Reading List Update: # 1 - 2

[jedibuttercup]

These were the first books of 2008; more of the Oz series, as promised. I'd have waited until I finished more of them to post, but I wanted to go ahead and get the bookmark post up (see previous).

1. The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum. Hardcover, large print, 261pp. 5th of the Oz series. Reread. This is the one they call the "Party Book of Oz". It's Ozma's birthday-- which one, they never say-- and she uses the Magic Belt to cause Dorothy to wander out of Kansas into a nearby "fairy country" from which she wends her way to Oz, meeting new friends (Shaggy Man, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, Johnny Dooit, etc.) and old along the way. Lots of fun nonsense; boating across the Deadly Desert; the Truth Pond, which both reveals your true self and curses you to speak truth evermore; the Love Magnet; and a grand birthday bash which neighboring rulers attend; but no real conflict.

2. The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Hardcover, large print, 294pp. 6th of the Oz series. Reread. In this one, Dorothy asks Ozma if she may bring Uncle Henry and Aunt Em (who are losing the farm) to Oz to live, and Ozma says yes. So Ozma Magic Belts them there, and they and Dorothy tour Oz. Meawhile, the Nome King plots to tunnel in under the Emerald City and conquer the country. The pacifistic nature of Oz under the current regime is emphasized; instead of killing the invaders, Ozma neutralizes them with the Fountain of Oblivion and Magic Belts them home. Dorothy's honorary Princess-hood is made much of, and she visits many of Oz's non-human "fairy" settlements. Glinda's magic is mentioned; she maintains Oz's weather and a Magic Book that says what's going on everywhere; she's teaching the Wiz real magic; and she makes the entire country invisible at book's end to protect it from the normal World. A more substantive book than the last.

Next up: eight Oz books yet to go. The futher I read, the more I picture D.G. finding these dusty "fairy tale" versions of the O.Z.'s history on a shelf somewhere, and pestering her Tutor for "the way it all really happened." Which, of course, I then feel compelled to write... *facepalm*
~

Comments

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

If you did write that, I would cry with happiness. Especially if you made her a descendant of both Dorothy *and* Ozma (or Ozma had no descendants)--it's the only way I could accept Dorothy's line instead of Ozma's ruling Oz. :-)

[jedibuttercup]

The easy way, of course, is to just say that Ozma eventually did get tired of being a girl, as she worried in Land of Oz when Glinda reversed the enchantment that made her a boy...

There are also plenty of Princes both girls' age in nearby places, such as Ev; and Dorothy did find one of them pretty cute. I'll have to read the other eight books before I think about it too much more, though. =)

[wolf-j.livejournal.com]

Oz is totally on my list of books to "Finally read this year." I've read Wizard ~and Ozma ~, but never got around to the rest.

[jedibuttercup]

They're enchanting fairy tales-- even now-- on the one hand; but on the other, lots of thinky fodder about American cultural mores at the time and how that came out in Baum's writing.