Hi there,
I recently read Watership Down by Richard Adams and I absolutely loved it. I just found it so immersive and it was one of those books that I just couldn't put down at all, and I would look for any and all excuses to read just a little bit more every day. Any chance I could get, I had the book open in my lap and I was adventuring with Hazel and his friends through the English Downs.
I am so obsessed with the writing in this book, and I just loved how Adams included specific names of plants and trees from the British countryside – because even though I maybe didn't know these plants by name or appearance, just reading their names in descriptions made the story all the more immersive? If that makes sense? And I found I could so vividly imagine the scenes happening in my head. I also loved the attention to detail to the animal characters: every nose and tail twitch; every flick of the ear or bounding leap from their hind legs, or the flex or ruffle of a wing!
For example:
"The primroses were over. Towards the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak tree roots"
"A hundred yards away, at the bottom of the slope, ran the brook, no more than three feet wide, half choked with kingcups, watercress and blue brooklime".
"A faint breath of wind stole across the fields and a blackbird began to sing from somewhere beyond the elms"
"The ground became soft and damp. They could smell the sedge and water."
"The first rabbit stopped in a sunny patch and scratched his ear with rapid movements of his hind leg…"
"Kehaar appeared on the parapet above them, flapped the rain out of his wings and dropped down to the punt."
I don't mind if the suggestions are also books from an animal's perspective; or if it's about fantastical beings in a fantastical land; or even if it's about humans in our natural world. I just adored the incredible writing and immersive story and world that was created in this book and am aching for anything else like it.
I mostly read Fantasy and Sci-Fi, but am also trying to branch out more and have enjoyed Crime, Thriller and Horror recently. So I guess go crazy as I'm happy to give anything a go.
I'm just looking to find that same feeling I felt when reading Watership Down.
Thank you for any help! 🙂
by Kovaek
3 Comments
For descriptive writing, you really can’t go wrong with anything by Dan Simmons. He’s written horror, sci-fi, literally fiction, crime fiction, and historical fiction.
This one works for me that way. I listen to the audio book version. I’m only just finished with the third one.
My Struggle is a 3,600-page, six-volume autobiographical novel series by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. Published between 2009 and 2011, the series chronicles Knausgaard’s life from his childhood on a Norwegian island to his present life as a married father and writer in Sweden. The series explores themes such as death, feelings of inadequacy, and the struggles of daily life
I’d go for The Once and Future King—especially the first section The Sword in the Stone. Beautifully written. If you remember the Disney film, The Wart is turned into various animals—and in the book, it’s descriptive and very precisely written accounts of the natural world from the POV of various animals. Extremely evocative of the natural world.
For nonfiction, I’d go with the works of Robert Macfarlane (say Underland) and Helen MacDonald (H Is for Hawk). Both are just very elegant, precise writers of nature.