RIP Richard Adams.
Watership Down woke me up. I was twelve years old. Shardik blew a hole through the middle of my mind. I was thirteen years old. The Plague Dogs injured me with perspective. I was fifteen years old. The Girl In a Swing made me realize that we can take a creative work and make it our own and not owe a whit of allegiance to the creator. I was nineteen years old.
Richard Adams gifted me in the same way that CS Lewis gifted me. And in the same way I believe that JK Rowling has gifted the Millenial generation. The talent of these authors lies in offering hope to dreamy children by way of prose dreamscapes. Waking young adults gently from the sleepiness of childhood and magical imaginations with the promise of the waking dream, the novel, the story, the imagined character. Adventure and heroics. The reasurrance that life can be a glorious undertaking, the journey of the hero, the choices to do the right thing will always be offered and we can choose, or we can accept, and keep moving onward and upward. The peak of the mountain beckons.
I know we all have read and cherished Watership Down, and rightfully so. It deserves that level of adoration. But has anyone on the flist also read Shardik? I have yet to mean another fan of that bear-god.
Watership Down woke me up. I was twelve years old. Shardik blew a hole through the middle of my mind. I was thirteen years old. The Plague Dogs injured me with perspective. I was fifteen years old. The Girl In a Swing made me realize that we can take a creative work and make it our own and not owe a whit of allegiance to the creator. I was nineteen years old.
Richard Adams gifted me in the same way that CS Lewis gifted me. And in the same way I believe that JK Rowling has gifted the Millenial generation. The talent of these authors lies in offering hope to dreamy children by way of prose dreamscapes. Waking young adults gently from the sleepiness of childhood and magical imaginations with the promise of the waking dream, the novel, the story, the imagined character. Adventure and heroics. The reasurrance that life can be a glorious undertaking, the journey of the hero, the choices to do the right thing will always be offered and we can choose, or we can accept, and keep moving onward and upward. The peak of the mountain beckons.
I know we all have read and cherished Watership Down, and rightfully so. It deserves that level of adoration. But has anyone on the flist also read Shardik? I have yet to mean another fan of that bear-god.
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(Just saw that both are finally available for Kindle, which had been an ongoing frustration for me, as recently as last year.)
His death is another loss of light in a year of luminaries snuffed too soon :/
<3
I switched off the Kindle last year and back to print...I found I wasn't retaining as much of my reading digitally. :(
I couldn't read The Plague Dogs: couldn't get past the part with the tank. I switched out of Pre-Vet in my first year of college on account of my views re animal experiments. But The Girl In A Swing, woah!! I only ever read it once (library book) when it first came out, but so many images and passages from it still stick in my mind.
RIP Richard Adams; may his spirit run free with the rabbits forever. And with the Bear of course.
She kept insisting I read it. Finally I did. It altered my mind.
Fiver still lives in my heart, he has his own little ache there.
Now I have three more books to add to my "To Read" list.
In the past week we've lost George Michael, Carrie Fisher, and now Richard Adams. Enough already!
Edited at 2016-12-29 12:14 am (UTC)
Mmmm...not sure the other titles are worth adding or at least bumping more worthy titles out of the queue for. I don't recommend A Girl in a Swing at all.
Did you get my PM??
In fact, I just answered again, but I am not sure it went right. I'm going to go and check that. If it didn't send properly, I will email you. So sorry for any angst.
I think I may have Shardik somewhere. Might even still have Watership Down.