Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum

This was in most ways a really easy read and in some ways hard.  I grew up on the movie of the Wizard of Oz and still know it pretty much word for word.  I think I read the book at some point in my childhood but that has been at least 20 years and since then i've also read all of Gregory Maguire's re-imaginings of Oz and have seen the musical "Wicked" a ridiculous amount of times.  So as much as she terrified me as a child I now think of the Wicked Witch as Elphie and really do love her.  That said the Wizard always annoyed me even as a child so that hasn't changed much from incarnation to the next.

I do love this book and I love the characters.  Unlike the problems I have with Alice (in Wonderland) I really do love Dorothy as a character - even when I'm wanting to scream lines from Wicked at her ("Who takes a dead womans shoes?  Must've been raised in a barn!").  She's sweet, she's likable and despite being used by the Wizard she really is forgiving and nice.  I love the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion as well and while part of that comes from having loved the movie versions of them I think mostly it's because they are written so well.

But as I said both the musical Wizard of Oz and Wicked have kinda warped my mind on all things Oz.  I want to cheer for the Wicked Witch.  I want to call the Wizard a manipulative tool (which to be fair he kind of is), I forgot that Boq actually is in the book and I really do love him in this and Maguire's version of him as well (the musical version I don't particularly like) so it was good to get back to where Oz began and to remind myself of the original version.  That said i'm still going to have a hell of a lot of fun when it gets to studying this one in class.

Next I think I should actually try some Australian fiction.