Finished up Night Watch and picked up Thud! Which is going to be interesting
It was the first Discworld book I ever read, I picked it up when it came out and I was 14, I liked the cover and the review blurbs compared it to Douglas Adams so I was into it. I had no idea Discworld was a thing, so it was surprising walking into this fully developed and well worn world. Still loved it a bunch, but I haven't read it since (or ever read Snuff which I have waiting).
Reading through it now, its a little jarring honestly. Night Watch wasn't really a full on Watch book because so much of it is just Vimes and set in the past so going from Fifth Elephant, which is in a more advanced but still recognizably backwards Ankh-Morpork, to Thud! which is in the deep end of the modernization of the city and also a lot more interconnected than the previous books is a little odd. Usually you might get a Death appearance or, like, Ridcully shows up for a scene in a book but in the first 30 or so pages I've had the Times mentioned a bunch, Otto from The Truth and Moist Van Lipwig have all made appearances. It's not a bad thing but is something I wasn't expecting.
Finished up Night Watch and picked up Thud! Which is going to be interesting
It was the first Discworld book I ever read, I picked it up when it came out and I was 14, I liked the cover and the review blurbs compared it to Douglas Adams so I was into it. I had no idea Discworld was a thing, so it was surprising walking into this fully developed and well worn world. Still loved it a bunch, but I haven't read it since (or ever read Snuff which I have waiting).
Reading through it now, its a little jarring honestly. Night Watch wasn't really a full on Watch book because so much of it is just Vimes and set in the past so going from Fifth Elephant, which is in a more advanced but still recognizably backwards Ankh-Morpork, to Thud! which is in the deep end of the modernization of the city and also a lot more interconnected than the previous books is a little odd. Usually you might get a Death appearance or, like, Ridcully shows up for a scene in a book but in the first 30 or so pages I've had the Times mentioned a bunch, Otto from The Truth and Moist Van Lipwig have all made appearances. It's not a bad thing but is something I wasn't expecting.
I think that it makes sense after Night Watch to switch to the Lipwig books for a bit. They really do massively change the status quo of the setting, pushing it full throttle toward modernity.
And while I don't think there are any author insertion characters in Discworld, there's a certain resonance to how:
A subtle underlying theme of the Moist Van Lipwig novels is that Vetinari is feeling his mortality wants to quickly push Ankh-Morpork to a place where it can survive his death while also grooming a successor capable of riding the tiger when he's gone.
It's not bad because I've read them before so I know what goes down but if I was just reading the Watch books for the first time I would be wondering what the hell happened to the city
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Finished up Night Watch and picked up Thud! Which is going to be interesting
It was the first Discworld book I ever read, I picked it up when it came out and I was 14, I liked the cover and the review blurbs compared it to Douglas Adams so I was into it. I had no idea Discworld was a thing, so it was surprising walking into this fully developed and well worn world. Still loved it a bunch, but I haven't read it since (or ever read Snuff which I have waiting).
Reading through it now, its a little jarring honestly. Night Watch wasn't really a full on Watch book because so much of it is just Vimes and set in the past so going from Fifth Elephant, which is in a more advanced but still recognizably backwards Ankh-Morpork, to Thud! which is in the deep end of the modernization of the city and also a lot more interconnected than the previous books is a little odd. Usually you might get a Death appearance or, like, Ridcully shows up for a scene in a book but in the first 30 or so pages I've had the Times mentioned a bunch, Otto from The Truth and Moist Van Lipwig have all made appearances. It's not a bad thing but is something I wasn't expecting.
Looking back, I am extremely surprised that Thud! was written before Unseen Academicals, given the goblin themes.
one of the things that becomes clear on rereading the books is that pratchett loves the joke where some thieves ambush somebody in a back alley and it turns out to be a werewolf or a golem or granny weatherwax or some other unbelievably tough person
power levels are variable just for comedy reasons. sometimes pratchett needs trolls to be completely immune to harm and sometimes the plot doesn't make sense unless a normal human being is able to fight one
one of the things that becomes clear on rereading the books is that pratchett loves the joke where some thieves ambush somebody in a back alley and it turns out to be a werewolf or a golem or granny weatherwax or some other unbelievably tough person
power levels are variable just for comedy reasons. sometimes pratchett needs trolls to be completely immune to harm and sometimes the plot doesn't make sense unless a normal human being is able to fight one
I always loved in the later books it became a meta-joke. I think Going Postal mentions that there are way less bandits for the mail coaches to deal with. After like the previous five books each feature a bandit holding up a coach with a witch/wizard/vampire/educated rodents inside it.
I'm still going through Thud! And am enjoying it, although its definitely on the weaker end of the Watch books. Pratchett leaned way too much on Social Commentary in this one and the multiple gags like THE IMP'S COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IS CALLED BLUENOSE LIKE BLUETOOTH DO YOU GET IT feel really weak and low-hanging for him.
Mr. Shine is cool as hell though and a much welcome addition to the world, as trolls feel far less developed and fleshed out than their dwarf counterparts and it is nice to have a major troll authority figure that isn't Detritus.
... I actually completely missed the Bluenose joke until just now.
I really enjoyed the troll world building, and the build-up and payoff of Vimes' arc was satisfying enough that it's solidly one of my favourites, although it probably does suffer in comparison to Night Watch. But in publishing chronology there was a big gap between them, so I never really had them mentally side by side.
... I actually completely missed the Bluenose joke until just now.
I really enjoyed the troll world building, and the build-up and payoff of Vimes' arc was satisfying enough that it's solidly one of my favourites, although it probably does suffer in comparison to Night Watch. But in publishing chronology there was a big gap between them, so I never really had them mentally side by side.
There's an overall decrease in complexity of the books when he switched to dictation. I'm still glad he kept going, and I Shall Wear Midnight is an amazing book from the same period.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited December 2018
I have finished The Light Fantastic, and it has held up much better than The Colour of Magic. Most of the positive memories I have of the early Rincewind books (Cohen, the flying megalith, the scheming wizards) come from the second book, and a fair amount of the clunkier elements of pure pastiche are concentrated in the first. The Luggage and Death are also solidifying into their later incarnations nicely.
Next up is Equal Rites, which I'm pretty excited about. I hadn't thought about it much until the callback in one of the recent Tiffany Aching books, and I'm interested to revisit the early version of Granny Weatherwax. As I recall, her character was pretty well-defined from the jump.
Oh, and old audiobooks are weird. There's a jingly bell effect that plays every time there's a section break, and it's such a strange choice.
I think the first book of the post-diagnosis era that I was actually disappointed in was Unseen Academicals - the idea was fundamentally great, but there's some structural issues, the world-building was looser than it had been for a long time, the political and cultural commentary was a bit of a mess, etc ...
At the time I didn't want to link this to his mental decline, everyone can have an off day, but retroactively I think there's a definite through-line that starts around then, maybe earlier. I agree that there's certainly a drop in textual density, maybe plotting complexity as well.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The only book where the decline really jumped out at me was Raising Steam. The prose gets kinda wonky and there's not actually any conflict? The book is about a story in which things basically turn out fine for everyone involved, whereas previously the Moist books had been about him outsmarting the entire city in some mad bid to do what Vetinari told him and also come out on top himself somehow.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I just finished reading Mr. Fox last night
I'm going to need some time to think about it as a whole entity, but honestly, even if it was just a collection of sun-warped Bluebeard retellings, it would be exemplary
Definitely check it out if you're interested in fairy tales and books about writers (but not like, those books about writers (but also yes absolutely those books about writers))
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Raising Steam felt less like a fully formed book and more like someone trying to get out an urgent flood of ideas before they were lost forever.
Yeah, exactly. It left me feeling overwhelmingly sad.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the first time I read that book it was such a distressing experience. My family tends to go in for exotic and science-defying cancers rather than dementia, but it gave me a little taste of what it must feel like to have a loved one just fade away.
Yeah I've definitely noticed that Thud! Feels a lot more...simplified? It is still engaging and fun and enjoyable, but it is going for a lot more rote and somewhat disappointing gags and plot points whereas the prior Watch Books, for the most part, felt very fresh and original from top to bottom for me.
Like this whole Angua, Sally, Cheery and Tawnee have Girl Time at the bar bit I'm in the middle of (as well as "Angua and Sally go back to the Watch in stripper outfits) feel very...well, lame, for lack of a better word. It's not horribly offensive or terrible but it's a noticeable dip in quality. Which is a completely understandable thing given Pratchett's condition and circumstances at the time.
So for some reason my Google feed has seen to recommend a couple articles with clickbait-y titles like "Was JRR Tolkien rascist against Orcs?" And it just struck me as people having these articles in the chamber. Waiting for a slow day to hit publish and get views by dragging Tolkien
The LOTR novels have been out for decades. And I I've seen conversations here about the problematic aspects like Men from the West being Noble and pure and Men from the East being swarthy and evil.
So for some reason my Google feed has seen to recommend a couple articles with clickbait-y titles like "Was JRR Tolkien rascist against Orcs?" And it just struck me as people having these articles in the chamber. Waiting for a slow day to hit publish and get views by dragging Tolkien
The LOTR novels have been out for decades. And I I've seen conversations here about the problematic aspects like Men from the West being Noble and pure and Men from the East being swarthy and evil.
Even Tolkien wasn’t fully satisfied with his portrayal of orcs.
But they are basically elves corrupted by a dark god.
So for some reason my Google feed has seen to recommend a couple articles with clickbait-y titles like "Was JRR Tolkien rascist against Orcs?" And it just struck me as people having these articles in the chamber. Waiting for a slow day to hit publish and get views by dragging Tolkien
The LOTR novels have been out for decades. And I I've seen conversations here about the problematic aspects like Men from the West being Noble and pure and Men from the East being swarthy and evil.
Even Tolkien wasn’t fully satisfied with his portrayal of orcs.
But they are basically elves corrupted by a dark god.
also it's been a while since I was fully immersed in Tolkien lore but the implication was that corruption was more than spiritual - there was always a hint that some pretty fucked up body horror shit was going on behind the scenes.
Right, and even then I remember reading about how upon reflection, Tolkien was not satisfied with the concept of an entire race of Evil beings. But unfortunately he passed before he could rework their history.
Tolkein and dbz, for example, and many other works are seen through so many cultural lenses due to being part of so many people's childhoods that its damn easy to crap out some clickbait about anything.
Hell, analysis becomes an issue with some works as you need to educate people on a mindset divorced from our own before you can have a conversation.
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I have just finished All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. It's one of those frustrating books where I can't tell whether it's brilliantly flawed or just promising dreck by an early author.
The book jacket summary is that the protagonist is from an alternate timeline where limitless clean energy was invented in the mid 60s, and he lives in the wildly optimistic technological utopia predicted by the sunnier midcentury sci-fi writers. Everything is rad, everyone is happy, and it seems like a sustainable long-term future. In a time-travel mishap, he accidentally screws up the experiment that would result in that future and his emergency return mechanism lands him in our version of 2016, which by his reckoning is a nightmare dystopia.
In the pro column, the writing itself is very good, and it involves some of the best time travel shenanigans I've ever read, above and beyond the framing conceit. Everything clicks together with the clockwork precision of a golden age sci-fi novel, and there are bits near the end that approach Nick Harkaway levels of surreal yet perfectly justified outcomes.
The cons are mostly weird sex stuff. There's a plot point about sexual violence that will absolutely ruin the book for a lot of people, and I'm still struggling to decide whether or not it has ruined the entire book for me. The author also puts an unseemly weight on bearing a man's child as an act of love. Here's the plot point in general terms, if you don't mind being a little bit spoiled and are unsure whether or not to pick up the book:
At one point, the protagonist ends up taking over the body of his alternate timeline self, quantum-leap style, and falls in love with an alternate version of someone he knows from his original timeline. The version of him from the current timeline temporarily takes control of his body and date-rapes her starting while she's asleep, and they both have to deal with it later.
It sucks, because the good parts I mentioned are really good, but the bad parts I mentioned are really bad. I'll certainly be picking up his next book, but he's got one more chance to get better before I write him off.
Does pity preclude cleaving someone in twain with a big sword
It may make it necessary.
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
A big thing about evil in Tolkien is that it all has its genesis in lust for power. Melkor fucked up the song because he wanted control, The elves first act of evil was kinslaying because they wanted back the simarils numenor started its fall long before sauron. The "evil" creatures were that way due to lies, betrayal, torture and cruelty, and that they were misused into their present forms rather than anything inherent their nature being evil
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Anyway, anyone read An Unkindness of Ghosts? Thoughts?
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
It was the first Discworld book I ever read, I picked it up when it came out and I was 14, I liked the cover and the review blurbs compared it to Douglas Adams so I was into it. I had no idea Discworld was a thing, so it was surprising walking into this fully developed and well worn world. Still loved it a bunch, but I haven't read it since (or ever read Snuff which I have waiting).
Reading through it now, its a little jarring honestly. Night Watch wasn't really a full on Watch book because so much of it is just Vimes and set in the past so going from Fifth Elephant, which is in a more advanced but still recognizably backwards Ankh-Morpork, to Thud! which is in the deep end of the modernization of the city and also a lot more interconnected than the previous books is a little odd. Usually you might get a Death appearance or, like, Ridcully shows up for a scene in a book but in the first 30 or so pages I've had the Times mentioned a bunch, Otto from The Truth and Moist Van Lipwig have all made appearances. It's not a bad thing but is something I wasn't expecting.
I think that it makes sense after Night Watch to switch to the Lipwig books for a bit. They really do massively change the status quo of the setting, pushing it full throttle toward modernity.
And while I don't think there are any author insertion characters in Discworld, there's a certain resonance to how:
It's not bad because I've read them before so I know what goes down but if I was just reading the Watch books for the first time I would be wondering what the hell happened to the city
Looking back, I am extremely surprised that Thud! was written before Unseen Academicals, given the goblin themes.
It just hit me
power levels are variable just for comedy reasons. sometimes pratchett needs trolls to be completely immune to harm and sometimes the plot doesn't make sense unless a normal human being is able to fight one
I always loved in the later books it became a meta-joke. I think Going Postal mentions that there are way less bandits for the mail coaches to deal with. After like the previous five books each feature a bandit holding up a coach with a witch/wizard/vampire/educated rodents inside it.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Mr. Shine is cool as hell though and a much welcome addition to the world, as trolls feel far less developed and fleshed out than their dwarf counterparts and it is nice to have a major troll authority figure that isn't Detritus.
I really enjoyed the troll world building, and the build-up and payoff of Vimes' arc was satisfying enough that it's solidly one of my favourites, although it probably does suffer in comparison to Night Watch. But in publishing chronology there was a big gap between them, so I never really had them mentally side by side.
There's an overall decrease in complexity of the books when he switched to dictation. I'm still glad he kept going, and I Shall Wear Midnight is an amazing book from the same period.
Next up is Equal Rites, which I'm pretty excited about. I hadn't thought about it much until the callback in one of the recent Tiffany Aching books, and I'm interested to revisit the early version of Granny Weatherwax. As I recall, her character was pretty well-defined from the jump.
Oh, and old audiobooks are weird. There's a jingly bell effect that plays every time there's a section break, and it's such a strange choice.
At the time I didn't want to link this to his mental decline, everyone can have an off day, but retroactively I think there's a definite through-line that starts around then, maybe earlier. I agree that there's certainly a drop in textual density, maybe plotting complexity as well.
I'm going to need some time to think about it as a whole entity, but honestly, even if it was just a collection of sun-warped Bluebeard retellings, it would be exemplary
Definitely check it out if you're interested in fairy tales and books about writers (but not like, those books about writers (but also yes absolutely those books about writers))
Yeah, exactly. It left me feeling overwhelmingly sad.
Like this whole Angua, Sally, Cheery and Tawnee have Girl Time at the bar bit I'm in the middle of (as well as "Angua and Sally go back to the Watch in stripper outfits) feel very...well, lame, for lack of a better word. It's not horribly offensive or terrible but it's a noticeable dip in quality. Which is a completely understandable thing given Pratchett's condition and circumstances at the time.
The LOTR novels have been out for decades. And I I've seen conversations here about the problematic aspects like Men from the West being Noble and pure and Men from the East being swarthy and evil.
Even Tolkien wasn’t fully satisfied with his portrayal of orcs.
But they are basically elves corrupted by a dark god.
also it's been a while since I was fully immersed in Tolkien lore but the implication was that corruption was more than spiritual - there was always a hint that some pretty fucked up body horror shit was going on behind the scenes.
Hell, analysis becomes an issue with some works as you need to educate people on a mindset divorced from our own before you can have a conversation.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
The book jacket summary is that the protagonist is from an alternate timeline where limitless clean energy was invented in the mid 60s, and he lives in the wildly optimistic technological utopia predicted by the sunnier midcentury sci-fi writers. Everything is rad, everyone is happy, and it seems like a sustainable long-term future. In a time-travel mishap, he accidentally screws up the experiment that would result in that future and his emergency return mechanism lands him in our version of 2016, which by his reckoning is a nightmare dystopia.
In the pro column, the writing itself is very good, and it involves some of the best time travel shenanigans I've ever read, above and beyond the framing conceit. Everything clicks together with the clockwork precision of a golden age sci-fi novel, and there are bits near the end that approach Nick Harkaway levels of surreal yet perfectly justified outcomes.
The cons are mostly weird sex stuff. There's a plot point about sexual violence that will absolutely ruin the book for a lot of people, and I'm still struggling to decide whether or not it has ruined the entire book for me. The author also puts an unseemly weight on bearing a man's child as an act of love. Here's the plot point in general terms, if you don't mind being a little bit spoiled and are unsure whether or not to pick up the book:
It sucks, because the good parts I mentioned are really good, but the bad parts I mentioned are really bad. I'll certainly be picking up his next book, but he's got one more chance to get better before I write him off.
It may make it necessary.
Also
SAURON PRINCE OF CATS
This turned out to be perfect for that!
I think I enjoy reading more when I'm honest with myself and my desire to just kind of read genre fiction
Just wanted to share this rad cover I found looking at a best in sci-fi list on the Verge.
Is it ya or more aimed at adults?
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981