#what will i do when i get to the end of this discworld reread

[booksbabybooks]

In rereading Discworld, I marvel at how lucky we were that Sir PTerry lived to give us such a fitting send off to that universe: and how that send off is much richer if you view Raising Steam and The Shepherd's Crown as a dual goodbye.

Steam gives us "big ideas" Pratchett at his finest: what happens when you introduce a world-changing roundworld idea to Discworld (the railways). It showcases a host of favourite main characters (Moist, Vimes, Vetinari and the Night Watch) plus some beloved minor characters (Harry, the Low King) and develops their relationships in new and interesting ways (see how Moist, who has never had time for the police, is forced to reassess Vimes, and vice versa). It moves key issues forward - gender politics in the dwarves, how certain species are treated - and revisits old stories (Vertinari's secret double, the golden golems). Plus we get some genuinely exciting set pieces, and happy endings all round. It would, on its own, be a fitting finale.

Then we get Shepherd. A small scale, intimate book about one old woman's death and one young woman's destiny. About how a life can ripple through the world, but without pulling focus from those in her smaller circle. It's not scared of big ideas - from the gender dynamics of witches to the relationship between faeries and the world - but it ultimately feels focused on one compact group of (mostly) women. While Steam felt like a big, showy leaving party, Shepherd feels like a farewell between friends, bittersweet but lovely all the same.

Together, they reflect the strengths of Discworld, its ability to tackle big ideas but to do so by tying them to characters who feel like people you know, making them small enough to grasp. Read them in close sittings, and they fit together beautifully.

[shazzyv]

Been rereading the Discworld City Watch series coz those books are like crack laced with serotonin and I think Carrot is simultaneously one of the best and most terrifying characters in Discworld.

Best because yes he's the goodest boi and he's got a werewolf gf and he's unfailingly honest and decent to pretty much everyone and is so earnest and sweet people just can't disappointment him. Except...

One thing that sticks in my head is that last scene in Men at Arms

SPOILERS for most of the City Watch books:

When, right at the end Cruces is telling Carrot he's a long lost king and has the documentation to prove. Carrot walks over to it, takes a read and while Cruces is doing his villain monologue, stabs him through the chest. It's quick and clean and Carrot doesn't even bat an eye that he just took a man's life on purpose.

I say on purpose because my boi literally committed manslaughter in the previous book when he threw the Law and Ordinances at Wonse. He didn't seem to miffed then either, aside from the fact he just misunderstood an order from a superior.

Granted it's a funny joke and Wonse was a bastard but Carrot doesn't seem to react to it.

Like, throughout the books Vimes constantly struggles with the urge to just go ham and remove all the people causing the problems. He's constantly faced with the cynicism and cruelty and just the sheer stupidity of the world and always tries to do the moral thing, to do it by the book because as he says, "if you can do it for a good reason, you can do it for a bad reason." He's in the grey between black and white.

Carrot on the other hand doesn't really seem to mind. We never really see what Carrot is thinking (probably because he's so honest he just flat out says it) so it's hard to parcel how he feels about things.

My headcanon is he killed Wonse by accident, never thought about it again and then killed Cruces when he realized Cruces was a greater threat than he realized plus was about to kill Vimes. You could say the same about him skewering a werewolf later on in Fifth Element, but that was a survival situation I feel. Granted he never really kills again but I like to think if Carrot was face to face with Carcer or Stratford it would've been a very short conversation.

I think that's another reason why Vimes keeps a close eye on Carrot. Imagine doing your best to live life by a strict set of moral principles only to have your charismatic, well beloved second-in-command simply kill a man in front of you then tell you without blinking you had a wedding to go to.

Carrot even says "Personal doesn't mean important" which kind of tells me that no matter what his feelings on the subject, he's going to try to do the right thing.

And he killed Cruces for, I feel, a good reason.

He's a good man who'll kill you without a word and Vimes is a good man who'll kill you when there's no other acceptable option.

Vimes is the grey and Carrot is the white that gets dirty.

[prodigaldaughteralice]

So, I was tipped off a while ago by a post that’s probably still in my queue (I have a long reblog queue u_u;; ) that a few words were changed in the US edition of Monstrous Regiment. As it’s my favourite Discworld book, and I’d only ever read the US edition, I tracked down a second-hand UK first edition online and had a re-read as soon as it came, with my battered old US edition next to me so I could check when anything pinged me as ‘off’. Here’s what I found, not counting minor UK->US spelling changes like turning “girlie” into “girly”.

(There may be more that I missed, I didn’t have both copies open the whole time, but I’m pretty familiar with this book. As my sister teased me about when I mentioned I’d done this comparison, I did have it in my bed for several years as a teenager so I could reread it whenever my insomnia was hitting particularly hard.)

Spoilers from here on out, of course.

The first two are just kind of pointless? Changing “coprolite” to “coprolith”, which is just a less common word for the exact same thing, and changing “riff-riff-raff” to “riffraff” feels like they forgot Jackrum was playing drunk in that scene. Whatever. These don’t bother me.

There are a few UK->US type changes in the next one (“wooly vest” to “woolen undershirt”) which similarly feel pointless to me, but what really gets my goat is the last word. “The man’s bare chests,” plural, being changed to “the man’s bare chest”. Because that’s foreshadowing, but it’s not a giveaway, because on a heavier (cis) guy they do hang separate. It’s a nice little touch, and they took it out.

The next one is the one I’d been tipped off to, and it’s the change I’m the most annoyed about. “Turned her chair to the fire/around him the kitchen worked” -> “turned her chair to the fire/around her the kitchen worked.” I’m sure whatever editor changed it didn’t do so with any kind of malice or agenda, they just weren’t paying enough attention and thought they were fixing a continuity mistake, but it’s just such beautiful writing that they removed.

Because they’ve just had this incredible, delicate, vulnerable conversation about the girl Jackrum left behind him, and that that girl was him, and that he has a son out in Scratz and he doesn’t know what to do now that he’s leaving the army. Polly cries. And it’s Polly who suggests that he really can remain Jack Jackrum, he can go back to his son in medals and braid and be his father, and Jack gets to really settle in to the idea that he can be happy that way. Both those pronouns being “her” doesn’t feel wrong, necessarily; I always read it as Polly processing. But the switch between the two sentences is so beautiful. It’s a gentle closing of the conversation, it’s that girl being fully put behind him, and Sergeant Major Jack Jackrum (retired) getting to go on with his life.

The last one is just… odd. Inexplicable, and it’s the hardest to explain as just an editorial accident. They added a word that specifies something that was not previously specified. “One of them was Maladicta, in full uniform” becomes “one of them was Maladicta, in full female uniform.” I was thinking about it on this reread, and Mal is the only member of the squad who wasn’t publically outed at the Keep. Mal wasn’t involved in the actual raid— too busy gibbering and sucking on a sack of coffee beans— and at the trial Mal kind of stood in the back vibrating from caffeine overdose. Even Jackrum said “with vampires, who cares”. Only Polly knows about Maladicta.

And what that means is that Mal is the only member of the squad who could reasonably remain presenting as male in the army. Polly encourages a couple of young recruits in the very end that it’s their choice to enlist as men or as women, with Mal right beside her, and I think the original ambiguity there is really lovely— it doesn’t matter if Mal has an ‘a’ on the end at the moment, because Mal is there to help Polly fuck shit up, and that’s what matters. By adding the specificity, they just… took away a really nice bit of subtext, a really nice effect.

So yeah, I’m ticked off as a queer person about the (minor) subversion of the book’s general gender fuckery, but I’m almost more ticked off as a writer. Pratchett was so talented, and we talk about it a lot on a large scale of themes and motifs and characters, but he was also just so fantastic on a sentence to sentence level. This is craft! This is really beautiful, delicate writing, elegantly put together and perfected, and some US editors just. Took out some of it. And it’s still an incredible book! As I mentioned, I had it in my bed for years as a teenager so I could reread it over and over, it means a ton to me, it’s my favourite of his work and I love his work! But it hurts to see these little places where it was originally even better.

[carriagelamp]

Found some excellent horror-related and horror-adjacent books to read this month! Not a common genre for me, so this was fun. Really can't recommend Grady Hendrix as an author enough, Horrorstör was definitely my favourite novel from this month

Eric

I hate saying it because I love the Discworld and Terry Pratchett is easily my favourite author, but man Eric did not do it for me. You could see some good bones in it, but as far as I’m concerned all the interesting bits that appeared were done significantly better in later books. It had some humour moments, but the only bits that I really enjoyed were when the Luggage was around.

This story followed a young, teenaged, would-be demon summoner who, instead of summoning a demon, accidentally winds up with the incompetent and fearful wizzard Rincewind. Obligated to answer this kid’s wishes, they end up bouncing through time and space while attempting to survive what each wish had to throw at them. 

Fantastic Mr Fox / Esio Trot / George’s Marvellous Medicine / The Enormous Crocodile

I went on a Dahl kick this month, I wanted to work through some of his shorter works that I’ve never bothered to read before. All of them were honestly delightful, I had a blast. Esio Trot was probably the weakest of the lot, but the other three were so much fun. The Fantastic Mr Fox may be my favourite just by virtue of being the most fleshed out, but listening to The Enormous Crocodile be read by Stephen Fry is an unparalleled experience.

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy

A story I enjoyed more than I expected. I have a strange soft spot for hockey narratives, but that might just be the Canadian in me. Alix’s one true love is hockey, it’s the one place she feels competent and happy, but her team captain is making the space increasingly hostile until, unable to take the bullying, she strikes out and punches her captain. Shocked by her own violence and given an ultimatum by the coach to get her temper under control, she ends up going to popular and poised Ezra, hoping that he could show her how to deal with harassment without losing her cool in a way that scares her.

Horrorstör

Easily the best book I read this month, this book was amazing, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a “haunted house but in a knock-off Ikea” and I mostly picked it up as a joke because the premise sounded hilarious. But I was familiar with the author (I’d read The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires a couple years ago) and trusted him to do something interesting with the premise. And wow. Just wow. It is very much a classic, grisly, nauseating horror premise, but in a way that explores capitalism, exploitation, and treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill. It’s been  a long time since I read a book that actually gave me chills, but I had to put this book down and walk away from it occasionally, it was intense enough.

The Kaiju Preservation Society

As a Pacific Rim lover, this book was everything I’d ever wish for it to be. It’s such a love letter to the kaiju genre as well as environmental conservation, and it’s speculative biology is fascinating!

After being fire from his job at the beginning of the Covid pandemic lockdown in New York City, Jamie Gray is barely making ends meet by acting as a delivery driver. He doesn’t know how he can possibly continue on like this, until he runs into an old friend who offers him a strange and intensely secretive job offer. With nothing to lose, Jamie agrees and finds himself on an alternate Earth, helping to study creatures that he only knows from campy monster movies, now very much real.

The Last Wish

Felt an urge to reread a Witcher book, so I’ve been picking my way through the short stories. They continue to be a lot of fun, and it felt good to reconnect with the original narrative voice again after reading a lot of fanfiction over the years. For anyone who has someone existed post-Netflix version without picking up the general premise: Geralt of Rivia is a "witcher", a person who was specifically trained to wield weapons and magics to hunt dangerous monsters that threaten humans. This is a collection of short stories that show Geralt on some of the various hunts he's had during the decades of his over-long life. (It's significantly better than the Netflix version, very much worth the read if you like classic high fantasy and/or fairy tale retellings.)

Mortimer: Rat Race to Space

A very dull youth novel. Mortimer is a lab rat at Houston who has aspirations to go on the space program and prove that rats are better suited for colonizing Mars than humans. If you’re a seven year old who wants to consume space facts, this is the book for you. For everyone else, it’s a bit of a slog.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism

Another Grady Hendrix book. This book was undeniably well-written, just as masterful as his others, but I didn’t enjoy it as much. A bit too much high school narrative and not enough all out horror. The conclusion was pretty decent, but the rest was… fine. A fun love letter to the 1980s though as you learn about two best friends and how they grow up together. ...A bit of a debate whether or not it warrants a queer marker or not, I'm not even going to make that attempt.

The One and Only Ruby

The newest book from the One and Only Ivan series. Much like The One and Only Bob this book was… fine. The original of the series was really wonderful and felt quite inspired, inspired by the real life story of a gorilla that’s kept in a small cage in a mall complex. The next two books take place after that one and each follows one of Ivan’s friends (Bob the dog and Ruby the baby elephant). A fun enough addition to the series, the art is still cute, and it has decent things to say about the hunting of endangered animals, but it was nothing amazing. 

Paperbacks from Hell

Look, I really just felt the desperate need to read a bunch of Hendrix novels after being so violently consumed by Horrorstör. This is a nonfiction book in which Hendrix dives into the evolution and popular tropes of horror novels throughout the 1980s, with the cover art being the driving thesis throughout. You can tell how much he loves these weird, pulpy horrors and it makes you want to go and find a bunch of these and read them yourself. It really is an interesting book, even if you aren’t a great horror lover (which I wouldn’t consider myself).

The Salt Grows Heavy

Now this is a fucking novella. An absolutely unhinged, body-horror rich retelling of both The Little Mermaid and Frankenstein. Yeah. After the complete destruction of her husband’s kingdom at the hands (and jaws) of her own children, the Mermaid finds herself travelling with a mysterious Plague Doctor. I won’t go further into this except to say that the way it portrays morality, life, death, and the mutability of flesh is just… something else. Would recommend. But not if you have a weak stomach.

Scott Pilgrim

A classic. I watched the new animated series with my brother and felt the need to go back and reread the entire original series. Absolutely perfect, no notes, continues to be one of my all time favourite graphic novel series. The magical realism is just *chef’s kiss*.

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: June 2024

Halfway through the year! More daylight means less media consumption but I'm okay with that. Here's what I experienced in the month of June.

……….FILM……….

Back to the Future & Back to the Future Part II (1985 & 1989) It's been a while since I've watched these but I was immediately stricken by how much Avengers: Endgame owes to Part II. Both move at such a breezy clip that it makes total sense Part III would ditch most of the sci fi stuff for a western.

……….TELEVISION……….

Bridgerton (Episode 3.01 to 3.02) Having not watched seasons 1 or 2, I'm impressed by how well the first couple eps set the stage for newcomers. Plus it makes all the previous seasons feel like lore! So far I'm digging this gossip girl.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Episode 1.07 to 1.08) Really great season of television that ties so much up I was genuinely surprised by how complete it felt. I know season 2 is confirmed but I think this show got in, said what it wanted to say (wholly), and got it and hot dang do I respect that. Big fan.

Delicious in Dungeon (Episode 1.23 to 1.24) Great cap to the season and lovely to end not with a bombastic fight but a contemplative and hopeful discussion. Such an excellent adaptation.

……….YOUTUBE……….

The Death of Movie Theatres - Beyond the Black Void by Red Letter Media It's really interesting to think of the movie-going experience as something that could become more niche: something akin to listening to records or going to see a play. VIDEO

Simple Rules for Better Sandwiches | Techniquely with Lan Lam by America's Test Kitchen I really appreciate the culinary arts but have only ever felt confident in the kitchen when following a recipe. Videos like this have really opened up my mind to concepts and building blocks for making better food. VIDEO

……….READING……….

Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie (Complete) I'm not usually one for short stories (tougher to connect and keep track of the characters, especially if reading a few in a night) but I'll admit I liked most of these. Varied with really only one or two that left me feeling confused. Heck I even solved a couple before the end!

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett (Complete) The previous book (reading in publication order) didn't click for me but this was a return to form. Maybe it's cause I love the witches, maybe it's cause I love vampires, but this was a joy. Some of the body humour felt dated, which is strange for the generally timeless humour of Pratchett's work, but fortunately it was only a small part. Big fan and excited to get back into Discworld.

The Vision by Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Mike Del Mundo, & Michael Walsh (Complete) The concept character writing is so good in this; the Visions really do read like androids attempting to be human. I really wanted a slower burn out of this and wish we got a little more "trying to fit in" before it all goes wrong. Maybe it'll sit better with me on a reread but it was still a fun time with a comic book.

I Hate This Place Volumes 1 & 2 by Kyle Starks, Artyom Topilin, and Lee Loughridge (Complete) Picked these up from the library on a whim and it's all oozing with so much style. Doesn't quite live up to expectations (I was imagining more serialized stories instead of one very fast-paced story) but the artwork is so gnarly. Really cool premise that I wish had more room to breathe.

……….AUDIO……….

No Hands by Joey Valence & Brae (2024) I want to like this album, but its 90's influences just don't grab me. They do a great job of capturing the spirit of the style, but I preferred when that style was more early Beastie Boys. Those are 80s/90s influences I can get behind.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) Tuesday crew has defeated the elves and made a Liche ally! But their current quest is collecting all the pirate bones they scattered back during their very first Neverlandian session! Anyway you can read all about it here!

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 crew's magic item investigation has lead them to a wealthy family holding a private event and their plan is to get in through the power of wrestling fandom. I'm excited to see how that goes.

And that's it. See you in July!

[cosmicrhetoric]

tagged by the incomparable @briarhips to post nine book recs <3 sorry so many of these are classics im going thru smth

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen: This is MY Austen of choice. I'm doing a reread atm and it's very Emma in it's social commentary but this is THEE eldest daughter book of all time. Maybe I just like when characters are super repressed but if you want to see a woman (who has spent 200 pages being soooo hinged) have the most cathartic breakdown about it......

Identitti, Mithu Sanyal: For fans of Kuang's Yellowface who want a bit more of an academic lens! Our main character, a 2nd gen Indian-German woman, spends years of her life in the trenches of postcolonial study under a seemingly Indian woman who is then exposed as white. It doesn't give you any easy answers but it provides a lot of scholarly resources and leaves a lot of space to come to your own conclusions. Read it on a plane. Kinda fire.

Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson: We all know Carson. But I'm picking a nonfiction essay instead of Autobiography of Red or her translations mostly because this one takes you behind the curtain of a lot of her famous translations when it comes to the aspect of love. I'm not really nonfiction girl in general but this was worth it

Chain Gang All Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Speculative abolitionist fiction! Set in a near future where prisoners can compete in death matches to try and win their freedom. I've honestly read nothing like this...ever, like it's in a league of it's own but if you're a fan of the way footnotes were used in something like Babel you're gonna wanna check this out. Multiple povs (really interesting pov switching from a craft perspective actually) overlap to paint a stark and realistic depiction of American prisons.

The Devourers, Indrapramit Das: This was described to me as "IWTV but with werewolves and in Mughal India and actually really good" and while that's a pretty comprehensive plot summary it does not even begin to cover the shit this novel goes through. This is a book about transformation and stories and what letting a story live in you can do for you. The werewolves are kinda obviously a genderqueer allegory as well (as they often are in sff lmao) but when the interviewer himself starts talking about gender in his experiences you can see how that changes the story he's transcribing and it's just very cool. Heavy trigger warnings on this one though. Don't read if you can't handle a bit of piss (they are wolves). Writing style wise feels very similar to the magical realism of The Hungry Tide if that's ur bag

The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot: In the way that s&s is my Austen, this is MY Eliot. A classic story about women of this era who cannot fit into the boxes society lays out for them. A failed romance brands the main character an outcast in their town in a way that is. Hear me out. Fucking Utenaesque. Follow for some classic tragedy and themes of water....I would compare this more with like Dickens Bleak House than Austen though.

Villette, Charlotte Bronte: Once again. MY Bronte. Maybe it's just cause I read this before Jane Eyre but literally I do not understand why Miss Eyre gets so much more love than my girl Lucy. In broad strokes the story is about an English girl who ends up having to support herself by moving to France and becoming an English teacher at a girls boarding school. She's also plagued by a terrifying apparition of a nun, because this is Charlotte we're talking about and there's a bit of Catholic v Protestant thing going on. I read this during the very early pandemic and let me tell you some of the descriptions of isolation and loneliness are soooooo. yeah.

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett: Listen. Like, listen. It's that good. I wouldn't put a discworld novel up against fucking chain gang all stars unless it was THAT good. This is a classic 'girl dresses up as a boy and goes to war to find her brother' story. It definitely started as a commentary on folk songs/stories but it is at it's heart a novel long criticism of imperialism, nationalism, and organized religion (there's jokes though it's funny). Also not to be that guy when it comes to LGBTQ book recs but the thing came out in 2002 and it's surprisingly thoughtful when it comes to both gender and sexuality. You do not have to be a fantasy fan or a discworld fan to read this. If you gave Pratchett a try and didn't like it i STILL insist you give MR a shot. It is in a league of it's own.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell: Do not be scared off by the sheer length of this one. It's fucking silly. This is one of my faaaaaaaave 1800s novels about class. We have juxtaposition between Molly's family (her father is a gentleman but a working doctor) and the landed gentry but also this divide between the uneducated Squire and his Cambridge bound sons and another one with the 'new money' gentry. There's also quite a lot of early science and anthropology documented in this (Gaskell and Darwin were besties) if that's interesting to you. WARNING: SHE DIED BEFORE SHE FINISHED THIS. ITS LIKE 99% DONE THOUGH

This was a hard list to narrow down but I have to include (at least as honorable mentions): Ling Ma's Severance/Bliss Orange, Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem and the SFF POC anthology New Suns

tagging: @weltonreject @bronskibeet @gaymersrights @orchidreign @brechtian + any and all mutuals i know ive forgotten <3

[jenreadsstuff]

Small Gods thoughts...

When I first read this one, as a teenager, it was one of my least favourites. I just didn't get it, the way so many other fans seemed to get it. I don't know why, but it's likely because my experience of church and politics back in the mid-90s was limited to Sunday School and Spitting Image.

I think it's definitely one that you need some level of adulthood to fully appreciate. Now, it makes so much sense, but I also feel like I appreciate Brutha as a character so much more than I ever could have as a teenager. The courage it takes to resist your impulse to lash out at someone who has seriously hurt you, to say, we can be better than we are but only if we make the choice to do so, and keep making that choice every damn day. To have both power and knowledge, and understand how to use them wisely - Simony and Urn both have knowledge, but both intend to use their knowledge unwisely, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Brutha's proposition on the beach at the end - 'what if we fought, and then in the future, people ask why we couldn't have sorted things out on the beach when we had the chance?' - illustrates a recurring trope in Pterry's writing, which he also used in Johnny and The Dead, of recognising now that you have the chance to do things differently than your first idea suggests. It's a question I often find myself pondering when I'm trying to make a decision - what if this is my chance to think things through and make something better?

I like the Latatian jokes in SG - I think this book might also be the first use of nil illegitemi carborundum, which remains a firm favourite quote that I use regularly at work.

Also interesting to see Om invoking the 'million to one chance' effect.

Rereading SG was something I was particularly looking forward to when I started this reread project - it was the book I probably struggled to engage with the most as a young Discworld fan, so I genuinely appreciate having the opportunity to revisit it now as an adult. Also, at 16 I didn't know what a pederast was and Google did not exist then, so that's one more reference I now have a better understanding of.

[theygotlost]

2023 book log/year in review!

here is a comprehensive of breakdown of every book I read this year!!

Terry Pratchett's Discworld

this was THE YEAR OF DISCWORLD for me. I read more disc books than non disc books. I'm probably gonna take a break from the series for a few weeks to get my breath back. I read my first ever disc book, Going Postal, in december of 2022 so it doesn't technically count as being part of this year, but here's every one that I read starting in january, in the order I read them:

Making Money

Raising Steam 

Guards! Guards! (x2)

Men at Arms (x2)

Soul Music

Feet of Clay

Mort

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Wyrd Sisters

Faust Eric

The Wee Free Men

Witches Abroad

Thud!

Monstrous Regiment

The Truth

Lords and Ladies

Hogfather

Rereads

The Fourth Bear is kind of whatever but rereading all the others has cemented them as some of my favorite books and I'm really glad I got to experience them again because I hadn't read them in years 😁

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had It Coming) by Mike Brown

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams

Other Books

It's kind of embarrassing to see how this list pales in comparison to all the disc books but I WAS reading other stuff I swear!! look!!

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

Sacrifice by Mitchell Smith

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Did Not Finish

Some of these I got through more of than others. the really bad ones I dropped only after 50 pages or so. im sorry women.

Closing Time by Joseph Heller

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde 

The Real and the Unreal, vol. 2: Outer Space, Inner Lands by Ursula K. Le Guin

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Total Stats

Books started: 36

Books finished: 31

Books finished that I hadn't read before: 26 (19 Discworld, 7 not)

I PROMISE I'm not trying to be one of those "30 books in 30 days!" type booktok people, I wasn't aiming for any specific number. I only read this many books because i genuinely really loved them and couldn't stop reading them!!!!!!!

Reading List for 2024

I have an even longer list than this with a bunch of books that I saw or were recommended to me and I thought "oh that seems interesting maybe I'll check it out" but who knows if I will actually get to them. this list below is basically a new years resolution, books that I fully intend to read this year:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (already currently reading this one, just need to finish it)

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami by Gretel Ehrlich

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Discworld Reading List

Yes, I am keeping this one separate. I don't necessarily intend to get to all of these by the end of 2024, just some time in the future (I probably will end up reading them all next year anyway LOL). Once I finish these, only the Rincewind and Tiffany Aching series remain. I'm not as interested in those based on the small sampling I got of them, but I'll probably read them all at some point just for the sake of completion.

Moving Pictures

Snuff

Reaper Man

Pyramids

Small Gods

Equal Rites

Maskerade

Carpe Jugulum

it's kind of scary to think that this is all thats left..... idk what im gonna do after that man..... kill myself? start over from the beginning? I guess ill just have to cross that bridge when I get to it ☹

happy new year everypony!!!!

[magpiefngrl]

Mar + Apr Books

Photo Credit (original): Ed Robertson

Mar + Apr 2023

I read 14 books in the past two months and filled 11 categories of my Reading Challenge. Two of the novels were NetGalley ARCs; neither impressed me much. Three were from my piles of unread physical books, which is (slow) progress. One was a reread. Overall, I'm doing OK as regards my 2023 reading goals.

The books that I enjoyed the most were:

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles (historical m/m romance) I inhaled it in a day and a half. A very satisfying romance. KJC goes from strength to strength, and I realised when I sank into it how much I'd missed her writing.

Daughter from the Dark by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. A unique, weird magical realism tale that I quite enjoyed.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. Fantasy of manners. Very Les Liaisons Dangereuses but with more swords and a gay love story at the heart of it. I liked it a lot and it's stayed with me.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (sci-fi novella) Everyone keeps raving about Murderbot--and they were right! I read the novella in one sitting. Very well-paced, an excellent narrator voice, the mystery kept me in suspense till the end, secondary characters were distinct with personality that came through even through Murderbot's POV.

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E Harrow (fantasy short story) I've a complicated relationship with Harrow's stories. Luckily, this one hit the right buttons. It's a fascinating premise; Harrow is good with those.

What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (fantasy short story) Not as loudly impressive as the rest, this is a quiet understated ghost tale about two charlatans pretending to contact the dead.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (dark fantasy) This is a wild ride, like WHOA. Insane world-building, very original and creative, violent and dark AS FUCK (most trigger warnings apply), this is the kind of novel that makes most of fantasy appear super tame.

What's next?

No idea. I 'll prob read some romance to put my mind in a romance-writing mode. I also want to get to a series or two that I've left unfinished (Temeraire, probably, or the Dreamer Trilogy) and to read a couple more physical books that have been gathering dust on my shelves. Maybe one more Discworld novel too?

[kiaxet]

for fic writer asks:

7, 20, 35, 42

I was gonna wait until I had a keyboard in front of me for this, but it's SDCC weekend so fuck it we ball

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

Honestly? Vibe. I generally do third person limited for whoever the story's about, with very few exceptions, and I tend to POV switch if the story calls for it (but only if it's planned/a consistent thing. If I need a one-time POV switch to shore up something in the story, that's a structural issue I need to fix).

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

I do a lot of em dashes - for punctuation, for stream of consciousness, for whatever I need them for - and I have a very particular way of writing mental breakdowns that just keeps making it into fics.

On a less mechanical level, most of my stories tend to be about moments or day-to-day stuff. I don't write a lot of grand, sweeping epics or action; I do a lot of dialogue and day in the life sort of stuff.

35. What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain? 

Know what they want. They don't have to be redeemable; they don't have to be complex; they don't have to be smart or powerful or competent; they just need to do shit and you need to keep in mind what that shit is. Do they want to destroy the protagonist's family because of a mistaken identity issue? Do they want to end the world because they think societal rot has set in too deep to be fixed? Do they want to end the world because they're fucking bored and just want to do it? All valid! Just make sure you know what they're up to and keep it in mind.

42. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

We're fudging this a bit because the last fic I read was one you linked, so we're gonna talk about one I keep rereading instead: Power Up! TMNT Rise; everyone's ninpo gets an upgrade,and Leo's does not shake out the way anyone expects. Healing Hands goes a little wrong.

It's a slow start, but holy shit does it go places. I love the approach to Leo's inner workings - that we stay away from the self-flagellation we see a lot with post-movie Leo fics and get into him trying to improve and how goddamn hard it is to make changes in your thought processes and habits, even when you know the changes are for the better. Also, the hurt and hurt/comfort in later chapters is fucking delicious.

The fact that this fic has some solid Discworld DNA woven in and isn't afraid to show it also earns it quite a few points.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Doing this for last year

How many books did you read this year? 36 novels, 78 manga and graphic novels. I'll skip talk

Did you reread anything? What?I've been rereading (actually listening with audiobooks) the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Last year I reread Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum, Mort, Soul Music and Hogfather. I also reread (listened) American Gods.

What were your top five books of the year? Our Wives Under the Sea, In the Dream House, Otherside Picnic Volume 8: Accomplices No More, Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emporer and Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality. You can see more in-depth looks at my favorite in this post here.

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? I'm interested in checking out more of Julia Armfield and Carmen Maria Machado. And Chuck Tingle, but I already knew about him lmao. (Manga and GN wise, Uta Iskaki, Tatsuki Fujimoto, Mark Russell and Mokumokuren. See my full list of new favorite manga here!)

What genre did you read the most of? Besides manga, according to storygraph, fantasy (actually LGBT comes in second but I don't really consider that a genre).

What was your average Goodreads rating? 4.3. I do tend to be overly generous with my ratings because I'm an author and I know how hard it is, plus I like to err on the side of kindess, but yeah, probably essentially accurate! Might be closer to a 4.

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? Oh, a lot. Godkiller, Delilah Green Doesn't Care and The Spirit Bares it's Teeth stand out.

Did you meet any of your reading goals? I always set the low goal of 25 books, so yeah. On Storygraph I surpassed 100 counting manga.

Did you get into any new genres? No? I read a surprising amount of horror last year though.

Favorite new release? Camp Damascus or Night's Edge. If you count "released in English" It's definitely Otherside Picnic Vol 8.

Favorite book that been out for a while? In the Dream House and Our Wives Under the Sea

Any books that disappointed you? I found Mexican Gothic too slow paced and had to DNF it. The Old Woman with the Knife was such a cool idea but the writing was dull, so another DNF. For ones I did finish, Piranesi also didn't hit the way I wanted. I really struggled though She is a Haunting, which sucks because I actually bought that one on a whim.

Least favorite books? Oh boy, though I technically didn't read the whole thing, it was definitely Medusa's Sisters. As I said on here "I have to say, "Athena cursed Medusa and her sisters because she's a mean lesbian who's afraid of Zeus's homophobia, so she punishes her gf for being raped by making it so she turns in men to stone, classic manhating lesbian move" sure is a way to add extra layers of ick to Ovid's version of the Medusa myth, and i didn't know it was even possible to make that worse!' I also skimmed the end to see if it got worse or had any satisfying conclusion, and yeah it sure did get even worse, it included a character sleeping with her sister's rapist and hashtagtotalgirlboss telling him to go away as her big empowering moment, while also mentioning he gave her a baby which gave meaning to her life. All of the characters were awful but not in a fun way, and probably the funniest moment was when a character acted like it was SO shocking to see an older man getting sexual favors from a pretty young man in a brothel..IN ANCIENT GREECE.

whoops took too long answering this, invalid now.

books that won awards? I have no idea.

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? Probably Piranesi? Based on how people were talking about it I expected a lot...I kept waiting for a cool twist that never came.

Did any books surprise you with how good they were? I mean I expected In the Dream House and Our Wives Under the Sea to be good, but they blew me away, and I wasn't sure I'd enjoy a middle-grade book but I loved Zachary Ying.

How many books did you buy? 16. Minus all the Pratchett audiobooks, it's 8. (you don't want to know the answer for manga)

Did you use your library? Yes, a ton.

Most anticipated release? I don't really anticipate releases all that much, I mostly hear about books after they've released.

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama? Well, I follow withcindy on youtube so I watched a lot through her. I also saw the Cait Corrain thing going down on twitter. God help me if I ever participate in book drama, though.

Longest book? American Gods for sure.

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book? Guesswork here, since I don't want to check them all, but probably Magirevo 3 since it was so repetitive I could skim most of it. Qualia the Purple was likely the second fastest at 5 days.

Did you DNF anything? Yeah, 11 books according to Storygraph. Last year I struggled through a few books so this year i decided to drop books as soon as they were boring to me or I realized I wasn't feeling it/in the mood. I'll probably return to some! Medusa's Sisters was the only one I dropped because I was angry.

Reading goal for this year? The usual 25 books.

end-of-year book ask

How many books did you read this year?

Did you reread anything? What?

What were your top five books of the year?

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

What genre did you read the most of?

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

Did you get into any new genres?

What was your favorite new release of the year?

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

Any books that disappointed you?

What were your least favorite books of the year?

What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

How many books did you buy?

Did you use your library?

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

What’s the longest book you read?

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

Did you DNF anything? Why?

What reading goals do you have for next year?

[asecondglassofcinnamonwine]

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Ray Carney is the owner of a furniture store in Harlem, trying to get by and provide a better life for his growing family than he had as a kid. Occasionally his cousin Freddie swings by with a radio or a TV or some jewels, Ray doesn’t ask questions on where they came from, and he sells them on and gives Freddie his cut. Then one day Freddie drags Ray into a much bigger crime: a heist at the ritziest hotel in Harlem - the Waldorf Astoria of black NYC - the Hotel Teresa. They’re way in over their heads, and throw Ray into a crooked life of crime far darker than what he would have otherwise chosen.

[thankskenpenders]

Sorry to bring this subject up again on this blog but honestly I can’t give up on liking Harry Potter. I don’t like *JK Rowling*, but...I don’t know, I’ve always believed in art vs artist. Maybe I’m in the wrong but personal change is always something I’ve not been able to do well.

I'm sorry but even as someone who literally loved Harry Potter so much that I dressed up as HP characters for two back to back Halloweens in elementary school, saw several of the movies opening day, got Order of the Phoenix day one, made my parents buy me a bunch of the Lego sets, etc. etc... it's just not that good of a series

It's a mess. It's easy to see why those first few books grabbed peoples' attention, but the character arcs fizzle out, the plots start to make no sense, half of the most important shit in the series happens with no involvement from Harry, the second to last book retcons the whole thing into a fetch quest for a series of macguffins that had never been mentioned only for the last book to introduce ANOTHER macguffin fetch quest on top of that, and most importantly, JK's awful, awful politics are all over the damn series. The racism, the antisemitism, the rampant internalized sexism that colors the arc of every single female character, the general fetishization of milquetoast neoliberalism. Yes, even the transphobia. Go back and reread the scene where Rita Skeeter is interviewing Harry and notice how much attention JK draws to her "mannish" features. But that's not even the point, because these could literally be the most perfect books ever written and I still don't think it'd be worth it given what the author is doing

I understand having complicated feelings about art you love when the creators end up being shitty. I know it's not that easy to detach yourself from things that mean a ton to you personally. I get it if you still like those characters and that world deep down. But you gotta keep that shit to yourself. This isn't just an author who said some stupid shit on Twitter. This isn't just a problematic book series. This is a billionaire who is actively using her power and influence to advocate against the rights of trans people everywhere. Her writing on these subjects is literally being cited by lawmakers both in the UK and abroad to justify demonizing people like me and trying to legislate us to death. And she's able to do all of this because Harry Potter made her one of the biggest authors alive

I know it's not easy to just snap your fingers and stop loving a thing you care about. But there's so much better fantasy fiction out there that wasn't made by a literal monster. Read Discworld or something, I don't know

[utilitycaster]

Wizard Breakdown Tracker, Episode 138

I think it is easy to forget that literally every episode that aired in the year of Our Common Era, 2021, has taken place over the span of *Spurt voice* eleven days. Well. It has. And, indeed, the last seven episodes have covered roughly two days.

The reason this is only about wizard NPCs is because they serve as a sort of audience surrogate in that they are nerds who don't go outside, vs. D&D PCs who see more shit in two to eleven days than most people would see in a lifetime; case in point, Essek's current state of shock. This is also making it very hard to check in with the other wizards. But also this is not about accuracy, even though I am usually right about everything. This is about...honestly I'm not sure, other than wizards.

What I'm trying to say is:

Caleb Widogast is a PC, not an NPC, and is not included in these strange statistics*.

Currently sidelined: Pumat Sol, Oremid Hass, Ludinus Da'leth, Astrid Beck, E_dwulf Grieve

Obligatory self-indulgent Vess Derogna song parody: Tomb....takers, killed you in your room, they’ll end the world soon but hey/you cult wizard, lost in a blizzard, whatever you’ve done, well, murdered, you’ll stay

Trent Ikithon: I am 100% serious that while I have made Narrative Sense In Actual Play Media in the rock on which I will cast my Temple of the Gods, if the final boss is Trent riding on Uk'otoa...I won't be mad. Like does it seem tonally off? Yes; Critical Role is not humorless high fantasy by any means** but they are not actively trying to seem like something that should be airbrushed on a van, usually. But will it be pretty awesome? Yeah.

Trent on the other hand is pretty fucking mad, presumably, because Caleb continues to leave him on read and also picked up a little something called Mind Blank, which is actually useful and not in fact No Thoughts Head Empty. With that said I don't think it's increased; I think we're just at a steady simmer.

Conclusion: 7/10.

Essek Thelyss: Okay I am a dabbler in both cosmic horror and mathematics; I enjoy many elements of both but am an expert in neither. But if I may drop the jokes for a second, how incredible is it that in this alien setting of a city that is an unwitting and unwilling amalgam of consciousnesses, with all the trappings of classic cosmic horror, two people decided to take a scientific risk with things seen as forbidden or foreign by their respective cultures...and won.

I don't know what will befall Essek and he's clearly still having a pretty rough time of it, even though unlike Caduceus I don't think he was brought to the brink of profanity again, yet; but no matter what happens at least he'll have the nat 20 of instant long rest. No matter what happens...he was right about dunamancy. Fucking ironic how much potential the dynasty is wasting, really.

With that said he does have a red eye now even though all he (and, to be fair, Fjord, Veth, and Caduceus as well) did was fight off an eldritch abomination without rolling what must have been like a 20 Wisdom save DC. Like, he (and Fjord, Veth, and Caduceus) do not deserve this. You think this man has a positive wisdom score? In this economy? (actually, he might, I say, looking at Caleb 'Wisdom Ostensibly 16' Widogast).

Conclusion: keeping him at 8/10. It's funny because he is fully on an emotional roller coaster but it's averaging out to about an 8/10 each time; it's just that he's constantly beset by horrors beyond imagination and really terrible rolls but also incredible validation of his beliefs that had so long been ignored. The man's mental state is basically a sine wave, which interestingly enough is itself influencing his mental state.***

Yussa Errenis: The Prodigal Most Interesting Man in Exandria returneth! Wensforth, play Freedom! 836 PD. You know, he should probably feel a little bit of shame, because he should know better, but also he probably does not. Anyway please enjoy the lines I had for Yussa while he was trapped in Cognouza that I did not ultimately use:

aha no don’t get your consciousness sucked into an ancient city you’re so sexy

Here am I floating in an ancient and terrible world-devouring city/far out in the planes/Threshold crests are blue and there’s nothing I can do

Making bad choices and joining the voices it’s...YUSSA ERRENIS

Conclusion: I'm going to say 6/10 but rapidly decreasing. Also Wensforth has had several days to clean the tower...maybe he just won't tell Yussa? He probably will though.

Allura Vyesoren: she's going to facepalm so long that Kima starts timing it, isn't she. She's going to get a series of messages like "hey so the Mighty Nein seem to be doing well! they freed me from the city which sucked me in like some spicy ramen when I did an astral projection...also something happened in my tower?" She's going to just stare out the window for a long moment. She is going to ask herself, much as I have many a time, what the fuck is in the water in Wildemount.

Conclusion: 3/10. Hey, at least she got some news on the Mighty Nein and the city!

Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk: consider: after over 35 years, give or take, in your own perception of time, trapped in a gem, you finally come across some people. Consider that one of them apparently can't resist a big shiny wizard trap. Now consider that this guy went into your +1 Demiplane of Wizard Murdering AND got his mind fully schlorped by Aeorians and yet you are still, inconceivably, stuck in this fucking gem. This is where he draws the line? At a teensy little bodily possession? What the fuck dude.

Conclusion: I'm pretty sure he's already a few large handfuls of iron filings short of a component pouch (which is to say, full up on the batshit) already but this cannot be helping.

*this will be the first but probably not the last cosmic horror and/or math joke because I actually forgot to make cat jokes last night, so thoroughly did the Nein demolish Cree. Speaking of Cree's fate...call that a Furrier Transform.

**high fantasy is a complicated distinction and the wikipedia page includes Discworld which does not seem right to me; it also includes the Belgariad, a series for which I have great fondness having inhaled the first three books while sick in bed as a fourteen year old and having reread several times, but which is explicitly written by a guy who was like what if I made something as formulaic as possible but also literally everyone is either super sarcastic or a huge moron but anyway imo High Fantasy is actually frequently fucking hilarious and a sign of the skill of the creator(s) is whether it's hilarious by accident or on purpose.

***something something Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I had a joke here but it got very convoluted and that is actually not a pun although if you understand why it could be a pun, good work.

[harry-trumans-dishwasher]

My Thoughts on Every Discworld Book

The Color of Magic: The Anti Book. The Great Leveler. The Big Bang that strips the medium of all pretense (y'know, stuff like Plot or Structure) and allows the wild stallion of creativity to prance unheeded on the empty stage. Love it or Hate it, there are few books as impressively unbidden.

The Light Fantastic: Right when we get the scene of the Wizards standing around in their pajamas, you can feel the long lost thrill of a "Plot" stretching out in front of you! This was the book that made me love reading again and also made me a good deal dumber, too.

In the whole of Discworld, there will never be a fight scene as intense as the two scrawny wizards flailing desperately at each other. Rincewind gets his happy ending, which is like watching It's A Wonderful Life and you knew there were going to be four sequels where George Bailey's life just gets shittier and shittier.

Equal Rites: A lot of people say Granny Weatherwax's first book is Wyrd Sisters, but this is an important book for seeing how Pratchett's thoughts on Why Merlin Never Married eventually grew into one of his best characters. It's also one of the best books that applies Pratchett's background on physics to magic (before he discovered the word "Quantum").

As for the events of the book, just watch one of those old cartoons where a small baby wanders amiably across a dangerous construction site and you'll get the idea.

Mort: The first in a line of "Boy gets a new job, boy meets girl, boy saves the day and never comes up again" books that Pratchett will reproduce and refine until we get Going Postal. Unlike a lot of those books, this one's great! Death is at his most Enigmatic, but it lays down the rules for Death that carry on into the series.

Sourcery: Unlike every other Rincewind book, this book is about Rincewind. Every character, every plot point, and every message is built around Rincewind's deal. This is a rare (only?) Discworld book that is focused on one singular source of inspiration: A Wizard That Doesn't Do Anything.

Wyrd Sisters: I have a quote for you:

"(His) name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He has no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his (stories) back again..."

Sound familiar? That was Lord Byron talking about Shakespeare. Willy Shakespeare took existing stories and recontextualized and reexamined them for a new audience. And then Pratchett did it again! This is a really good book! The book I point to whenever I encourage anyone to give Discworld a try!

Pyramids: Boy gets a Job, meets a girl (sorta), saves the day, disappears forever. There're a lot of great ideas in here, though! You've got the assassination test, the World War Z scene, sun-sports, Pratchett rotates a polyhedron in his mind harder than anyone before or since. And most surprisingly, Dios becomes one of the most sympathetic villains across all of Discworld! It has some interesting takes on Fundamentalism and Exoticism, but a lot of it comes off as "Boy, those Egyptians sure were silly, huh?"

Guards! Guards! "Hmm how can I write a book about underdog policemen? I know! I'll make crime legal! I'll make the policemen alcoholic and despised and outnumbered and this and that and and...." And what you've got is a fine book! Although the summary on the back of the book spoils its best twist (and if you know me, it has to be a Really good twist to get me concerned about spoilers).

It's a book that benefits from rereading. Sometimes to examine the copaganda, the comparisons between the book of laws and the book of dragons, the comparisons between Ankh-Morpork and Sybil, or just to laugh again at the Cultist scenes!

Eric: The most maligned of the Discworld books. It's short, it hand-waves a lot of things, it veers out of the way to make fun of Mayans, it's not great. What is great is the description of Hell. Somewhere along the trousers of time there's a version of this book that's less of a parody of Faust and more of a Parody of Dante's Inferno. I like this book because it's fun to read it and imagine I'm reading a better book.

[One thing that the worst Discworld books have in common is that they're Inspirational. They make you think, "Gee, I could write a better story than this!" Although you're probably wrong, it takes the right kind of bad book to make this enjoyable. If Art inspires the audience to happily make more Art, that's good Art!]

Moving Pictures: Boy gets a new job, meets girl, saves the day, fucks off forever. I can't stand this book, man. The description of Holy-Wood is evocative, yeah, the introduction of Ridcully is cool, sure, the book ends after a fashion, definitely... but... y'know those scenes in Soul Music where characters just make References again and again and again? In theory it's cool you have a fantasy world that's suffering real-world radiation and you have all these References punching holes in reality, but that's the whole book, yo. Maybe I'll feel different once I've already read every other book in the world and feel moved to re-read this one.

Reaper Man: Now here we go! Now remember everything that made the Light Fantastic an "Anti-Book?" References nobody gets? ideas stacked on top of ideas on top of ideas? Well it's all coming back, baby. The chaos is much more controlled, yes, but you have to work at it if you want to see the sense in this book. Twist your eyes, reread things out of sequence, read online forum discussion, randomly alternate your IQ scene-to-scene... It's a heartrending and absurdist read that, like the best bubblegum, is a delight to chew on for hours! If you ask me what my favorite Discworld book is, I’ll say, “the Reaper Man you get after reading it 3 times!”

Witches Abroad: This might be my favorite of the Witches books! It’s funny, it heartbreaking, and you’ve only got one (1) stupid reference that contributes nothing! (”ullo it’sssss my birthday”) Unlike Reaper Man, this is a book that speaks for itself. Every book about the Witches reveals a bit more about their personalities, but I think this book shows us the most! The racial politics of this book are very complex, however. If you stripped everything down, you will find a trace of “White Savior” in the text. Whether or not you think Granny Weatherwax (the white-skinned witch) truly earns the respect of Mrs. Gogol (the black-skinned witch) is left to the reader, but Gogol’s arc may’ve deserved a bit more attention than Terry paid.

Small Gods: The religious book! If you’re used to the other Discworld stories (at least, the ones not written for children) you may be surprised with this book’s serious tone. If you’re like me, you’ll certainly need a lot of faith in Pratchett; faith that he’ll deliver on the well-earned happy endings we’re used to. It’s an atheist’s poison-pen condemnation of fundamentalism in religion that somehow manages to be a love-letter/apology to gods... while also comparing gods to eagles, lifting up and killing tortoises (prophets) for no good reason. The good guys win in the end, ushering in 100 years of intellectualism and tolerance. The dichotomy is resolved and... well, we’ll get to Carpe Jugulum soon enough.

Lords and Ladies: Another fun book that recontextualizes more than it invents, as Lord Byron would say. It says a lot more than just “what if elves were Baaaad” and expands on that subversion more than I could elaborate about it here. Every Discworld book is about old vs. new, and this book reintroduces Granny Weatherwax as a symbol (for better or worse) for younger witches. We first had Eskarina, Magrat, Diamanda, and then we’ll have Agnes and Tiffany. All this takes a backseat in my mind to the scene where Shawn Ogg turns to the “Advanced” chapter of Marital Arts. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen.

Men At Arms: The pigs are back! It’s a great whodunnit in a city where everyone’s always murdering each other anyway. Don’t question it for now. Guards! Guards! was great, but this is the book that establishes Vimes’ role in the world at large: either shaking his head at the injustices of the world or exerting himself beyond his physical limits. Some of the earlier books have teeth, but this is the book that introduces Politics(tm) to the series! The other watchmen do well to move the story along until Vimes is needed to do something unenjoyable.

Soul Music: Boy gets a new job, meets a girl, saves the day, goes away. Remember how much I hated Moving Pictures? Well, this book manages to space out its references a little better. A lot of them are actually clever, as much as I hate to say it! Susan doesn’t really come into her own yet, but Death’s arc though the story picks up well after Mort (since it’s probably best to ignore Reaper Man). It’s not the biting satire of the music industry you’re hoping for, but the climax with Imp and his Harp is the heartwarming scene that earns my thumbs-up.

Interesting Times: Ooh the racism one! Well, not really. The “Racism One” is a title that probably goes to Thud! or Snuff. This is the Cultural Insensitivity One, which doesn’t fall off the tongue so easily. Rincewind cannonballs through Fantasy China, bouncing from one mildly comedic scene to the next. What you get is a lot of punching-down humor. The peasants are so compulsively docile, their revolutionary slogans are things like “Slightly Bad Things Please Happen To Our Enemies.” Every school subject tests their students on poetry instead of anything else. People complain if their street food is too fresh. The jokes go on.

Once you get past that, once you get to the punching-up humor, the book comes into its own. Mr. Saveloy’s arc blew me away. The evil Lord Hong’s dehumanization of his people comes back to bite him. Rincewind’s nihilism clashes violently with revolutionary idealism. Twoflower returns. However, Rincewind ends up taking off his own wizard hat to disguise himself (betraying one of his most establishing character traits) so I’m not very enthusiastic about this one at all.

Maskerade: Fatphobic, some say. But I still like the idea of a character so ground-down, even the narrator can’t resist making jabs at her. It makes me like Agnes a lot more than I would’ve otherwise! Arthur Plinge’s Forrest Gump schtick is tiresome, if just because Granny Weatherwax ends up curing it at the end. Hooray and etc. But it’s still a book I recommend! The villain in this book isn’t the best one we’ve had, but he’s definitely one of the most memorable. Naturally, Granny ends up stealing the show, introducing what’s known among witches as “Cackling.” Magrat is presumably absent because she’s busy wearing fake mustaches and having sex.

Feet of Clay: The greatest whodunnit ever written even though it’s pretty obvious whodunnit. There’s not a lot of surprise or mystery in this book, but it’s endlessly fun to go through this book with a pen and circle the clues! Dorfl’s scene of self-possession is the crown jewel of the book, and the fact we’re supposed to forget about Minty is whatever the opposite of a Crown Jewel is. The worst thing about this book is that there’s no way in Hell you can recommend it. If you’ve read the preceding Watch books, you’ve (I hope) read this one. If you haven’t, this book won’t make any sense!

Hogfather: Although not as absurd as Reaper Man, this is definitely an Alice in Wonderland kinda book. Death takes over for the Santa-Expy, and the arc he goes through is surprisingly complex (transitioning from envying the Hogfather to developing a class-consciousness). Susan comes into her own in this book, as well. Instead of catching Arthur-Dent-itus, you get a feel for her motivation and unique take on things. If you ask me what the Reason for the Season is, I’ll point to Hogfather with one hand and Scrooged with the other.

Jingo: This is the ultimate British fantasy. Your ex-empire country goes to war for a stupid reason and the characters use brawn, guile, brains and bravery to make it to the frontlines and heroically surrender! It’s a great book in it’s own right, but it gets so much better the more you learn about the Falklands War Conflict. In real life, however, Britain played Argentina’s game and won those stupid little islands.

Stupid, of course, until they struck oil after the fact...

The Last Continent: Remember how I said Sourcery was the most Rincewindy book? Fuck you I never said that. THIS is the most Rincewind of the Rincewind books. Everybody’s favorite wizard pinballs around from one gut-buster to the next across Fantasy Australia. Shitty beer. Waltzing Matilda. Fuck you. Here’s what I want you to do: Look up any fantasy map drawn up by an idiot. Here I’ll pull up the Forgotten Realms.

Looks familiar. And look, there’s “Osse” right where you’d expect it. Long before I discovered Discworld, the omnipresence of Fantasy Australia always dumbfounded me. Christ, why make up a whole fantasy world if you’re just going to plagiarize real life and wow your readers with how ignorant you are of everything south-east of Fantasy-Europe?

I don’t think Pterry was an idiot, of course. I think he was a man with massive testicles who decided to base a book on Waltzing Matilda and fill it with as many jokes as his own logic would allow. That scene where they have to have “The Talk” with an island god? Genius. If you ever feel unsure in your life, if you ever feel like the all the hard work you do every day will only culminate in a wet fart, so to speak, I want you to pick up this book and know in your heart that that’s ok.

Carpe Jugulum: Granny faces her greatest challenge yet [checks notes] a member of the ruling class whose ambition proves to be their downfall. I’m not going to copy-paste the Byron quote (Terry copy-pasted enough for the both of us, hyuck hyuck hyuck) but this book is unique in that we’re actually frightened for ol’ Granny! She’s brought to her absolute lowest, takes the vampires’ petard and damn well hoists it back on ‘em! Remember Small Gods and everything we learned about tolerance and intellectualism? Well, fuck that! Gimmie some of that old timey Omnianism! Never invite a vampire and don’t forget the old hymns!

The Last Elephant: Nah vampires can be cool, too. A lot of people reach for this book with the attitude of “alright just one more Watch book before I get to read Night Watch,” so this entry is a little overshadowed. But it’s a fine political mystery; unlike most of the Discworld Whodunnits, who dunnit is surprising. I like watching Sam learn more about Werewolves throughout the book and eventually using all he’s learned to defeat Wolfgang. 

Carrot can just be a little frustrating to me. At the very end, after Carrot uses his innate kingliness to restore order to the watchhouse (I don’t know why people get the idea Terry was a royalist smh), Angua confides in Carrot how frightened she is of herself. She wants to know that if she ever becomes an evil werewolf like Wolfgang, Carrot will be the one to do her in. I would’ve liked it if Carrot (the man who could single-handedly usurp Vetinari) said “Yes, because you’d do the same for me.” But instead he says “Yea sure.” 

I just don’t buy Carrot is as Simple as everyone thinks he is. I would’ve liked it if he dropped the act and exhibited signs of self-awareness for a second. Like he did with Vetinari, I guess. Onto the next book,

The Truth: Boy gets a new job, meets girl, saves the day, and cameos in nearly every Discworld book since. I don’t get it either. It’s a good entry, but it’s hard not to think of this book as “The Less Cool Daniel” after reading Going Postal. Anyway, remember Vampires? God, we love Vampires, don’t we! I’m sorry for going through each book and saying “Remember this villain? This villain was one of the best!” but this book has like five of Discworld’s best villains so you’ll just have to bear with me. I think it’s also the first book to introduce Sam Vimes as an anti-villain, which is a big part of what makes Discworld so special!

Anyway, if you’re ever feeling down, just shout “The truth has got its boots on, and It's going to start kicking!” at yourself in the mirror.

Thief of Time: Gaiman’s favorite. I like it, but it’s a lot more middle-of-the-road in my mind. Lu-Tze is pretty cool, but the real star of the show are the Auditors! They’ve appeared in past books, but this is the one where you really get an idea of how complicated they are! It’s also fun to compare and contrast the Four Horsemen in this book with the Four Horsemen in Good Omens. I think I like the sympathetic horsemen more! Susan does a good job of moving the pages along, but her out-of-the-blue romance with Lobsang feels like an untidy way to leave things off with her.

The Last Hero: I don’t think I’ll ever want to re-read this one. Carrot saves the day by being brave and straightforward, Rincewind saves the day by being genre-savvy and helpless. Lenny of Quirm gets some cool lines, but it’s a short story that could’ve been a lot shorter.

The Amazing Maurice: Definitely my favorite of Terry’s books for younger readers! It’s horrifying and tear-jerking and probably the bloodiest Discworld book of all time. You probably had more human death in Sourcery or Lords and Ladies, but the gratuitous rat death in this book has every other book beat. I can’t wait for the animated movie of this book to come out, take out all the blood, and cause Terry to spin in his grave so fast it shows up on seismographs.

Night Watch: Fantastic Literature. Blows every other policeman-story out of the water. After so many books full of happy endings and progress, it’s startling to revisit the Color of Magic’s vision of a gritty Ankh-Morpork. Sam Vimes, lord and master of shaking his head at the injustices of the world, takes center stage and shakes his head like he’s never done before. The ground trembles, the thrones of tyrants shudder, and the pillars of corruption sway in sympathy to Vimes and his shaking head. Sometimes he has to take a break from shaking his head so he can overexert himself, physically, and thus literature is created.

The Wee Free Men: I don’t know why so many people turn their nose up at the Tiffany Aching books. I like this one! It’s simple, it’s gripping, and it’s especially interesting if you enjoyed Lord and Ladies. You’re loving life if you’ve read this book. Tiffany’s starting out her adventure, and things are looking up! Hey what does “Cerebus Syndrome” mean?

Monstrous Regiment: I love this book and I love telling people about this book. Imagine Mulan but she keeps finding out her fellow soldiers are also women in disguise. Also Mulan is on the bad side. I get it some people are tired of Terry replaying “War (what is it good for?)” but if you’ve made it this far and you’re just now getting tired of Terry and his Ctrl, C, and V keys, I think you ought to think on that. Anyway, I think it’s his best book on the Gender and is fun rereading (especially once you’ve gotten a grasp of the litany of characters and their names, real names, and nicknames).

It’s a book you can read first, but if you do, you’ll probably be shocked Vimes doesn’t show Polly his binder at the end.

A Hat Full of Sky: A story about witches that isn’t an obvious parody of another well-known story? Where did this come from? Who sent you? It’s an alright story. I like how the witches of Discworld slowly became more structured over time out of necessity, similar to how the Wizards became less insular over time. The ending is a little weird how Granny is supposedly doing power-plays at the Witch Trials, but the new characters manage hold their own.

Going Postal: Boy gets a new job, Boy meets girl, Boy saves the day, Boy gets two sequels. Terry had been working for decades on this formula. Staying up late in his laboratory, mixing and matching different narrative elements, creating such abominations as Moving Pictures. This continued until his hand slipped and added the secret ingredient, “Make The Boy Interesting,” and thus history was made. I reread this book three times and gave it away to a friend for Christmas. I’ve been itching to hold this book in my hands again...

Thud!: High on his horse from Going Postal, Terry decides to take it easy and write a book about the Police’s role in racial tension. Going Postal and Night Watch are tough acts to follow, but Thud! succeeds in not shitting the bed at all! Dwarven culture became a surprisingly nuanced part of the Discworld and have made discussing their upstanding and problematic aspects relatively delightful! Trolls are involved too, yessir, they sure are!

Wintersmith: This is where the Aching books get significantly more serious, but the jokes still land every time! My favorite part of Wintersmith is Annagramma, I think. She starts off as a bully to Tiffany, but by the end, they’re friends! Annagramma doesn’t really stop being a heel, but she and Tiffany reach an understanding and sincerely try to help each other. Can you imagine if Draco Malfoy did something like that?

Making Money: A great sequel to Going Postal that’s more fun to read than to remember. The jokes are funny, the stakes are high, the villain is one of the greatest we’ve ever had... I regard all these things dispassionately, but it’s the one book that still manages to get me jumping up in my seat when I reread it! I still have no idea how gold standards work, but I love it all the same!

Unseen Academicals: A long book that feels longer. It could’ve been shorter if Terry had fallen back on ol’ reliable (boy plus job plus girl equals one saved day) but instead he decided to do something more complicated: Two Boys and Two Girls! Six times as much plot! Similar to Night Watch, this book takes us forward into an equally alien and unfamiliar Ankh-Morpork. I liked the parts about Nutt (10% of the book) and the parts about Football (5%), and as for everything else, I hope to one day understand it once an English translation comes out for all the hooligan slang. 

I Shall Wear Midnight: Unlike every other Discworld book, the funniest parts of this book aren’t supposed to be funny. An evil ghost shows up and Tiffany meets girl (who’s an expert at pacifying ghosts) and disregards her out of hand. Eskarina Smith, legendary Wizard who hasn’t appeared since Book #3, shows up out of nowhere and tells Tiffany not to be such a fukcing pussy. As soon as the YA book starts, Tiffany confronts a father who beat her pregnant daughter so badly her baby died. I’m losing my mind.

I haven’t read The Shephard’s Crown, Snuff, or Raising Steam yet, but I’ll append this post as soon as I do!

The short stories are all generally fine and I don’t feel strongly enough about any of them to go through the trouble of typing their titles out. I will say that it’s weird so many people have latched onto Troll Bridge over the years.

In Conclusion, it might sound like my least favorite book is Moving Pictures, but this is incorrect. My actual least favorite book is The Dark Incontinent. This is one of the books Terry threatened to write before he passed, but never got to. From what little we know of this book (Rincewind visits Fantasy Africa) I can infer that this book would single-handedly blow every other Discworld book away.

Even if The Dark Incontinent were an enlightened examination of Apartheid, Heart of Darkness, and African Exoticism in fantasy, this would all be rendered moot by the title: The Dark Incontinent. A title that makes me thankful for the steamroller. It’s fine if you disagree with me on this, because I’d know that you haven’t thought about it as much as I have.

[ghostoftonantzin]

Books I’ve read this year, roughly in order

I’ve decided to make a record of all the books I read this year, and post it on tumblr, because why not. Of the books I read, nine were on my phone (thank you libby), one was an audiobook (before I remembered that I’m terrible at listening to audiobooks), and eight were short story collections (some of these were also ebooks). In order, with some thoughts, below the cut:

Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss- a reread, and just as good the second time around. Compact and tense, with a slow creeping sense of dread.

The Violins of Saint Jacques, Patrick Leigh Fermor- the back of this book frames it around the volcanic eruption at the end of the book. The framing device is about how the woman telling the story was the only survivor of the volcanic eruption at the end of this book. It’s not a surprise, and yet when it happens, it’s so sudden and violent and all-encompassing that it’s still shocking.

Faceless Killers- found this in the books app on my phone (long story) and tore through it in a day. Enjoyable, dark, and twisty.

Small Gods, Terry Pratchett- same books app find as Faceless Killers, and the first Pratchett book I’ve read that isn’t Good Omens. I enjoyed it, especially Pratchett’s sense of humor. I do intend to read more Discworld books, though they’re not at the top of my list.

A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes- I feel like I enjoyed reading the long article analyzing the social context of the setting almost as much as I enjoyed reading the book, though that’s not entirely a knock on it. It seemed to hover in a strange space between a children’s story and one that’s too bleak for children.

Matrix, Lauren Groff- very readable and great at drawing you into the world of the medieval monastery.

The Traveling Grave, L.P. Hartley- unfortunately, I feel like I can barely remember any of the stories in this one, though I did enjoy it. It’s more creeping dread than outright horror.

Skin Tight, Carl Hiaasen- the audiobook! Also a reread of a book I’d initially read maybe ten years ago. It’s not my favorite Hiaasen book, but it’s still a good one. (I also started listening to the audiobook for Sick Puppy, but never finished.)

Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda- part of my efforts to read short stories, and also more works in translation. I liked it, though I don’t have much to say about it.

Basic Black with Pearls, Helen Weinzweig- I feel like I read a lot of this in a warm bath in the middle of winter, which may have affected my opinion, but I really loved this. A married woman wanders around her hometown of Toronto, supposedly there to meet up with her secret-agent lover who she has followed all over the world, and who may or may not be real. But the meat of this book is in the encounters she has while wandering the city, and how they tie into her own past and the legacy of the Holocaust. It’s a strange, dreamlike book, and it’s stuck with me.

The Book of Difficult Fruit, Kate Lebo- I honestly expected this to contain more scientific and historical background on the fruits and less aspects of personal essays, but that’s more of a problem with me than the book.

Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Vol. 1, multiple authors- a good read. The editors at Valancourt seem very good at selecting stories for their short story collections.

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir- I downloaded the free sample from Libby at the airport, then immediately checked out the full book and read it in a day. I fell in love with Gideon as a character and narrator, and the ending was both tragic and exactly what I wanted.

Good Behavior, Molly Keane- like drinking vinegar littered with glass shards, in the best way possible. Wonderfully subtle and full of darker implications. The kicker is a killer.

Crocodilia, Philip Ridley- the narration in this felt very amateurish at times, though as the novel went on, I found it worked well to get me into the mindset of the narrator. The novel becomes an incredible puzzle box of twists and stories folding in on themselves and repeating, while still maintaining its core focus on first love and coming of age as a young gay man.

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir- I also tore through this in a day, though it made me miss Gideon even more.

Song for the Unraveling of the World, Brian Evenson- I’ve read a lot of praise for Evenson’s writing, and I did enjoy this book, though it didn’t draw me in. Also read on the Libby app, which may have affected my opinion.

Wise Children, Angela Carter- realized this year I wanted to read more Angela Carter, because the only thing I’d read by her was The Bloody Chamber, and that was a shame, because I love her writing. I loved this. It’s sprawling and dramatic, but filled with so much joy and zest for life.

Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, Teffi- I read most of this while getting my car serviced. That has nothing to do with anything, just wanted to mention it. Beautifully written, but also a fascinating look at the uncertainty of exile, and yet how life seems to go on in fits and starts.

The Pure and the Impure, Colette- beautiful writing, again. Just fascinating to read about queer communities in Paris in the early twentieth century.

A Certain Hunger, Chelsea G. Summers- read in the Libby app, after I’d had my eye on this book. I remember wondering while reading what the narrator thought about Ruth Reichl, only for her to mention her a few pages later. In my opinion, the food writing aspects of this novel were relatively weak for a novel supposedly based around it. Unfortunately, I feel like the book was blandly heterosexual in a way I found uninteresting. I do think this novel stuck the landing, though, in a way that made me appreciate the rest of it more.

Growing Things, Paul G. Tremblay- also read in the Libby app. Notes from the Dog Walker was the standout story for me, though I enjoyed the rest of it enough to consider seeking out some of his novels.

Deep Blue Good-by, John D. MacDonald- I tore through two Travis McGee books in the Libby app after reading about the author while looking up Carl Hiaasen trivia. I honestly haven't read a ton of thrillers, but it was fascinatingly emotional and honest about the pain the protagonist experiences for a detective novel from the 1960s.

Nightmare in Pink, John D. MacDonald- The other Travis McGee novel, also read on my phone. Certain lines of this book still haunt me.

A Nail, A Rose, Madeleine Bourdouxhe- actually started in early 2021, but I only finished it this year. Another short story collection, this time primarily about ordinary women in France and Belgium around World War II. Well-written, but I didn’t personally love it.

Lolly Willows, Sylvia Townsend Warner- more sedately paced than I expected, but the final conversation between Laura and the devil is astoundingly ahead of its time. In retrospect, it’s an interestingly subtle take on the power fantasy suggested by the blurb on the back.

The Alteration, Kingsley Amis- read before writing evviva il coltello. I would classify this as science fiction, but its entire focus on a world less technologically-developed than our own was an interesting twist. (Though I don’t read a lot of science fiction, so I couldn’t give you the proper context of whether it’s actually unusual.) Very much of its time.

The Juniper Tree, Barbara Comyns- I hate to say it, but my favorite part of the book was probably the cover. Fascinatingly timeless in its setting and an interesting update on the fairytale, but didn’t compel me.

A Night in the Lonesome October, Roger Zelazny- my second year reading this over the month of October, and I intend to do so next year. It perfectly encapsulates the feeling of “spooky season”.

The Collector, John Fowles- I’d heard of this book years ago, and was suddenly seized with the need to read it. Creepy, though it did feel like the plot dragged in places, though that’s understandable for its format.

Ghost Sequences, A. C. Wise- the blurb compares her writing to Angela Carter, which I don’t think is quite accurate; her prose doesn’t quite capture the same poetic highs of Carter’s work. But I enjoyed the stories in this collection, especially their incorporation of different forms of media in both form and theme, whether it’s apps or newspaper article excerpts.

Isolde, Irina Odoyevtseva- I originally read this in early 2021, but decided to revisit it this year. Excellently written in what it conceals through the narration, and simultaneously glittery and bleak. It’s a fascinating snapshot of the lives of young Russian emigres in France, post 1917.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis- started sometime in July, and repeatedly picked up and set down, which is really not the best way to read a book that’s dense with literary and philosophical references that I’m not familiar with.