The Wind in the Willows

I bet you're thinking, wow, two posts in one day when I've barely posted at all the past couple weeks.  And you're right it is weird, so thank goodness for bed bugs!  We're having an infestation at my job so I've got the entire weekend off + Labor Day!  Amazing.  And I'm going to take advantage of the time by reading, of course, and to do the more painful extracurriculars I've taken up over the past two months such as jewelry-making and crochet (mhm).  But mostly reading, partly because I've acquired a new book - from my job! Yes I snatched it right off the kitchenette table where people throw stuff they don't want - which will be posted in this lovely weekend's Words from the Well.  But to begin, I promised you a review of The Wind in the Willows, and that is what you will get:

In my first draft of the last post, I linked to the Townsend version of this because that's what I read.  And it was only after checking it out on Amazon afterward that I realized it is actually a "dumbed-down" (to quote the only reviewer) version of Kenneth Graham's classic.  So much to my dismay, I cheated and fixed the link to send you to a "real" version of the book, so that you may be more fortunate than I and read the actual classic.  I'm pretty embarrassed about this, and as I write this I'm searching Paperbackswap for a different copy of The Wind in the Willows so I can read it and edit this review.  But for now, let me say that I did like this little book, although it didn't quite live up to my expectations of magic and wonder like some children's books do. (I hope to do a whole sequence or theme on children's books here at some point, and maybe it will begin with the real WITW.)

The story goes, there is a mole.  Mole lives quite comfortably in his hole until one day he decides there is more to life than that, so he goes walking and meets the adventurous Water Rat.  Mole and Rat begin a great adventure together, becoming adorable friends, eventually introducing us to the pompous Mr. Toad and sage Badger, all of whom make up a terrific team that you'll be sad to miss once you finish the book.  The various trips the four take, over Rat's river, through Badger's dark woods, back to Mole's little hearth and home, are the perfect recipe for a funny, endearing couple of days if you happen to have off from work due to bedbug infestations and other such surprises.  Naturally I loved the famous chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and I really can't wait to read this in the original for that part alone, so I won't give anything away until I've got the real thing.  Consider this a preliminary review, soon to be updated.  Now which version should I order...