Welcome to Gaia! ::

I aboslutely LOVED Wicked. And the questions it raised about the true nature of evil.
I read Son of a Witch (which elicited many a, "Ha ha! Sonofawitch!" from my friends), but I didn't enjoy it that much.

I also loved Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.

I knew the soundtrack by heart before I ever read the book, however. I'm going to see the musical tomorrow. 4laugh

I became very familiar with the musical Wicked before reading the book, whereas a friend of mine read the book before become aquainted with the musical. She said that the book was absolutely amazing, so of course I had to read it. She also said that she was pretty disappointed in the musical version of the story.

However, I think I like the musical a little more. Granted, that's probably because I fell in love with Wicked the musical before I read it, and went to see it before that.

I did like that the book was very dark. In my mind, I view it pretty much as a classic Greek tragedy, except for the ancient and Greek part, but you know what I mean. All of the characters are so real and their actions are very realistic. Now, I'm one to think that some books are just written as a story to be told for entertainment and shouldn't be overanalyzed, but I think this book would be great in the classroom. I feel like a lot could be done with it. I would find it fascinating.

The play is amazing. Just simply amazing. In and of itself. I think to really appreciate the play, you have to hold it as separate from the book, because if you're expecting the book, you'll be disappointed when seeing the show. Likewise, I've heard many people say that they didn't enjoy the book, because they were expecting the play.



On a completely unrelated note, I love how Gregory Macguire created the name for the Wicked Witch of the West- Elphaba. Hm, El-pha-ba. L. F. B. for L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz.
I just thought that was pretty clever of him to create such a name. xd