (click to enlarge in a new tab):
