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...

At this point it's probably time to admit that I'm a Terry Pratchett completionist. He might not ever be releasing any new work, but there are still a handful of books that I haven't gotten around to yet. It'll be a while before I don't have any new Pratchett to read. And considering that I'm in the midst of an epic and constant Discworld  re-read, I may not ever be done reading him entirely. I'll just keep picking up his books and discovering new things in them and laughing at old jokes and wrapping them around me like a favorite sweater. The point is that this collection of short stories is really only for people who want more Terry Pratchett no matter what. It's not for casual fans. Pratchett isn't great at short stories (he admits as much in the intro for one of them). And most of these were written before he started writing novels. It's rough and unformed, but you can see the writer he eventually became. That said, there are a couple of ...

Thud!  isn't my favorite Discworld book. I'm not even sure if it would crack the top ten. But it is Pratchett at the top of his game, firing on all cylinders and weaving together a bunch of threads to create a dense, elaborate story that's so much more than the sum of it's parts. This book focuses on the contentious relationship between Dwarves and Trolls. As the anniversary of a famous battle between the two nears, tensions are running high throughout the city. Then a dwarf is murdered, the dwarves immediately blame a troll, and it's up to Vimes to get to the truth and keep war from breaking out in the streets of Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett dives into the interplay between history and myth, and the way they can inform actions in the present. He examines stereotypes and grudges and shows how they can take over and become larger than life. But this book is really about change. The way some people are so resistant to it that they'll do anything, and the small ways...

Going Postal  may not be Terry Pratchett at the top of his game, but it's pretty close. This book introduces Moist (who is entertaining in the beginning but, much like Rincewind, quickly wears out his welcome) and focuses on an ever more modern Ankh-Morpork. The clacks have been around for several books now, allowing messages to pass quickly both within the city and between the city and the outlying regions. Communication with Sto Lat is near instantaneous and it's even possible to keep up to date with far-flung Genua. But it's all starting to fail. The system was privatized, maintenance was dropped in the name of profit, and now the clacks is down more often than not, while the fat cats who own it grow ever fatter. So Vetinari enlists Moist von Lipwig, notorious conman, to resurrect the failing postal service. What follows is a rollicking adventure, touching on everything from public service to redemption to freedom. The references to Tump Tower feel even more on the n...

Re-reading the Tiffany Aching books has been a joy. Pratchett is at the height of his game here, and these books are basically perfect. I can't wait to share these books with my kid, and in the meantime I've been pushing them on all the neighborhood kids. Though they're mostly still too young for them, too. (Actually, my proudest moment was when a conservative mom was asking me for book recs for her daughter, and I convinced her to buy a series by beloved anarchist Ursula K LeGuin). Anyway, this is the second of Tiffany Aching's adventures. She's leaving home to spend some time as an apprentice to a witch. She meets some other witches her own age, learns that being a witch is mostly doing things that other people don't want to do, and has to deal with a hiver to boot. The hiver is a collection of sense and memories that takes over bodies, collecting new memories and basically doing whatever it wants. It's attracted to power, so it's attracted to Tiff...

Good Omens  was my favorite book for a very long time. I've re-read it more times than I can count. I once gave a copy to my mom for Christmas and then immediately stole it back. It's sitting on my book shelf right now. This book never failed to make me laugh or to make me think about what it means to be a good and moral person (or a god worth worshiping). I've read it so many times that I practically have it memorized. But I think I might be outgrowing it. Or maybe it's just that it isn't aging well. I still like a lot of what it says about humanity and morality and taking responsibility. But this time through I found myself cringing at as many of the jokes as I laughed at. Shadwell as a character no longer makes much sense to me. Or maybe it's the way people react to him. I can certainly imagine an angry, conservative, little man who hates everyone indiscriminately and insults anyone he interacts with. I can't imagine all these people finding it charmi...

Monstrous Regiment  is one of the best Discworld  books, though I'm not sure how well it's going to age. I think it will still retain value as a product of its time, but I think people are starting to do a better and more nuanced job of tackling some of these themes. Not that that's Pratchett's fault. Some of the language didn't exist fifteen years ago when he wrote this book. If he wrote it today (if he were alive today) I think it would be that much better. Which is saying something because, as I said, this is one of the best Discworld  books. The book follows young Polly "Oliver" "Ozzer" Perks, who joins the army in the final days of the war in the hopes of finding her brother and bringing him home safely. Polly is genuinely worried about her brother, who has always needed someone to look after him. But she's also worried about what will happen to her if he dies - as a girl she can't legally inherit her father's business. And so ...

It was a lot of fun to re-read The Wee Free Men  at the same time as the Fairyland  books. Tiffany Aching and September have a lot in common, and if they were ever to meet I think they'd be friends. Except that Tiffany may have been able to warn September about the fairies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. In this book, nine-year-old Tiffany starts to discover her destiny. Which isn't written in the stars so much as it's written in her bones. Tiffany is the second-youngest child in a large farm family. She was the baby until her younger brother, Wentworth, the long-awaited son, came along and stole all the attention from her. So now she watches him and does her chores and misses her grandmother. But the the fairy queen shows up and kidnaps Wentworth. And Tiffany, practical, angry Tiffany, who kind of resents her brother for being born, doesn't hesitate to set out looking for him. With the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, the titular Wee Free Men, she begins to learn ...

This isn't quite my favorite Discworld  book, but I'd argue that it's the best Discworld  book. This is Pratchett at his peak - tackling a timely and timeless issue with compassion and humor and forcing the reader to reckon with their own point of view. Pratchett makes excellent use of a time-travel paradox to send Vimes back to the past thirty years to mentor his own, younger self. This happens to coincide with a brutal regime change in Ankh-Morpork. No peaceful transition of power here - there are assassinations and revolutions, blood and fire, and Vimes just trying to prevent as much death as possible. On my first time through the series, this is the book where I finally fell in love with Vimes, where I finally saw what everyone else was seeing. He lays a foundation of morality for his younger self, one that will stick with him through the ups and downs (mostly downs) to come. It's a neat little origin story, one that acknowledges how much growth is still to come...

Like the first Science of the Discworld  book, this one alternates between non-fiction chapters and a story about the Discworld wizards exploring our world. The author's classify the non-fiction chapters as extended footnotes for the "story" chapters, and I guess that makes sense of the organization. Though those so-called footnotes are twice as long as the non-footnote material. Where the first book followed a linear time progression from big bang to the creation of life on earth, this one jumps around a bit more in time. As do the wizards. And while it coalesces around certain themes, this book ended up feeling a bit all over the place to me. It's much more thought experiment, being a history of civilization and philosophy and something of an extended argument against religion and for science. Which is all well and good, but it isn't entirely what I was expecting. There were, as always, a few fun tidbits. But this book ended up feeling a little all over the ...

On re-read, I enjoyed The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents  much more than when I initially read it. I'm not sure why exactly this is. Whether I'm better acquainted with children's literature in general now or with Pratchett's children's literature in particular and have a better understanding of what it tries to and can accomplish. Or whether it's because I read it along with Mark Oshiro, who loved it and pointed out all the wonderful nuance that I wasn't as attuned to my first time through. Regardless, I really enjoyed this book this time around. So much so that I'm seriously considering using it to introduce Gavin to the Discworld in a few years. (Let's be real, it was either going to be this or Tiffany Aching, and this one is geared towards slightly younger children than that sub-series). But it pulls of the neat trick of dealing with really big questions and refusing to provide easy answers. And in a kid's book, too. The rats in ...

The real draw of The Last Hero  is the artwork. The story itself is fun and interesting. It's probably the best of all the stories that involve Rincewind and Cohen, because those two are best in small doses. But it also does a good job of incorporating all the other characters, from Lord Vetinari and Captain Carrot, to the wizards, the gods, and, of course, Death. And it half seems like that was just so Paul Kidby would have an excuse to draw all of these characters. The story is simple and straight forward, with a classic Pratchett twist. Having read some of his earlier work I have a much greater appreciation for this story. It's still lacking in some ways, and there were a number of characters I wish had been woven into the story (like literally any female character at all who resides on the Discworld). But the artwork is stunning, and that's really what this book is about. The fantastic illustration of the characters, the gods, and the Great A'Tuin.

This was a fun collection of short stories for kids, from the very beginning of Terry Pratchett's career. He was still a teen-aged journalist when he wrote these stories for the paper he was working for. The collection was something of a mixed bag. I really liked some of the stories. Others never quite came together for me. Part of that is because I can't help but judge Pratchett's work against his later stuff. Comparing where he was in the beginning of his career to the heights to which he would eventually soar isn't fair, but I can't quite help it. On it's own, this is a wonderful collection of stories that I'll be thrilled to read to my kid in a few years. You can see the seeds of ideas and themes that Pratchett would go on to wrestle with later in life. The stories are cute and funny and often manage to subvert expectations. It'd be nice if there were more girls, but that's something Pratchett eventually got a lot better about.

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...

A little more than halfway through the Discworld  series, the Industrial Revolution is starting to take off. The Truth  introduces the movable type printing press, leading immediately to the invention of the newspaper (and, naturally, tabloids). It's fun to return to this novel in particular because it introduces a bunch of characters who continue to inhabit the background for the rest of the series. Reporters William and Sacharissa and their photographer, a vampire named Otto, will keep popping up any time there's something interesting going on. But this is where they first get the bug for chasing and reporting the news. The mystery at the heart of this story is actually the least interesting thing about it to me. Someone is trying to frame Lord Vetinari for murder in an attempt to replace him with a new patrician of their choosing. This is a well Pratchett returns to time and time again. But Vetinari is smarter, more resilient, and, strangely enough, more beloved than tha...

I can't figure out why I disliked this book so much the first time I read it. Well, based on the book mark that got left in it, I can understand why I might have been a little angry at the world and unable to really engage with this book at the time. But that's really no excuse. Or it could be that I can see just how pivotal this book is in the Discworld  series, now that I know everything that comes after it. There are a lot of firsts here. The clacks system begins the industrialization of Ankh-Morpork. There are tentative diplomatic relations with the dwarves and vampires of Uberwald. Pratchett infuses dwarf culture with an incredible richness and begins to explore themes of modernization and how new generations accept or reject traditions. Plus there's a perfectly vile villain. Really, though, this is one of the most solid books in the series. It caught me by surprise how every little side plot managed to tie back to the central theme. Plus it's another Sam Vimes...

Terry Pratchett is best known as a fantasy satirist. So I didn't really know what to expect, diving into a non-fiction book with his name on the cover. Even though it's anchored in Discworld  and has two stupendous co-authors, I wasn't expecting this to be quite as science-filled as it turned out to be. It was a pleasant surprise to find such a detailed and accessible pop-science book. But part of that might be because my world view aligns to closely to Pratchett's (which is probably related to the fact that I spent my twenties working my way through his best-known series, but who knows whether the chicken or the egg came first (the egg came first)). Pratchett starts by posing the question: what's the difference between magic and science? He posits that it's roughly the same as the difference between physics and biology, which is to say not that much. And it's hard to figure out when the one becomes the other. Pratchett uses his wizards to examine our worl...

Coming off one of my least-favorite Discworld  books, we head straight into my favorite one. I don't necessarily think it's the best book in the series, though it's certainly up there. But it pits the Witches (my favorite main characters) against a family of vampires (my favorite villain). So of course I'm going to love it. And there's a lot to love here. Magrat has just had a baby is trying to figure out how to be a queen and a witch while taking care of a newborn. Granny Weatherwax makes her biggest sacrifice yet in an attempt to defeat the vampires, and there's legitimate concern that her methods may cause her to join them instead. Agnes is still trying to figure out where she ends and Perdita begins, all while fighting off the unwelcome romantic attentions of one of the vampires. And an Omnian priest with serious doubts finds himself on an adventure he never asked for. One of my favorite things about this book is the interactions between Agnes and Vlad, ...

The Last Continent  is one of my least favorite Discworld  books. It's surpassed only by Eric , and it should come as no surprise that they're both Rincewind books. Rincewind is a frustratingly stagnant character. He does his level best to avoid everything interesting that happens to him. It's a sentiment I can identify with. Given my druthers I'd rather be sitting in a library with a never-ending supply of potatoes, too. But it's not terribly interesting to read about, and it get more and more frustrating with each additional installment in his series. It doesn't help that the Rincewind books largely function as a way to make fun of other cultures. This one centering on Australia. The plot threads never quite come together. Rather, Rincewind runs away from various terrifying creatures, drinks a lot of beer, and can't make heads or tails of the locals. The other wizards wreak havoc wherever they go. And everyone insists that Rincewind has to save the wor...

Terry Pratchett wrote this book when he was 17. Then, when he was 40, he did a massive edit and re-released it. That second version is the one I read (and probably the only one you can find these days). It was interesting to see his younger and older selves coming together in one book. Having read the entire Discworld and seeing him grow as an author made it easier to pick out the bits that he added later. The story itself is fairly straightforward fantasy, with a fun twist. The entire civilization exists inside a carpet, and it was fun to pick out the things from our world. The people collect ash and wood from fallen matches, varnish from a chair leg, and mine bronze from a penny. They're impossibly small and live on a contracted scale. The occasional (and unpredictable) vacuuming throws everything into chaos, and becomes the main crisis that the current characters have to get through. Unfortunately there are almost no women until the very end, where Pratchett tacks on a bunc...