watership down

[qthewetsprocket]

just finished reading it last night - was very good. it's also admittedly very much of its time; ie very 1970's england with its dodgy ethnic stereotypes and practically nonexistant female characters...but still a very good story.

my only real criticism is with the ending. first off, there were two endings, and it only needed one. the epilogue

Comments

[qthewetsprocket]

I think an ending like Hazel and Fiver at another silfay would have been too neat and tidy given everything that came before

what i had in mind was more along the lines of that scene towards the end of return of the king, where the four hobbits are in the alehouse watching their friends and relatives enjoy the peace they bought for them, but knowing that deep inside, they themselves would never be the same again. prosperity at a price, and all that.

and i started out googling all the unfamiliar plant names i came across, but that soon got very time-consuming, and really took me out of the story. in the end my reader's eye just kind of skimmed over it and went, 'yeah, yeah...scenery' before moving on to the actual action. it's sad in a way, because i'd really like to know more about plants and what the hell adams was describing, but there's very little call or time for it in my life currently ( see this post for more of my blatherings on that particular issue, and this one for thoughts on the gender relations, if you're bored).

[qthewetsprocket]

i think i have the geographical dyslexia thing too, but it usually doesn't bug me as badly as it did in this book. i think the last one to irk me that much was, coincidentally, lord of the rings, where i began to suspect that tolkien wanted to be a writer not so much as a middle earth travel agent. egads, entire pages full of intricate landscape descriptions...just say 'they climbed up a hill' and get on with it, ffs!!!'

*plans on snagging a copy of tales next tuesday when i'm in portland*

[crossbow1]

I should read that again. It's been 15 years. I remember it gave me nightmares about being a guard in a concentration camp.