Book Chain, etc, Week 13

#9: A book with more pages than the previous book
February: Keyboard Keys

Watership Down by Richard Adams.

I enjoyed it. There are some very emotional parts. I have some quibbles about the way interspecies communication is depicted, but they're quibbles. The Tolkienesque asides about language and translation are fun. Actually, the whole vibe is kind of Tolkienesque, in that it's about a big adventure being had by small creatures who live in holes in the ground and are very English in their manners and speech despite having no concept of what an "England" is. I found myself occasionally wondering if the various strange rabbit communities our heroes encounter -- the decadent artist rabbits, the totalitarian dictatorship rabbits -- are meant to be read as commentary on human communities; the only one I'm confident about is the bit where one of the folk tales about the mythical rabbit hero El-ahrairah takes a moment to have El-ahrairah express his disdain for Kits These Days That Don't Respect Their Elders Who Fought For Their Freedom In The War.


#10: A book published in a different decade than the previous book
March: "This" and "That"

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman.

A re-read, because I was feeling like something light and none of the other options I was seeing for the March prompt were appealing to me.