Bookish Thoughts

I regard the Discworld the way other people regard the bible. That might be blasphemous, but there it is. When I need comfort, when I need to laugh, when I need to think deeply, when I need to be reminded of all the beauty of humanity, I turn to the Discworld. These books soothe me. They empower me. They provide surety that it will all be okay, but that I have to do my part to make it okay. Reaper Man is about Death. It has some incredible quotes that, in the wake of my husband's death, I needed to come back to. And in coming back to them I ended up re-reading the entire book.  Anyway, here are a few of my favorite bits of this particular book: Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backward. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means that you must be facing the wrong way. People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, t...

Thief of Time  is a lot sillier than I remember it being. It's not exactly a bad thing. But I remember loving this book, and this time around I only liked it. It was fun and funny. But the past few books have had a depth that this one lacked. So I ended up feeling a bit let down. The thing this book is missing is the biting social commentary that I remember as such a hallmark of the Discworld  series. Of course, it took years for the books to evolve from the silly adventures of Rincewind to the much more hard-hitting advancement in Ankh-Morpork. They're all satire, but some of them are a whole lot lighter than others. The past few books have been heavy, though. Pratchett was tackling more complicated issues, holding that distorted mirror back up to our world and demanding that readers take a good look around. And so Thief of Time  feels like a bit of a regression. It's a good, solid book. But by Discworld standards, it is merely okay. There's a lot to like here. Su...

After yet another re-read, Hogfather remains one of my favorite comfort-reads. It's one of the best Discworld books, with a strong through line about the power of belief and starring two of the best characters: Death and his granddaughter, Susan. The interesting thing about this book is that it actually works better on re-reads. It takes a while for some of the plot threads to come together and for he various reveals to be made. Which can make it incredibly confusing in the beginning. But once you know the basic point of the story, everything slots neatly into place. The mystery may be gone, but many of the early scenes take on a new richness and humor that more than make up for it. Even better, I'm still picking up on things that I either missed or forgot the first time through. It takes a while for the Discworld books to get this dense and rewarding (and some of them never really do), but it makes the series so worth it. This book works well on it's own, but it wor...

Soul Music is definitely the punniest Discworld novel so far. Every other line seems to be a joke or a reference. Since the theme of this book is classic rock, most of those puns are references to real world bands and songs. It's fun to pick up on them, and that was a big part of my enjoyment of this book the first time I read it. In my memory, this was one of my favorite Discworld stories, probably because it was one of the first where I was able to pick up on all of the jokes. It also centers on Death, which is always fun, and introduces his granddaughter, Susan, who is one of the greatest characters in the entire series. But despite these highlights, this book didn't quite live up to my memory of it. I didn't dislike it, but it felt disconnected in the way Discworld books often do. There's a story about Death attempting to forget, a story about Susan attempting to fill his shoes while he's away without leave, and a story about living music possessing a yo...

It's funny the memories and emotions that a re-read can unearth. I read the bulk of this book, if not all of it, on a vacation to California. I was there to visit family, the summer after college ended. But I mostly remember reading this book while I was sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for Danielle and Eric to pick me up so we could get some food before heading to the airport. Maybe it's all that California sun that has me remembering this book so fondly. I was surprised to like this book less on the re-read than I remember liking it the first time through. It's not that it's bad. In fact one half of it probably remains one of my favorite bits in the Discworld universe and could very well be my favorite story about Death. But there's this entire subplot about snow globes and trolleys and wizards that makes no sense. I'm not sure it even belongs in this book, though I sort of see how Pratchett was trying to tie his themes together. But it was clumsy. It's ...

With the fourth Discworld book, we're really getting into the Discworld I recognize. Death is hanging out, trying to figure out humanity. The characters make epic mistakes out of ignorance and do their best to fix them. There are a ton of puns, some sadness that hits you right in the gut, and a few great observations about how the world and stories work. What's weird is that this isn't quite the Death I recognize. It's a little strange to think that Death has a character arc. He seems so unchangeable and final all of the time. But he definitely becomes more empathetic towards humanity over the course of the series. I think a lot of that happens in his next book Reaper Man , but you can see the beginnings of it here. He's curious and he's lonely and he turns to humans to help with this. Unfortunately that leaves an opening for his apprentice to royally screw things up. But then, fixing that is what reminds him of who he is. All in all this was ...

Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel, Thief of Time , has almost the same plot as one of my favorite episodes of Angel. Sort of. It's the end of the world (this happens almost as much on the Discworld as it does in the Buffyverse). This time, it happens to be caused by a clock that freezes time. So once it starts to tick, it never will again, and neither will any other clock. Everyone will be be stuck in a single moment that lasts forever. The details are different, but the stories are similar enough that I went to look up which one came out first. It turns out both were released in 2001, so this is a bit like Leibniz and Newton coming up with calculus at the same time. Okay, maybe this plot isn't quite as genius as calculus. But it's certainly enjoyable. Time paradoxes and apocalypses are always fun. This is definitely one of my favorite Discworld novels so far. Of course, the Death books tend to be among my favorite so there's no real surprise...

I started reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman toward the end of high school and built up my collection over the first few years of college.  But it took me a bit longer to get around to the spin-offs.  With Death: The Time of Your Life , I finally managed to finish this collection.  There's a nice sense of completion that comes with that. This graphic novel picks up with Foxglove and Hazel, who were first introduced in A Game of You .  They lived upstairs from Barbie, the central character in that arc. Though Foxglove previously appeared off-page in the first arc, Preludes and Nocturnes , when her ex-girlfriend calls her in an attempt to get back together. In A Game of You , Hazel discovers she is pregnant, which she's a bit amazed by.  Yes, she had sex with a man, but she was told that if you do it standing up, you can't get pregnant.  Hazel's not the brightest person. Foxglove agrees to stay with her and try to work things out, though. Death: The...