The Wind in the Willows in Never too Late to Read Classics

Dec 12, 2013 Laura marked it as to-read

Shelves: gutenberg, e-books, audio-books

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

3* The Golden Age
CR The Wind in the Willows ...more

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Jun 30, 2016 Douglas Beagley rated it it was amazing

Proust for Kids

This is not a book for children, nor for adults, nor for those caught in between. It is not a book for anyone. I will not recommend it, or share it, or ask my wife to read it. It is a book only for me, as all books are, and no one else in the world will ever curl up in a rainbow hammock under variable skies and follow the languid walks over emotional landscapes, alien and yet natural, and see through the eyes of those who are not people, are not animals, either, nor anything in be Proust for Kids

This is not a book for children, nor for adults, nor for those caught in between. It is not a book for anyone. I will not recommend it, or share it, or ask my wife to read it. It is a book only for me, as all books are, and no one else in the world will ever curl up in a rainbow hammock under variable skies and follow the languid walks over emotional landscapes, alien and yet natural, and see through the eyes of those who are not people, are not animals, either, nor anything in between.

I have just read the chapter in which Rat, the steadfast, loyal, mildly gruff yet dependable and neighborly, the erstwhile partner of the innocent Mole, observes the goings on of the migratory animals in early autumn and first rejects, then finds himself envious of, then is bewitched by and then released from, the notion of wandering to new unknown lands and leaving behind his structure and his self. In a bit of reversal, he is "rescued" from having the far off eyes of a very different rat by his partner Mole, who perhaps learned the trick of it and the sometimes necessity from the earlier failed attempts to heal toad of his inherent toadness.

At the end, Mole provides paper and pencil and suggests to an uncertain Rat that he hasn't written poetry in a while, and perhaps he might scribble a bit, at least to get down the rhymes. And rat does.

He is not Robert Frost, our rat. He's not a literary artist. But he is himself, and his poetic spirit is with him always, and applies itself at just the right moment in just the right way, when fumbling with the natural world after an encounter with the divine, for example. His poems will never quite be complete, but there is something there that answers who he is and who he longs to be, and it is enough.

My word, what an odd, odd book. "Rich" is the obvious description... Ludicrously rich. Very little happens, everything happens, and we get swept up in it until we realize we are reading a book about everything, and everything that ever was anywhere or ever will be. It's Proust for children. Nostalgia is my least favorite flavor, so I have no reason to love this book, but I do.

We are rat, and mole, and sometimes toad, and we might unwisely aspire to be badger, who is clean out of fucks long before the phrase was invented, and we shall ever wander and skip through our lives like the twittering sparrows. ...more

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Sep 01, 2022 Lisa Kelsey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook

This was a childhood favorite of mine. Mole, Ratty, Badger, Toad and assorted other woodland creatures and their misadventures. I enjoyed the audiobook read by Terry Jones.

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May 05, 2018 Holly rated it really liked it

Never too late to read the classics! Glad I finally got around to this one.

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Nov 29, 2013 Tom Britz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This was far and above anything I ever dreamed it would be. The writing was picturesque and hilarious at times. The characters were real to themselves. I somehow missed this as a child, I am so glad that I found it now. This is truly a great book.

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