I tried reading Watership Down several years ago and failed. I remembered what happened more than halfway through the novel, so I’m surprised I didn’t just finish it. It is long, though. And it’s totally worth a read. I really enjoyed it, though reading from a rabbit’s point of view took a bit of getting used to. The novel is about rabbits starting their own warren and the Things that Happen. It’s amazingly violent – much more than I thought it would be. I haven’t seen the movie (or if I have, it’s been a really long time), but I bet it sticks pretty close to the novel’s plot. And Adams is great at imagery. I felt like I was in the warren with the rabbits.
The first time I tried to read Watership Down, I lived in Mid City, New Orleans. It was probably a year or two before the hurricane. My condo wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but it wasn’t terrible, either. Except a girl named Ashley lived next to me, and she sold prescription drugs, so ne’er-do-wells were often about, yelling up to her window. “AshLEY!” Urgh. Anyway, I was sitting in a recliner next to a window that looked out to my small patio. It had a privacy fence a good bit taller than me. I heard a noise, and a dude I assumed to be one of AshLEY’s “friends” jumped over my fence, grabbed my bicycle, shoved it over the fence, and jumped back over. Goodbye to my bike. Not that I really rode it or anything. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat really still and watched him. I figured it’d be a bad idea to try and confront him since the only thing between us was a thin pane of glass.
I don’t really have a lot to say about this novel. I really liked it. There’s also a Tales from Watership Down that I’ll probably look into at some point. A novel about rabbits was certainly a change from what I’ve been reading lately.
