Thursday, June 30, 2011

Alice in Wonderland and that Tea Party


I went to a book group last night to see if I wanted to join it. The book under discussion was Lewis Carroll's "Alice and Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There"

It is hard to put down the emotions I felt in this group. I was the new member and untested. The leader was missing. There was one man in the group who the self-appointed leader deferred to. It was soon that I felt I was in the tea party of Alice's Wonderland complete with the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen. Since no one introduced themselves I felt free to write this blog characterizing what happened. The discussion had the same mad logic the book had.

Much was made of the annotations in the books many of the readers used. The Mad Hatter wanted to talk about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The Red Queen wanted to praise the Walt Disney version of the book and one lady who was rather sweet and more like the dormouse kept saying she did not understand the book at all and she had a very strong British accent. I liked her the best because of her honesty.

I have joined several book clubs this month but will not be joining this one. At first, I thought it was my personality. It was evident that they did not think well of me, but I think I made them feel uncomfortable. They kept changing the subject as those at the tea party did in the book. I could keep up since I was well acquainted with the subjects they switched to. There was no logic to the subjects they brought up. Still, I kept up. The Mad Hatter kept making pronouncements of things completely off the wall and the only thing the Red Queen did not say was "off with their heads."

It wasn't until I started to write this that I found the whole meeting funny.


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