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Dec 17, 2009

Rico rated it:

oh man, this book totally tricked me! I got a bad haircut one day so I needed to lay low for a few weeks ("Supercuts", my ass! Liars!). I called two of my hardest, most straight-up thug homies (Zachary and Dustin) to bring me some of their books and this was one of them. I had just watched a show on A&E about WWII naval battles so I couldn't WAIT to read Watership Down! I love sea stories, "man overboard!" and "off the port bow!" and "aye aye cap'n!" More...

35 comments like (304 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2010

John rated it:

Ok, so it's a book about a bunch of rabbits traveling through a small stretch of English countryside. As such, it doesn't seem like something that would appeal to anyone but a preteen. But the fact of the matter is this is a great story, full of rich characters, a deep (if occasionally erroneous) understanding of things lapine, and it can reach moments of depth and profundity that the movie of the same title does not even begin to hint at. I was actually introduced to this book in one of the bes More...

3 comments like (58 people liked it)

Jul 30, 2010

Manny rated it:

It's got nothing much to do with this book, but I want to tell my rabbit story. Feel free to disbelieve me if you must, but it's actually true. I know the person it happened to quite well, though I have changed names and other particulars in order to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent.

So, many years ago, my friend (let's call her Mary) used to have a dog (let's call him Rover). She lived next door to a family whose five year old girl (let's call her Anna) had a rabbit (let's ca More...

19 comments like (32 people liked it)

Jun 27, 2011

Joel rated it:

If you made a Venn Diagram of the longest books I read as a pre-teen and the books I reread the most, this one would be smack dab in the middle. I've read it at least five times, which is a lot for me, and listened to the audiobook more than once on family road trips.

Despite the fact that the story is deeply silly on the face of it (a bunch of rabbits move from one field to another... wow, what an adventure...), it's actually pretty thrilling. A soothsaying crazy rabbit has visions o More...

14 comments like (19 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

John rated it:

It was the summer of 1986 when, rumaging through the long unused bedrooms of my grandfather's house, I stumbled upon the book Watership Down. At twelve, I was at that wonderful age when any book was a source of fascination rather than embarrassment, and so I sat upon my uncle's old bed and, in the dusty sunlight streaming through the window, began to read a book which would stay with me years later.

Fiver, a small and nervous rabbit, is plaugued by visions of the coming destruction More...

4 comments like (18 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2009

Kirsty rated it:

Well... who knew that the life of rabbits could be so engrossing?!

This book was a joy to read. The author used beautiful imagery to the point where I could imagine every little detail of the scenery and surroundings. He definitely has a way with words and I loved how he interspersed the writing with 'Lapine' (rabbit-talk) to make it that bit more believable. His writing made me want to keep reading and I would have happily read another 500 pages. I was sad when the story ended.
More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Apr 21, 2008

Loren rated it:

Adapted from ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com

Watership Down has a lot in common with the ancient epics. In it, a lone warrior leads a band of harried outcasts into the wilderness in search of a home. They’re aided by a seer who can touch the future with his dreams. They face perilous quests and hair-breadth escapes, ferocious foes and desperate siege assaults. But unlike the works of Homer and Virgil, Watership Down is also about rabbits. Which is appropriate, as almost all of its char More...

2 comments like (18 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2008

Ernest rated it:

Probably the greatest fantasy/adventure book I have ever read just happens to be for young adults and is about talking rabbits in search of a new home. I initially thought I'd be overcome with unintentional laughter and an inability to suspend my disbelief. I thought wrong. By the book's end, when this ragtag collection of refugees from the obliterated Sandleford warren reaches the end of their journey, I was figuratively elevating Mr Adams to the gold medal platform of fantasy writers, just More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2008

Mick rated it:

While I was trying to put together a preliminary list for the books I was going to try to read this year I came across the title Watership Down a hundred times. I’ll admit that when I first came across it I thought it was going to be a space adventure. Much like the movie Ice Pirates, I thought it was going to be about a over laden supply ship crashing in enemy territory with the only know water supply that existed in the galaxy, or at least something like that. As it turns out the book contains More...

8 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 17, 2008

Melissa rated it:

Going to read it for Skinner. And I have to do a book project on it. Everyone says it's boring.

11 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 11, 2008

Alexis rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

May 03, 2010

Hayes rated it:

I liked this even better the second time. It's an adventure story. But what I liked best about it, and which didn't strike me the first time I read it (or at least I don't remember being struck by it), was the theme of how important it is to be true to your nature.

Rabbits is rabbits, and must be rabbits: they need to live in a dry, clean warren, in peace together. There may be disagreements and some fighting, but no animosity. It is the rabbits that have turned into power hungry warr More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2008

Holly rated it:

This is undoubtedly a heroic tale on par with the odyssey. How wonderful it is to so thoroughly enjoy a story for its journey and additionally be swept away occasionally by the unique picture of the world it shows you. As daily life consumes you, you tend to forget to imagine the world as it is seen by the small, but when you revisit it in books such as this, you remember that you spent some time there in the past.

How fondly do I think now of Hlao-Roo and Hrairoo, Hazel-rah and pigv More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2010

Peter added it

Richard Adams is surely versed in country things.

Watership Down is the story of an unlikely group of young rabbits that break away from their warren and head out in search of a new home. They venture across the English countryside, through copses and combes, across rivers, and in and out of back yards, and their encounters on the way test their strength, cleverness, and resolve. It’s The Lord of the Rings meets Animal Farm, but without the deliberate political allegory.

What More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2008

Dana rated it:

I remember when I was a little girl, my mom told me how much she loved this book. She even bought my brother and me a videotape of the animated version, to introduce me to the characters. (The movie's great...but I would *not* recommend it for little kids...)
I bought Watership Down at Powell's when I was eleven. I proudly paid for it with my allowance, and proceeded to read the whole book in a matter of days.
On first reading, a few of the more existential allusions in Adams's work w More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2008

Aerin rated it:

A friend gave me this book several years ago, and it had been sitting on my bookshelf, unread, ever since. How good can a book about talking bunny rabbits be, I wondered.

Turns out, really quite good. Although there's no denying that this is a book about talking bunny rabbits, it's closer to Lord of the Rings than Peter Cottontail. It's a fantasy adventure novel with its own language and mythology, and although it's long it never gets boring.

When young Fiver has a premo More...

6 comments like (10 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Susan rated it:

Watership Down is the story of a small group of rabbits traveling across the English countryside in search of a new home. Their tale begins when Fiver, a small, nervous rabbit, senses an unnamed future danger for the warren in which they live. Fiver has the gift of prophecy, and when he speaks, his older brother Hazel listens. After taking their concerns to the Chief Rabbit and trying in vain to make him believe and understand that they are in great danger, Hazel and Fiver plan an escape from th More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2008

Joshua rated it:

There are many holes in my life when it comes to memory, holes that one can fill with a Buick. I don't remember my first kiss. I don't even remember all the places I've visited and lived in. Yet, I do remember the film that sparked my love for movies (Indiana Jones), and the one book that made me a life-long reader. Watership Down is that book. Even 15 years later, I remember how I felt when the "unimportant" Hazel lead a group of rabbits to a better and new life. I remember the brav More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2010

Mariel rated it:

Watership Down is not a children's book. It's a everyman's book. Every animal, too. (Anyone with a pulse and a beating heart that gives a shit about what is around them.) There's a lovely intro in a newer edition about how he "wrote" it with his children (the stories started out a spur-of-the-moment thing when prompted to tell them a story). It's meant to be interactive in a makes you think and makes you feel way. I certainly lose myself in this world whenever I reread (it's funny how More...

17 comments like (24 people liked it)

May 29, 2008

Wesley rated it:

There have been many good reviews of this book and I won't attempt reiterate them. I just want to point out two errors that people often make about this book.

1: This is a novel for young people.

If you examine the vocabulary and sentence structure of this book you will find that it is deceptively complex. The reading level is at the top end of the high school range. It is so brilliantly written that it seems like an easy read, but it really isn't.

2: The nove More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2008

John rated it:

The adorable and highly creative anthropomorphic novel of a group of rabbits that seek out a new home. Playing on staples of heroic fantasy (mystical visions, warrior castes, frail but brave protagonists) and granting the rabbits human intelligence but a very rich culture, Adams creates a world more believable than much Fantasy about humans. It's very easy to get lost in their optimistic, sweet realm of simple concerns, where human affairs are almost as unknowable as those of gods, and everyone More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2009

Lori rated it:

When I was a kid, I remember watching Watership Down. At that time, I had no idea it had been a book.

I hadnt thought about it again until I became a fan of Lost, and was made aware of its connection to the show.

I strongly believe this is a novel that everyone should read at some point in their lives. Its not just a novel about talking rabbits who have adventures. Its a novel about a group of individuals, each with his own strengths and weaknesses, who are determined to s More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2007

Meredith marked it as to-read

I NEVER READ THIS... here is why i never will:

when i was four (yes, FOUR) my dad was ready to hand me watership down. now i was a precocious little person but i was, after all, four and barely reading you know, like, easy books. so anyway i started hearing about this book called "watership down" and that it was about rabbits, not a some kind of ship that sinks. this confused little mere-mere. ever since then, my father has bothered me to read this book. seriuosly, he still More...

10 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2007

Inge rated it:

This is a fantastic book and I can't believe I waited so long to read it. The suspense really pulled me in and kept me up at night reading, but the most poignant moments for me were the hard choices characters are forced to make. Yes, I'm talking about rabbits, but Hazel's character is so layered and richly drawn you forget the whole non-human thing. We're beyond Animal Farm here -- this story is an epic. Expect to shed a tear on the last page - partly because the book's over, but mostly because More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2008

Amy rated it:

I'm 100 pages in, and this book is as boring as they come. So many indistinguishable rabbits hopping around eating various types of green things in the ground. I try to read on it during my lunch break, but I find that I'd always rather do anything than start back on this book. Is it a rule that classics have to be boring? Do books become classics because they are boring and someone has decided that it's a mark of high class to read boring books? Oh, god, please let this book get better since th More...

14 comments like (8 people liked it)

Mar 11, 2009

Relstuart rated it:

A really fun story. Very creative to imagine the world of rabbits and the possible perils of their world.

This book is the Lord of the Rings on a rabbit scale. One of my favorite in my memory. :)

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2008

Lisa rated it:

This book is actually really good and better than you'd think it could be, especially since the whole book is from rabbits' points of view. But it was kinda weird at times, and also sometimes boring, but it was still pretty good. i would recomend this book to patient people because its ok at first, but still kinda boring but then *I*(underlined/bolded)think it gets really good..

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Mar 06, 2009

Rachel rated it:

I read this book as a child but had very little recollection of it when I sat down to read it again in February. I suppose this is technically a fantasy book, since the characters are all animals, and even though fantasy is not really one of my preferred genres, Watership Down is somehow transcendent in telling the story of the brave band of rabbits who seek to establish a new warren after fleeing their old home. In many ways, Adams tells the standard, archetypal hero's journey, but I was moved More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Jessgrannis rated it:

you wouldn't think a book about evil bunnies would be good... but you would be wrong.

17 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Tara rated it:

I downloaded this as a free E-Book, and had such a different view of it reading it NOW, as opposed to when they tried to make me read it in high school. At the time, the story of talking rabbits was just too annoying for a "suave, sophisticated" high school senior to pay attention to, and I put this book down and didn't think about it again. Now that I'm an adult, the parallels between the rabbit's world and our own are much clearer, and the patience I might have gained with age makes More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)