Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Wicked by Gregory Maquire



Rating: 5.3.5

Category: Read at your own risk

I haven't finished this book and I'm not sure if I will. I've been listening to the audio version while I run and though I have enjoyed it, I've about decided that I should just wait for the musical. It is definitely not a clean read. I have heard that it is a very good book and I can see that it would be very interesting and entertaining but there is just a little too much sex, innuendo, and crudity for my taste. Since the musical is so family friendly I have heard of many people being caught unaware by the content of this book so I thought that I'd try it out and see for myself. With 3 F-bombs in the first third and more to come I'm sure, I've given it a 5 rating on profanity. The 5 for sex is deserved but the 3 for violence is just an estimate of what may come since there hasn't been much violence yet. If you really want to read this book I would guess that you could skip parts and be okay because it doesn't have profanity throughout like some books I've been unfortunate enough to pick up. If I do finish I think I will try the book version instead of the audio because I might be able to control what I read a little better. I would definitely not want my teenage daughter to read this.

5 comments:

Kira =] said...

I love how easy it is to understand your rating system. It makes it easy to know at a glance, whether I'm interested in the book. A similar system for movies is used at kidsinmind.com. Thanks for braving the waters for us!

Kim said...

Thank you. I did borrow the rating system from kidsinmind.com. It's a great system and I hope they don't mind my borrowing it.

Thanks for the comment and for visiting my blog. Hope to see you around again. :)

Not quite the Bradys said...

I just finished this book yesterday. I don't know if you read the book version or not, but I have to say, I don't think you really could control the sex and innuendo much better by reading it than by listening. I read the whole thing because I am compulsive about knowing how things end- (books, movies, tv shows, etc.) The quantity of sex in the book exceeds your rating system. (I'd say a 7+.) Also, the perversion of the sex in the book is quite nauseating. It's bad enough when sex is mentioned every third page without exploring many more venues than just a man and a woman together. I thought the book was interesting, creative, and I liked that it offered an explanation to the incongruity of the L. Frank Baum series. I did NOT like this book however, and I would recommend anyone with an even slightly conserative moral code to steer WAY clear of it.

On a separate note- how did you do the search by category section of this blog? I've been trying to achieve the same idea and can't figure it out. You can leave a note on mine. Thanks!
Aberjaber

Anonymous said...

I read this book because I saw it on the shelf and read the back of it. The story is fascinating but as mentioned the sexual nature of it was a bit much. To put it mildly. Although I like his ideas I have put off reading his other books because of that. I did read The Ugly Stepsister. There wasn't quite as much mention of sexual things. But the subject matter was still pretty intense.

Shelley said...

I like most books but I hated this one. It was so disturbing to me I read a church book right after just to cleanse my mind :-). Such a great premise for a story ruined. I just saw the musical though and loved it!