What sort of readers read Wicked?

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:41 am Post subject: What sort of readers read Wicked?

Hello, Wicked readers, I'm back on track reading Maguire's book, and this time I mean to proceed.

I'll write some of the questions I'm asking myself as I read.
This book is very unusual, and I am trying to picture the kind of reader that would be attracted to it.
Of course, some would be the type that belong to a group and like to discuss books.
Others would read it because they've seen the old films or the musical.
Yet there is a wealth of unusual vocabulary, and some complex sentence structures, that you do not always associate with bestsellers.

So I'll keep this in mind as I read: who are the other readers in the real world?

Actually, here's an extract from the New York Times which partly answers my question:
“Son of a Witch,” a sequel to “Wicked,” spent 14 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Although “Wicked” stayed there for 26 weeks, it didn’t arrive until 10 years after its publication. In one interview, Maguire joked that the musical was “a $14 million advertising campaign for the book.” In fact, when the novel was published in 1995, he gave a reading in Chicago for which seven people showed up." *

Next, Carly's reference to audio books has been very useful for me: I'm used to reading only books I feel attracted to but Wicked is one of those books I wanted to be able to discuss but could not manage to read as my mind kept wandering.

Now I've started listening and reading at the same time, it's a new experience for me and I'm enjoying it.
An added bonus for someone like me is that I hear some lovely English from an educated voice: usually the only type of English I hear is from television.

*http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11maguire.t.html?pagewante d=3&_r=1[/quote]

Constance963 · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:33 pm Post subject:

Hi Ophelia,

I am mainly a general fiction reader. I picked up Wicked because I saw the musical and it prompted me to read the original story that the show was adapted from. I had read one of Gregory Maguire's previous books, Lost, so I was at least a little familiarized with his writing style which I have to admit had put me off at first. I started and quit reading Lost 3 times before I finally really got into it on the 4th reading and I enjoyed it once I did. When I started to read Wicked, I had a feeling that it would be the same so I stuck with it.

Theomanic · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:36 am Post subject:

I wanted to read Wicked because I have a strong attraction to fairy tale type stories, and re-tellings of fairy tales. I think that's part of the reason I like magic realism as a genre, and the whole idea of modern day fairy tales.

Personally I didn't end up being a huge fan of Wicked. I felt for a book that size, regardless of subject matter, the character development was amazingly lacking. I don't think the book would ever have made a splash without the musical because I don't think it's very high quality. However, quality doesn't a bestseller make! (Thinks about a certain D. Brown....)


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