Ten essays on Carroll's book and the playable version of it: whether it is worth reading as an adult and why the first edition was recalled, what the hookah scene actually says, six screen tea parties ranked against the text, the case for the stranger sequel, the whole cast with the chapter each one appears in, Jabberwocky word by word, and the four essays that pick up where the Saylia Alice in Wonderland podcast leaves off.
It takes about two hours, it is ruder than you remember, and the printing you would most like to own was withdrawn by its own author. Twenty-two copies of it are left.
September 4, 2026 · 8 min read
A caterpillar on a mushroom with a hookah, a girl who keeps changing size, and a rumour with no source. The date the psychedelic reading took hold is easier to pin down than the rumour.
September 4, 2026 · 9 min read
Six stagings of the same tea party, counting the one on the page. The most faithful is a television film, and the one that made a billion dollars is not an adaptation at all.
September 4, 2026 · 10 min read
Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Jabberwock are all in the second book, not the first. It also has a plot, and the plot is a chess game.
September 4, 2026 · 9 min read
About twenty named characters, each one a single joke held without blinking. Also: the two queens people keep confusing, and the courtroom rule the King invents on the spot.
September 4, 2026 · 10 min read
A poem of invented words that everyone understands anyway, with an explanation Carroll wrote into his own sequel and delivered through an egg.
September 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Lewis Carroll taught mathematics at Oxford for 26 years. Read Alice in Wonderland knowing that and the nonsense reorganizes itself: every weird image has a rule under it. Here's the engineered logic hiding in a children's book.
June 7, 2026 · 6 min read
At nine, Alice in Wonderland is a girl having a weird day. At thirty, it's a precise account of losing control of your body, your identity, and the rules — disguised as a children's book. Here's what you missed the first time.
June 7, 2026 · 6 min read
He's in the book for barely ten pages, but the Cheshire Cat owns the lines people put on their forearms. Carroll wrote four pieces of usable life advice into one minor character — the fork in the road, “we're all mad here,” the grin without a cat, and refusing the shape.
June 7, 2026 · 6 min read
You quote Alice in Wonderland constantly without noticing — every time you say “down the rabbit hole” or “red pilled.” Here's the trail from an 1865 children's book to the Matrix, a 1967 rock anthem, every portal story since, and the names in your cryptography textbook.
June 7, 2026 · 6 min read