Skip to main content

Congratulations Sir Terry

Terry Pratchett has been knighted. Congratulations, Sir Terry!

While the honour comes from his services to literature, he seems to be shaping up to become a spokesman for Alzheimer's research, which could very well have won him the honour in a few year's time, if he had not got it for his writing.

Comments

Tim said…
Happy New Year.
You might be interested to know that the BBC Radio 7 on the internet is running some Pratchett radio adaptations.Last week there was a 4 part adaptation of Mort and currently theres an airing of Wryd Sisters.
Knowing that you are a fan could you suggest the best book to introduce oneself to DiscWorld. I got overwhelmed by the sheer number of books hes written so any advice would be appreciated.

Finally I noted you had a Jeffery Steingarten book on your TBR list and wondering if you got round to reading it as Ive enjoyed two of his books and would recommend them.
Regards
huey
Bibliophile said…
Happy new year to you too, Huey.

Thanks for the heads-up about the Wyrd Sisters play.

There are several schools of thought about the best Discworld starter novel, but I recommend starting with any of the following: Guards! Guards!, Mort, Pyramids, Small Gods or Moving Pictures. The first two are starter books in sub-series within the Discworld series, and the others are one-offs that connect to the other books in various ways. All of these books can be enjoyed to the full without having read other Discworld books, as can the young adult books in the series. Here is a reading guide for more suggestions: http://www.us.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-1-5.pdf

I’ve read both of Steingarten’s essay collections, and find them to be thoughtful, informative and entertaining, and I hope there will be more. If you liked Steingarten, you might like some of Ruth Reichl’s writing, especially Garlic and Sapphires.

P.S. I like your blog and have added it to my blog feed.
Tim said…
Thanks for your suggestions regarding Disc World and Ruth Reichl.
My modest blog pales in comparison to your splendid
efforts.
Kind regards
Huey

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and