Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams

Watership Down by Richard Adams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't exactly know how to rate this book.   I actually feel bad that I didn't immediately fall in love with it.  It was recommended so many times and it is well loved by so many.  I chose it to fulfill a book mentioned in another book challenge.  I recently finished up The Waste Lands by Stephen King, and one of the main characters mentions Watership Down.  They also mention Shardik, which Richard Adams also wrote.  As this was recommended many times for the 2017 reading challenge and it was available at the library I took a chance.  I had no idea what it was about, but I think I expected more of a fantasy and this really doesn't have any fantasy elements.  There is no magic or fantastical creatures, and Adams is very clear in the forward that he doesn't make the rabbits do anything that an actual rabbit can't do physically.  You can tell he went to great lengths to portray rabbits and their actions accurately in their natural habitat.

I didn't particularly enjoy Watership Down, but it was beautifully written. I think a younger version of myself would have really loved this book, but adult me just didn't connect with a story about rabbits and told from the perspective of rabbits. And that's is the basic plot line of this story, a group of rabbits takes off from their home or warren because one of the rabbits gets premonitions. This premonition leads them to face many hardships and find a new warren. This leads to new premonitions, and more hardships. All of the hardships that the rabbits face are typical things a rabbit in the wilderness would face weather, humans, predatory animals, hunger, the need for shelter, etc. Once they establish a new home, they come to realize there are no female rabbits in their group, so they figure out a way to explore the lands around them. This leads to a clan war with a nearby warren. The small group of rabbits face many challenges before their adventure is over. This is not a cute, fluffy bunny story. There is danger and violence, and can I just say I had no idea that bunnies could fight like that. I learned a great deal about rabbits from this book.

You can tell that Adams put a ton of work into his research, and you can tell alot of love went into the construction and telling of this story. I really loved the rabbit mythology he created and the stories the rabbits told each other. This definitely gets an A+ for quality of writing, character development, visual description, and plot development. The writing is excellent, and I can see why many love it and it is a favorite. I actually think my boys,would really enjoy this as it is an adventure story, and I think they are at the right age to fall in love with this story. While I didn't love it, I think I might enjoy sharing it and reading it with them.

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Review: Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Narrated by Ethan Hawke
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really did not enjoy this. I struggled on what to rate it, parts of it were ok, and part of it were just plain weird.  I'm ok with the realm of the weird.  I spent much of my childhood and teen years reading about vampires and aliens, well before Twilight came around.  I've read some weird stuff, but I think it was just way to strange for my liking. It reminding me so much of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, where you aren't really sure if the main character is really experiencing the things happening to him in the book or its all in his head but he really believes its happening. I'm just not a fan of these types of books where the plot is a metaphor or analogy for something else and you are left to puzzle out the deeper meaning and find the symbolism.

This book has been around a long time so I'm not going to try to over analyze it.  The story follows Billy Pilgrim during his life, but mainly during his time as a soldier in WWII.  While in Germany, Billy obtains the ability to time travel.  At some point on one of his time journeys, he gets abducted by aliens from Tralfamadore where he has some interesting experiences, most with a porn star named Montana Wildhack.  In his older years he wants to tell everyone about Tralfamadore, but most people just think he's crazy.  Much of the book is disjointed because he's always jumping around to different points of his life.  There are some fairly obscene parts of the book, so I can see why people would want it censored, especially given the time it was published.  Even in today's world, people would still find it offensive.  I just shook my head and kept going.

Having looked a little deeper into the history of Dresden and Kurt Vonnegut, some of the things he describes in the book actually happened, so it is a bit of an autobiographical tale and I understand it a little more.  I read an old interview he did on and based on the transcript, his books were a form of therapy for him.  Billy Pilgrim was inspired by a real man who died in Dresden, who he felt never should have been a soldier.  I can kind of imagine that Vonnegut came up with some of this stuff as a coping mechanism during his time as a POW as a way to survive.  Maybe not the exact sci-fi content of Slaughterhouse-Five, but perhaps some of it or atleast he escaped into his head.

I respect Vonnegut's work here and what he went through. The audio narration was great, and its under 8 hours. This just wasn't for me. I think the genre blending of autobiography, historical fiction, sci-fi, and satire just was too much . I really did appreciate the 10 minute interview with Vonnegut himself at the end of the audiobook with an attorney friend of his about the book and his inspiration for Billy Pilgrim.  I wish that part was longer.

Had I not been working through the Popsugar Reading Challenge, I don't think I ever would have picked this up.  I'm glad I finally got to it.  I want to get to more classics or iconic books that I haven't read that I feel like I should.  This takes care of a book mentioned in another book.  This was mentioned in the first few pages of Beautiful Creatures (by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl), which I read a while ago.