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Comment by jgable | Hacker News Reader

My favorite book of all time, bar none. Adventure, bravery, friendship, loyalty, love, life, and death. Written with a vividness and tenderness that brought me to tears. It sounds trite, but it's so true. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and do so.

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Adventure, bravery, friendship, loyalty, love, life, and death.

All these, plus another component I personally enjoy in adventure books -- flawed characters who complement each other, and so become collectively stronger than they stand as individuals. For example, Bigwig has an amazing character arc, where he learns to subordinate his strength to Fiver's vision and Hazel's leadership.

Other examples include the foursome in "The Three Musketeers" (who explicitly arrange their affairs to contribute equitably from among their talents, money, and time), and "Kidnapped" (where David Balfour and Alan Breck have to learn to trust each other in order to negotiate the dangers they face on each other's behalf).

The moment where Bigwig tells Woundwort that his chief rabbit has told him to defend the run and so that is what he is going to do is one of my favorites in all of fiction. Both for how it shows Bigwigs characters growth, what it says about duty, and for how Woundwort reacts being unable to comprehend that Bigwig would listen to any rabbit weaker then him and assuming that there is an even more fierce rabbit in charge somewhere.

Like the author of the article, I also don't think of WD as an allegory but a story about rabbits. It is one of the first books I read that really pulled me into another world. Later I read 'Plague Dogs' which is a different animal and a bit perplexing.

I read Animal Farm twice, once as a child reading a story about animals, once as an adult reading it as allegory. I enjoyed it a lot more the first time.

Like Watership Down, Plague Dogs was made into an animated film, which can be found available on the intertubes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084509/

Warning: The Plague Dogs film is so viscerally traumatic that even if you're an adult the imagery can travel back in time and ruin your own childhood.

Man, I had nightmares from the Watership Down movie as a kid. Now I feel like I have to watch Plague Dogs just to balance things out.

The Plague Dogs has got to be the most depressing books I've ever read--almost sadistically so. The sucker-punch ending isn't eased any by the last minute deus ex machina either, it's just plain bleak from beginning to end.

You may also like William Horwood's Duncton Wood:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncton_Wood

What do you all think of "The Wind in the Willows"?

I found it too slow and couldn't finish it. Though maybe I was tried when I was too young.

It's the literary equivalent of a big woollen blanket. Best read in winter, with a warm mug of mulled wine.

It's wonderful.

I found wind in the willows less hard going than Duncton Wood: - though my fist exposure was to the stage play in London.

Toad Of Toad Hall was a UK Christmas institution with the actor playing Mole (Richard Goolden) having done so since the 1930's

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