Review: COMPLETE WORKS by Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and "The Hunting of the Snark" are ridiculously silly and have long been among my favorites. After finding a lot of Complete Works collections for very reasonable prices -- public domain books are free or nearly so on the Kindle -- the first one I read was by Lewis Carroll. I was eager to see what else he had written.

I shouldn't have bothered.

The late 1800s were a very sentimental time in England, and Carroll was more sentimental than most. He seems to have seen things, especially nature and children, as idealized. A lot of what he wrote was just glurge, a mixture of chicken noodle soup and sugar. The former is supposed to be good for you and the latter is supposed to taste good, but together they just sound disgusting. It's because of all the glurge that I don't recommend this.