There can come a time when a book is a chore and let’s be real – I’m three weeks out from my wedding, I have enough goddamn chores. I hadn’t gotten quite halfway through when I consciously uncoupled myself from this book and I have no real desire to go back and finish it in the week I have remaining on my library loan.
For my Retelling bingo square, I revisited a book I didn’t much care for the first time around either. I was gifted this book in high school I think I finished it then, but that was probably only because there wasn’t a Wikipedia summary to give me the gist of what I’d miss if I didn’t. God bless the internet.
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is the story of the cackling green lady with the hardon for a pair of shoes. It also gives us a whole bunch of backstory on Oz itself, its people, the Wizard, Glinda the Good, and there’s just a lot. It’s part one in a series but also this book could have been a series unto itself. It feels like multiple different books all tied loosely together – the quiet story of a lonely women abandoned on a marsh, a political thriller fighting fascism, a magical road trip, but they never quite work as a whole and I gave up around the time Elphaba reaches the ancestral home of her married, now dead, lover. I dunno. The book just never grabbed me.
It did start strong, though, and somehow my favorite character was Galinda/Glinda? I enjoyed the revolutionary spirit of Elphaba but a lot of her decisions seemed plot driven rather than character driven (mostly her friendship with Glinda. They bonded over a hat?) Overall, I’m not sorry I gave up.
Bingo Square: Remix
BINGO: Remix, True Story, Far and Away, Youths!, Reading the TBR