The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, it is ranked 139th on The Greatest Books of All Times site – you find thousands of reviews of books from these and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, it is ranked 139th on The Greatest Books of All Times site – you find thousands of reviews of books from these and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

7 out of 10

 

Animal Farm https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/08/animal-farm-by-george-orwell-one-of.html is one of the masterpieces of world literature and maybe the only book with animals that I enjoyed, fauna as in they populate the narrative, there are fish, dogs and what not in other novels, evidently, like here In The Willows

 

Alas, Wind in The Willows was not my cup of tea, and here my ‘review’ should end, your interest, if there ever was one, should also fade, or disappear, so I hope I will not get some retribution, like a few days ago, when this fella read what I posted and then he got aggravated because I am vain, it was a note about me, etc.

He was right, in so many ways, but then to quote Jorge Luis Borges https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-riddle-of-poetry-by-jorge-luis.html there is no taste in the apple, the man needs to taste it, and I will extend this to the books I read, it they taste sour, then this is my reaction

 

Mea culpa, I have to admit that if it is subjective – ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ – still, even Animal Farm passed me by the first time, when I was an adolescent, and saw the cartoon, before finding about the chef d’oeuvre, I thought the idea is silly, children watch those kinds of things, and dismissed the book

Later, I could see how the pigs represented so well our very own communists – I fought in the Revolution of 1989, which toppled Ceausescu  http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html and that guy would complain again, were he in the area, for here I am, boasting again with shamelessness

 

Then there is the invaluable ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’, a better definition of the system could not be found, but then The Wind in The Willows is a different matter, it just did not connect with me, though it should in different aspects: I have two macaws and had all kinds of pets:

Borzoi, chameleons (too delicate, alas), an iguana, stary dogs, cats (even now, nine or so come daily to get food, in the garden), rescued various sick creatures, but I am surely getting to the point where I better read again what I found exhilarating https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/06/hearing-secret-harmonies-by-anthony.html

 

There is a good sign, and I guess I should thank God for this, in that I have started yesterday with Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer and so far it proves to me an enchanting first part, I like Jane, the whole narrative, there are aspects to condemn in her family, they are rich, snobbish, antisemitic, but also against the French and others

 

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