Book Review: Watership Down

Go rabbits!

Even though Richard Adams' superbly written Watership Down is about a group of rabbits this is not a child's whimsical book. It is a serious yet magical novel about a group of rabbits trying on a quest to survive make for a better life for themselves.

The personalities of Adams' rabbits were based upon the personalities of individuals he fought alongside in World War 1 so there is a sense of purpose and gravity to the rabbits' actions. It really brought life to his story. Providing rabbits with back stories, talking about their religion and their concerns as well as their desire to improve their lot really hooks the reader.

Josh Cosham's reading of the audiobook with a British accent added to my enjoyment of Watership Down.

I remembered watching this book in cartoon form back in 1978 with its Hobbit style of art and hoped it would live up to my found memories of it.

It did.

Cartoon trailer:

Watership Down Cartoon

Book Review: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (audiobook)

I enjoyed Jules Verne classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. The key role this novel played in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony #Doerr motivated me to read this classic tale.

I found it fascinating to read what people imagined the undersea world looked like in the 1870's. The descriptions of sea creatures and underwater formations never seen before but only theorized about showed what an amazing imagination Verne had.  

However, this is also the one drawback I found in his novel.  His descriptions could been overly long especially at the beginning when describing the Nautililus.

And like a classic novel, there are many parts of lengthy introspection where you are exploring the characters' feelings and emotions in depth, compared to modern novels which breeze from action to action or drama to drama.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just different.  I really liked that style of prose in A Tale of Two Cities. I find listening to audio books helps me stay engaged with the classics when my attention my start to wander in these longer sequences.

Michael Prichard's excellent reading of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea really brought the story to life, keeping me engaged and helped me believe Professor Aronnax really did take a amazing submarine journey.

Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was very impressed with Anthony Doerr's use of language. His description of the atmosphere of France and Germany before and during WWII was exceedingly vivid.

Telling the story primarily through the experiences of a German teenage boy, Werner, and a blind French teenage girl, Marie-Laure made for intriguing reading.

What I liked most about the Werner story, were the decisions he made to act or not act in certain situations. I also enjoyed Werner's process of learning there was so much more to the world than life in his small dirty coal town - even though it was not all positive.

Marie-Laure's story had great descriptions as they were filled primarily with the sense of touch, smell and hearing. Her listening to the sounds of her town after the initial bombing from birds to mollusks to dead whales was wonderful.

Unlike, Werner's story, hers had different perspectives from secondary characters like her father, uncle and von Rumpel. While this did not hurt the story, it made for a different reading in her chapters compared to Werner's.

There were time jumps every other chapter. Meaning the first chapter was 1944 while the second chapter was 1934 and the two stories ran forward from these two time points. I believe this was done to get some action into the beginning of the book, because while the 1934 years were mildly interesting, there was no sense of danger. It was a good choice.

Zach Appelman's reading on the Audiobook was superb.



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