As in any dream, I woke up...

This post is the last for this book.  And this has long been overdue.  I didn't have the time to write before I got admitted for my seventh cycle of chemotherapy that's why I am writing this just now.

My first reaction is that maybe I am just a little too old for this book.  But I have this idea that no book is to passe for anyone.  No book is old nor new for someone who wanted to read, who wanted to experience.  But sometimes, it just has a difference if you read the right book at the right age.  I know I would have had different reactions in some of the scenes had I read it when I was younger.

Anyway.

I found it fascinating that the the characters were all made of cards.  I initially thought it kind of funny.  But the fascination continued when the cards have their numbers as their names, and that they have their own roles in the adventure.  The knave was tried for something that I didn't even find out if he did or did not do.  I don't really know if I wasn't just paying too much attention to the book or the book really didn't tell.  This happens to me every once in while.

Anyway, this book reminds me of a local movie.  That one with Ai-ai delas Alas entitled "Ang Tanging Ina" where all the offsprings of the mother were named by numbers.  But of course, not to be to obvious, it was Uno, Dos, Tres and so on.

The last sentence of the book:

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with a dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and found a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

I don't know if I ever mentioned (since I have been very forgetful these days, that I read this on e-Book.  And here is the link:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

I have been reading using natural light for about a while now.  So, that meant I have most of my reading time in the afternoon when the sunlight is strong.

So, recently, when we have been having grey and gloomy days, I decided to use the computer so that I can read even if the lights are low.

Image copied here

I turned to Google Books to find an e-Book that I could start reading and I figured that I would not search or try to choose from a million books.  I'll just start reading the first book that I could lay my cursor into.  And this is what I found.

The first sentence:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do:  once or twice she peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book, " thought Alice, "without the pictures or conversations."

For some, this was a reading requirement maybe in grade school, or a bedtime story that their parent(s) read to them.  But since I went into a public school here in our country, reading a novel was never a requirement - even if it was a book by a local writer.  So, part of my quest was to read these classical books that inspire children to read and write.  My parents never read to us during bedtime.  But it was never a problem for me.

It's a good thing that I got myself into reading even if it wasn't a requirement in school.  I guess it was my dad's persistence that I read his collection of Reader's Digest - a collection which he kept so that we, his children could have something to read on.

Anyway.

Since it's an eBook, I don't have an image that I took of myself.  This is the image cover that I took from the site where I downloaded the book itself.

Here's what's on page 68 of the book:

"He must have imitated somebody else's hand," said the King.  (The jury all brightened up again.) 

"Please, your Majesty," said the Knave, "I didn't write it, and they can't prove that I did: there's no name signed at the end." 

"If you didn't sign it," said the King, "that only makes the matter worse.  You must have meant some mishief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man."