religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far

After reading Bleak House and The Idiot, I needed something a little lighter and frankly a little more humorous. So I turned to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Pyramids doesn't have any similar characters from the other books (with the exception of Death, of course) and seems like it could be read without reading the ones before it. But I would recommend it.

Young prince Teppic is sent to Ankh-Morpork's assassin school and is not looking forward to going back to his kingdom, which resembles ancient Egypt. But when his father dies, Teppic goes home to take over the throne and build his father the largest pyramid that has ever been built.

"It wasn't a particularly pleasant smile. It was thin and dried-up, a smile with all the warmth long ago boiled out of it, people normally smiled like that when they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at least you felt he was making the effort."

These pyramids mess with the fabric of time and through some quantum physics sends Teppic's land into a new dimension. Thankfully, Teppic and a handmaiden escaped on a camel who happens to be the best mathematician on the planet. Teppic then struggles to find a way to bring his country back into the here and now.

"These men were philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no one else would consider for five seconds."

The writing was just what I needed, clever and dry and ridiculous at times. I remain in love with Discworld.

"They are great minds, he told himself. These are men who are trying to work out how the world fits together, not by magic, not by religion, but just by inserting their brains in whatever crack they can find and trying to lever it apart."

Don't forget to vote on my next classic read! There are only four days left!

rocks is an acquired taste

I haven't posted in a long time and I'm sorry for that. I've started graduate school and a new job so my life has been a little hectic lately. But I want to be sure I'm making time for this! With all of my text books, I wanted to read something light and fun so I immediately turned to Pratchett.

Wyrd Sisters is another Discworld book, a fantasy that will make you laugh until you think you might pee your pants. This one parodies Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet. We start out with the murder of the king and his transition into being a ghost. Three witches, including Granny Weatherwax who was a big part of Equal Rites, are given his son to hide away so that the new king, the Duke, doesn't kill him. They give him to a travelling band of actors to raise until the time is right.

"She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it."

The witches try their best not to interfere with politics, but somehow get pulled into it. The Duke is suffering from some major Lady-Macbeth-itis and his wife is hellbent on killing anyone who doesn't get with her program.

"The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo."

These books are nothing but fun and the characters are what make them that way. They each are so realized and delightful. Even the cook, who has no speaking lines, has a personality that comes across clearly.

I'm hooked on this man's books. Thankfully there are about a million of them.


As I said above, I've been super busy with school and it has cut into my reading time. However, I am working on a few things at the moment (slowly but surely), such as Oblomov by Goncharov, The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan and the Fatal Eggs by Mikail Bulgakov (which I hope, hope to finish by the weekend).

Against the Lore

We had our big employee shopping day at work last weekend and I grabbed a lot of good things. Most of them were Christmas gifts for my family, but I had to buy some things for me. I got Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, This is Not a Book by Keri Smith (click for her awesome blog), and the next two volumes of Y:the Last Man.

After reading the first two Discworld books, The Color of Magic and the Light Fantastic, I knew I'd pick up the rest sooner or later. Equal Rites is about a dying wizard trying to pass on his powers to an eighth son of an eighth son, who turns out to be a woman. Since there has never been a woman wizard before, she has a pretty hard time.

I thought this book was very well done. It was funny, interesting and smart. Esk and Granny Weatherwax were great characters to read about. Esk is so confidant and fearless that it's very easy to root for her. Simon is another character I liked and I hope he and Esk pop up in another one of Pratchett's books. Esk's wizard staff acts a great deal like Twoflower's luggage from the first two books, causing trouble for anyone who's got it out for its owner.


"She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."

It just reeks of ambience

The second book in the discworld series by Terry Pratchett is the Light Fantastic. It picks up right where The Color of Magic left off, without missing a beat really. The disc is heading towards a crazy red star, the clouds are solid, magicians are being overthrown, you know, the usual.

I think that the first book does a better job of keeping things funny and memorable. I know that I liked this book but I honestly don't have too much to say about it. I like the idea of Death having trouble learning some type of card game and the images of the trolls. I think it is hard to change the preconcieved image that most people have of classical fantasy creatures, but Pratchett does the best job at it with those trolls. And whenever I lose my teeth I hope I can afford some diamond den-chewers.

Twoflower continues to be the sterotypical tourist and Rincewind follows after, trying to clean up the mess.

And, perhaps my favorite exchange between both of his books that I've read! This takes place between Rincewind and Bethan, a madien who was rescued from being a sacraficial virgin who was mad that her Saturday nights at home went to waste.

"A necromancer!" said Rincewind
.....
Bethan leaned sideways.
"What's neck romance?" she wispered.
"Necromancy. Talking to the dead," he explained.
"Oh," she said, vaguely disappointed."

Love it. I'm really not sure which of his books comes next, as I mentioned there are about a bagillion of them, so I'm not sure when or which ones I will read. But I love Pratchett's humor and wit so I'm sure there will be more discworld goodness in my future.

A tavern brawl? Why didn't you wake me?

Ok, I picked up two books by Terry Pratchett simple because I stumbled across him on goodreads.com. I was just reading random quotes from him and figured that I would dig his books. Shocking news: I was right!

First up is The Color of Magic. This starts off the Discworld series, which, as far as I can tell, includes nine hundred books. This world is flat, and being held up by four giant elephants that stand on an enormous turtle. In The Color of Magic, we follow Twoflower, Discworld's first tourist, and Rincewind, Discworld's worst wizard, as they travel around and cheat death numorous times.

One of the things I most liked about this book was Death actually. Since Death has to be personally present at the death of a wizard, we get to see a lot of him showing up around Rincewind. Death, much like Harry Potter in book five, has given into CAPSLOCK.

This book has all the elements of a classic fantasy story, wizards, heros, sword fights, dragons, magic, trolls, tree nymphs, with the bonus addition of a piece of luggage that has a hundred little feet and can eat people. The book is also very witty and sarcastic at times, so I felt right at home. I would not say that it was a "great" book in the way that the Lord of the Rings books are great, however, any book that honestly makes me lol is worth a look.

I didn't write down a bunch of quotes like last time, my reading notebook seems to have wandered off - maybe Jack hid it..... But I just flipped through to what I think may be the best line of the book:

"No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk."