2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Tell us what you thought of the book! You can leave your review here. Even if you read the book outside of the group, please feel free to let us know what you thought of it.

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I accidentally reread this a month early (in March). I first listened to the audiobook in 2017 and have been considering a reread for the past year or so.

This time around I listened to a different narrator. Both were unabridged readings of the book. Having listened to both narrations in full, I prefer Ralph Cosham's version to Peter Capaldi's. Though, honestly, it may have been the novelty of the book the first time around. I also prefer the more sinister cover to the audiobook read by Cosham.

As someone who grew up in the country (US not UK) and has always enjoyed anthropomorphic fiction, the idea of a bunch of male rabbits essentially running around performing military maneuvers was amusing. Learning, after my first listen, that the author had been in the military during WWII helped make sense of the storyline and characters.

At first, I was not sure how to feel about the book beginning as a children's story, as children do not mature at the same rate and some are more sensitive than others. Of course, attitudes toward child rearing have changed a bit since the book was first published in 1972. For me, the author handles danger, death, etc. well enough.

At times the book seemed to be either disjointed or too strung out. That may be the result of the storyline developing over time, or it may have been my short attention span.