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India Press Store - Watership Down: A Novel
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List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $8.75
Your Save: $ 7.25 ( 45% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780743277709
ISBN: 0743277708
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2005-11-01
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bunnies and more bunnies
Comment: This is a great book for everyone who enjoy well written stories. A young bunny with the talent of prophesy and his sister who act on his promptings. It has the culture of this enchanting creatures, couple with instruction to understand it better. A well done, good to learn about life and what to do when problem arise book, and it will be for many years to come.
Anna del C.
Author of "The Elf and the Princess"
and "Trouble in the Elf City"
The Elf and The Princess: The Silent Warrior Trilogy - Book One (The Silent Warrior Trilogy)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Part fantasy, part children's book, all charming...
Comment: Watership Down by Richard Adams is part fantasy, part children's book and all charming. This has become a true classic that is universally loved. Richard Adams first created Watership Down as an oral story for his two daughters on a long road trip. When he was finally finished, they encourage him to write it down in book-form as it was better than almost any book that he read to them each night.
This story is about a group of rabbits. But unlike many fantasies, these rabbits don't do anything they wouldn't normally do except to talk to each other and other animals. Brother rabbits Hazel and Fiver live happily in Sandleford Warren, until Fiver has a premonition that something terrible is going to happen to their home. They convince a group of rabbits to flee Sandleford and seek a new and safer warren. The rabbits go through many travails and Adams details them all in great detail. Perhaps the most dangerous expedition involves the search for female rabbits to help populate their new warren. The rabbits have their own language, Lapine, and Adams provides a glossary of Lapine terms at the end. This edition also includes a new introduction where the author tells how he came to write this book.
I'm not much of a fantasy reader, but I grew very fond of Hazel, Fiver and their companions.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Story, 70% Good Metaphor
Comment: I've waited for years to read this book, and by and large it didn't disappoint. Great story, interesting characters, largely fast flowing plot, and mostly a good metaphor: the metaphor of breaking from the herd, breaking from the old way, treating life as an adventure to be tackled, and taking risk and using ingenuity to accomplish a mission. I loved all that, and loved its message about the complacency of hutch rabbits (average humans!) - and how weak and lost we become when complacency takes over.
BUT...
The metaphor of the story ultimately breaks down because it becomes a "happily ever after" story. The whole purpose of the rabbits' ultimate mission in the second half of the book is to find ways to attract or procure female rabbits so they can mate, have babies, and just...ultimately live average, complacent lives. I admired their ingenuity in achieving this end, but what kind of message is this "end" in our modern world? Just more dating, mating, and procreating - exactly the complacency that is KILLING OUR PLANET.
It's time for a new way: forget breeding like rabbits, stop the cycle of overpopulation, stop the spread of our species into new untamed lands, and instead scale back. Go within and heal our ancient wounds. Had the book had this message I would have liked it a thousand times more.
Two other criticisms: 1) I found the mythical rabbit-and-God folktales within the book, the ones the rabbit storytellers told, to be EXTREMELY DULL. Once I realized they were not remotely an intrinsic part of the story I skipped them - whole chapters - to no great loss. That sped things up a lot. 2) The literary quotations at the beginning of each chapter were distracting and irrelevant, so after a few chapters I mostly ignored them.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I guess you had to be there
Comment: This strikes me as definitiely a "book of its time". First published in 1972 (after being rejected by 13, count 'em, 13 publishers), it is written on a "young adult" reader level and is basically a formalized cobbling together of stories the author told his children on tedious car trips. Each chapter is preceded by a literary quote, which after the first 20 or so becomes a bit precious and eventually pretentious. Obviously, it has quite a following, but it seems to me to fall into the same category as books as diverse as "A Wrinkle in Time", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Atlas Shrugged", or perhaps less complimentary, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (which itself was published 2 years before this). All have their fans, most of whom first read their book at an impressionable age, and who seem more passionate than the material objectively deserves, because the story has some resonance for those readers. Those fans all find some sort of inspiration, or really self-confirmation, and tend to get irate if YOU don't "get it" too. Frankly, it struck me as an overly-twee cross between "The Hobbit" and Beatrix Potter. (And please, I *did* enjoy "The Wind in the Willows".) The female rabbits ("does") are essentially non-existant in the first third of the book, and are much-sought-after non-entities in the rest, useful only for perpetuating rabbithood (didn't know THAT was a problem....) The "lupine dictionary" ought to be a litmus test for potential readers: if this strikes you as charming, or clever, or creative, give the book a try. If you think that is just a mite affectatious, and have a hard time with rabbits having "names" like Hazel, Buckthorn, Pipkin, and Dandelion, I think you'll be happier with a "pass".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Comment: I had never read this book in highschool like i had heard that many people had. I am kinda sorry i was not able to when i was younger. Oh well. I am only about 3/4 of the way through this book and it is hard to put down! Very interesting. Very different. I recommend everyone give it a read at least once in their life. Worth it all the way.
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Editorial Reviews:
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A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over thirty years, Richard Adams's Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.
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