finishing up "Watership Down" by Richard ADams

[terryg11]

I know it's an older book and about rabbits but it's really quite good. The characteristics and mannerisms he gives the rabbits is creative and it gets pretty intense, especially the part am at now. less than a hundred pages to go just thought I would share it's a good read.

[Hissyspit]

1. If you watch "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit" there is a

very quick in-joke in the film about "Watership Down," the animated movie version, that almost NO ONE in an American audience would get, but almost EVERY British film-goer would.

I was thinking about "Watership Down" last night or the night before, but I can't remember why now. Thinking about the fact that people are animals, too, I guess.

"Rabbits: Nature's Potato Chips"

[jobycom]

4. I think of that book probably once a month

For lots of different reasons. The totalitarian element pops into my head, or the quest for a new land, or the destruction of the old. Sometimes it is something minor, like the crossing of the highway, for different reasons. When i see an animal dead on the road, I think of that scene, and how the rabbits reacted, or sometimes I think of how technology has run away from us, especially in terms of weapons. I thought of it back in the Afghanistan invasion, for instance, when Bush used a predator drone to murder a farmer and his sons because the farmer was tall and our intel thought it could be UBL, since he was tall, too (like Herod killing all children, Bush was going to kill all tall people to be sure he got the right guy). I thought of how like the highway scene in Watership Down that must have been, when something the farmer could barely see or understand killed him out of the blue.

Great book.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Do tell, do tell. What was the inside joke?

[Hissyspit]

6. In-joke:

I'm sory, Backlash. I kept waiting for someone to ask and no one did, so I just forgot to check back later.

When Wallace and Gromit are out tracking the giant were-rabbit, they separate and Gromit is waiting in the truck. He turns on the radio and just for a second you can hear Art Garfunkel singing "Bright Eyes," the theme song from "Watership Down" - the joke being that they are on the track of a giant animated rabbit (of sorts.) The movie was a big hit in the UK and the song went to #1 in the UK. In the U.S. the movie went unwatched (a real crime; I was the only person in the theatre when I saw it) and "Bright Eyes" did not even chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (another crime; if you can find a copy of it, it's a moving song, much better than any Phil Collins Disney crap).

[littlefrieda]

2. It's a classic

that should be kept and reread.

[tularetom]

3. You can read this at many different levels

I remember reading to my kids 30 years ago and them thinking it was a good story about rabbits. But there was a whole lot more going on under the surface much of which is relevant to the cf we find ourselves in today.

I still remember the term for an automobile. "Hrududu" a most descriptive and evocative word.

[Marie26]

7. Isn't it wonderful?

I remember reading the book in a couple days - it was so compelling that I brought it to work, canceled dates, etc. to finish it. Who would've thought a story about rabbits could be so suspenseful?