Friday, April 8, 2011

It's Not Easy Being Green

Day 8: Most Overrated Book

YET AGAIN I had issues deciding what book to pick. (I'm noticing a trend here.) This time I actually had a decent size list of books I felt like I could feature.



Wicked: The Life snd Times of the Wicked Witch of the West 
by Gregory Maguire

alphamom.com
Ugh.

I honestly don't understand why everyone loved this book so much. Not that it was a bad book, it was written well and it had a good plot. But it wasn't great either.

A lot of it was simply warped and weird. I also hated the ending. Through the entire book it seemed as though Elphaba (the wicked witch) was a "good guy" and you sympathized with her. You took her side of the story. You liked her. then in the end... I felt like she actually did become wicked. (Although when they described how annoying Dorothy and her dog were, I was pretty amused.) Then they made two other books after.

I didn't even bother picking up the other two. Again, not that Wicked was a bad book. It wasn't. It simply was not my taste and I was disappointed. I feel no need to find out what happens after the story. Which is strange since normally I don't mind stories that are a bit warped and I feel like stories where you dig more into the "bad guy" is interesting.

Oh well.

Now the musical on the other hand - LOVE IT! They are almost two entirely different stories. Thankfully the ending of the musical I liked more! I listen to the soundtrack all of the time and I simply love it. I've seen the show twice on stage now, and if I see it more than that I won't complain!

So I'll leave you with a song from the musical.

3 comments:

  1. I wasn't even able to finish the book! I didn't hate it either, but it was just rather dull and didn't hold my interest all the way through. Perhaps I should stick through it to get to the annoying Dorothy parts, because all I've read so far is her becoming involved in some hippy underground political movement. I honestly thought I had the wrong book or something, since a musical was made out of it! Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. ;)

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  2. I wouldn't have said it was overrated, but it was a bit meh. I did make it through to the end though! I often wonder if I'd feel differently if I'd read the book before I saw the musical...

    I've read the sequel - Son of a Witch - and it was the same. I read the whole thing, but I was a bit meh about it all the way through.

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  3. I haven't read Wicked, but I've read two of his other books-- Mirror Mirror (his take on Snow White) and Lost. And I found that both of them had really terrible endings. The rest of the plotlines were okay enough, but the endings were seriously lacking. Really anticlimactic. I neither wanted to know or cared what happens to the characters at the end of the book. It's almost as if they fade away into oblivion at the end. But the thing was, despite the fact that they were bad, I didn't even care enough to be angry about it.

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