Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

Alice in Wonderland is the original dissociation fantasy—a girl falls into a world where every rule of logic has been replaced by something that almost-makes-sense, and the discomfort of that almost is the whole point. Carroll wrote it as a mathematical puzzle dressed as a children's story, which is why adults find it stranger and more unsettling than children do. The Cheshire Cat's casual cruelty, the Queen's off-with-their-heads bureaucracy, the Mad Hatter's broken pocket watch: it's all funnier and more specifically nightmarish on a reread. This edition pairs it with Through the Looking-Glass, which is arguably weirder and deserves more credit.