Joseph Piercy

curse.
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’

The list is largely arbitrary – as all lists of this type are – and makes no pretence to be in any way authoritative and set in stone

‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.’

I have been trying to remember what was the first book I ever read. By first book, I mean first proper book, first ‘grown up’ book, the first novel of over two hundred pages

century AD. The Celts left no written record of their history however, so we must de

Any written history is, to some degree, defined as much by what it chooses to omit as it is by what it chooses to include.

Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams, ostensibly a novel about rabbits but also a religious and political allegory that borrows from heroic mythology and the timeless narrative of the flight to freedom and fight against oppression and tyranny.

And, finally, all the libraries, librarians, bookstores and booksellers, writers and publishers and anyone involved in protecting the sanctity of the printed word around the world, Godspeed to you all

The book is over four hundred pages long and I can remember feeling a sense of achievement when I turned over the last page, but also feeling a curious sense of loss. So engrossed had I been in the story I had come to regard the characters as my friends, and hankered for more. I was missing them already.

I think the book would fail the Bechdel test regarding the representation of female rabbits in the story. A not uncommon criticism of Adams’ novel is that the female rabbits are presented as largely valued only for reproductive purposes (although, in fairness we are talking about rabbits here, who tend to reproduce a lot).