bluecastle | 28 Books -- Day 4 (Reply)

Watership Down -- Richard Adams (1972)

"Rabbits can count up to four. Any number above four is hrair -- "a lot" or "a thousand." Thus they say U Hrair --"The Thousand" -- to mean, collectively, all the enemies (or elil, as they call them) of rabbits -- fox, stoat, weasel, cat, owl, man, etc. There were probably more than five rabbits in the litter when Fiver was born, but his name, Hrairoo, means "Little Thousand" -- i.e. the little one of a lot, or as they say of pigs, "the runt." (footnote, bottom of page 4)

And here we go from ballerinas to bunnies... (but stay in England at least).

I have always wanted to be able to draw. I have tried over the years, but generally give up after a particularly bad attempt. I joined a Yahoo sketching group some years ago to try and give myself some encouragement. I was sketching and posting my sketches for a while... and my very best compliment came when I posted this very rudimentary bic pen and watercolor wash sketch of my cat Daniel Striped Tiger, and one of the members of the group referred to my sketch as "your very relaxed (and elegant) cat."

All of which doesn't seem to have a hell of a lot to do with Watership Down, now does it?

But the compliment was from a fellow who does PHENOMENAL drawings... and who worked at one time on some of the animation in the movie version of Watership Down.

Funny the connections the internets lead to.

It actually took me a long time to discover this novel. I had heard other kids talking about it off and on through middle and high school, but for the longest time I somehow had it erroneously pegged as some science fiction book. And while I liked some science fiction back then it just never hit me as something I wanted to read.

I have no idea when I picked it up and discovered it was about RABBITS... but I do remember being totally hooked when I did finally get around to reading it.

...epic journey stories, that just happened to be happening to rabbits... rabbits with their own language, and their own mythology...

...but in the end, are really just stories about bunnies made up by a guy who was trying to keep his daughters occupied on long car (or should I say hrududu) trips.

Beatrix Potter meets Aeschylus. Wicked Wonderful!!