Snowflake Challenge, day 11 = Discworld
(Non-fannish folk, not to worry, I'm almost done spamming you with Snowflake posts, and should go back to my regular 2/week posting schedule once we're past the first half of January. Just bear with my annual spike of fannish enthusiasm for a bit more!)
Day 11: Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life.
Ah! A day I was waiting for, because I owe
lost_spook a Discworld ramble for the December meme, and was hoping I could combine it with a Snowflake day, as seemed likely. I've written about LotR as my One True Fandom before, and foundational fandoms by medium, so it's time to talk about something else, and Discworld is as good a candidate as any of the remaining ones.
The interesting thing about Discworld is how late an addition it is to my fandoms-that-changed-your-life roster. I "met" LotR when I was 13, and The Hobbit even younger. Babylon 5 was a high school obsession for me. I first read ASOIAF in college, I think, though I wasn't fannish about it until later. Harry Potter was college as well. But Discworld is probably my first "grown up" fandom: I discovered it the year after I got married (at 22, but I figure I get to count myself as an adult if I was married, right?)
I moved into B's little studio apartment, one of the nice features of which was that it was literally two blocks from the local library. We didn't have a washer/dryer, and laundry became one of my chores: I'd bring down a bunch of stuff, get it going in the laundromat that was also a 2-block walk from the apartment, and then drop by the library, take out something to read, and wait for the clothes to finish doing their thing while reading my library books. So I went through a LOT of library books all of a sudden, because I was just done with college and suddenly had all this time in which I didn't have to do homework. One of the books I found by basically grabbing anything that looked the least bit interesting off the SFF paperback shelves was Good Omens. I read it and laughed and quoted choice bits to anyone who would listen, and then went off to track down other books by the two authors, neither of which I'd ever read before (or so I thought at the time). I started with Gaiman, and fetched up on Stardust -- which I found underwhelming (the movie has made me like that book more, but it's still my least favorite of the Gaimans I've read) -- so I moved on to Pratchett.
The library had no Discworld paperbacks at the time, for some reason, but it did have a fairly random selection of hardcovers in ugly library binding. IIRC, Interesting Times was the first I picked up, because I think it had the most interesting title? It didn't win me over, and I probably spent a lot of it very confused by the whole elephants-and-turtle thing, but enjoyed it enough to take the next book in the random selection: Soul Music. That on wasn't a hit either (and Rincewind and Death are still my less-favorite sub-series). BUT THEN I came across The Fifth Elephant, and that's where I really fell for the series. The Watch books is where it was for me at the start, and I read through all of those that I could find. I concentrated on the Witches next (my second-favorite sub-series), and at some point around Night Watch or so was starting to read each new book as it came out (that would've been 2002, so it sounds about right. Eventually I went back and read all the other Discworld books, including Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic, although it took me until 2010 before I caught up on everything (The Last Hero was the last gap I was able to track down) and was just reading the new books as they were coming out. Well, OK, I guess at this point I'm no longer caught up on "everything", because I couldn't get through Raising Steam -- it just wasn't feeling like a Moist book to me, or a Pratchett book, and that made me far too sad to continue. And I've not read the Science of Discworld books or the other companions, but I think that's a different matter. Oh, and remember how I mentioned that Interesting Times wasn't actually my first Pratchett? Or even my first Discworld, for that matter: once I got to the trolls, I started noticing that the names and the way they talked was feeling oddly familiar -- and then the penny dropped. I'd actually read "Troll Bridge" in the After the King anthology that I got for my birthday back in 1992. But I didn't know it was Discworld then, so I don't think that counts. Anyway, at this point I've read 40 Discworld novels -- which, along with Nation, Dodger, The Carpet People and A Blink of the Screen -- definitely makes PTerry the author I've read the most books by.
But just reading a bunch of books, even a bunch of books I like very much, isn't itself life-changing. But Discworld was definitely more than that. As soon as I was into The Fifth Elephant, I was reading bit of it out to B at the breakfast table (the part about Sam and Sybil's marriage especially, because a lot of it rang so true to us as a newly married couple). At some later point, filling out a character meme, I had to come up with a favorite male and female character of all time, and realized that the latter was definitely Granny Weatherwax and the former as likely to be Vetinari as any of the other couple of strong contenders. My favorite antagonist / scariest villain of all time is also a Discwrold character: Vorbis from Small Gods. Pratchett has straight up ruined me for a number of tropes played straight (like the Rightful King Returns), and pretty much all other comic fantasy because, well... none of the other guys are Pratchett, are they. Conversely, "Pratchettian" is one of the highest compliments I can offer a book, and one of the solidest recs from others that I can receive. And it's not just my reading life Discworld has affected. At some point I noticed that I was using "likes Discworld" as a primary sieve for "should I become LJ friends with this person", and I can't say it's ever steered me wrong. (I know a couple of you are not in that category, and there are even a few who dislike his writing. I don't hold it against you, honest. :P) And when characters in other books quote Pratchett or make references to Discworld, I automatically like those characters (and their authors) more.
Not all of the books are masterpieces (though a lot of them are). I prefer the Wizards in small doses in general, and Rincewind mostly absent. The early books, up through Equal Rites, are more interesting to me as an artefact, a sort of proto-Discworld. Making Money and onward get shaky, for the understandable tragic reason of PTerry's decline. I had to force myself to get through The Fifth Continent (maybe it's funnier if one has been to Australia). But most of the books are very good, and a bunch are downright amazing.
lost_spook asked me for favorite books and characters, and this seems as good a place to list them as any. So here are my top 5, not in ranked order necessarily:
1. Going Postal -- I instantly fell in love with Moist, and with Vetinari's interaction with him (and Vetinari in general, a this stage of his rulership of Ankh-Morpork), and I've always liked the golems, and Adora Belle is also great, and basically I love everything bout this book.
2. Small Gods -- for Vorbis, and several very sharp quotes about religion and faith.
3. Lords and Ladies -- my favorite Witches book, which I think is the perfect showcase for Granny and Nanny both, and has Granny and Ridcully, and Magrat actually being interesting to me for once, and the "wasps vs bees" metaphor, which I love.
4. Night Watch -- my favorite Watch book that I only reread in little pieces, because ouch. (But also, young Vetinari!)
5. A Hat Full of Sky -- surprising me, but it's my favorite of the Tiffany books, and a worthy complement, I think, to the grown-up Witches (and the Feegles are fucking hilarious, OK).
Favorite characters -- I was going to make a list, but it's probably easier just to list them out: Vetinari and Granny at the top, Moist, Nanny, Vimes, Sybil, Tiffany, Ponder Stibbons and Ridcully, and I have a soft spot for Fred Colon, I find. That seems to be a top 10, and that's probably enough. (And like I said, Vorbis and Dios and probably a few others would qualify for special "awesome villain" note.
And let's round up with favorite quotes:
"Tyrant, remember?" -- Vetinari in Going Postal
"And not because you was that bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. [...] You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I'd have been a whole lot worse." -- Granny in Wyrd Sisters
- "It's murder now. Not assassination, not politics, it's murder." -- Vimes in Feet of Clay
- "You really intend to proffer charges?"
"I'd prefer violence," Vimes said loudly. "Charges is what I'm going to have to settle for." -- ditto
- "Yes, sir. I've given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of 'em, sir." -- ditto
- "Lord Vetinari had a very good memory. But everyone wrote things down, didn't they? You couldn't remember every little thing. "Wednesday: 3 p.m., reign of terror; 3:15 p.m., clean out scorpion pit..."
"[Vetinari]'d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He'd made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake." -- Feet of Clay
"I know about sureness," said Didactylos. [...] "I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?"
"It has to be done," Brutha mumbled. "So the soul can be shriven and--"
"Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher," said Didactylos. "All I know is, it was a horrible sight."
"The state of the body is not--"
"Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit," said the philosopher. "I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could"
- Small Gods
"It will help overthrow a tyrant."
"And then?"
"And then what?"
"And then you will smash it to bits? Smash it up? Take the wheels off? Get rid of the spikes? Burn the plans? Yes? When it's served its purpose, yes?"
"Well--"
"Aha!"
"Aha what? What if we do keep it? It'll be a... a deterrnet to other tyrants!"
"You think tyrants won't build'em too?"
"Well... I can build bigger ones!"
"Yes. No doubt you can. So that's all right then. My word. And to think I was worrying"
- Small Gods
- "Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it." - "The Sea and Little Fishes"
Not a lot of books can make me laugh, tear up, and ponder something deep and fundamental within the same book, often within a couple of pages -- by Discworld manages this in practically every book. I know so many of the bits by heart... and yet still regularly find jokes I'd missed (like that "Casanunda" isn't just a reference to Casanova, it's a PUN -- Casan-ova [over] --> Casan-unda [under] -- 'cos he's a Dwarf, see?) And I keep finding out that things which I thought were merely jokes are actually clever references. It's a series that becomes richer and more impressive (and, OK, also more groan-worthy) the more you read it and the more you know -- which is the best kin of book.
I don't tend to feel touched by celebrity deaths, but when Terry Pratchett passed, my whole flist was in mourning, and so was I. And when I read The Shepherd's Crown, you know which bit, I cried for most of my public transit commute and hid in the bathroom to bawl several times throughout the day.
But, to end on a more cheerful note: even though I'm heartbroken there won't be any more, Discworld books have stayed with me, of course, and will continue to stay with me. As will the friends I've made (and will continue to make, I don't doubt -- have I told you guys that Awesome Friend Ali is, of course, ALSO a Discworld fan, and Going Postal is her favorite book, too?), and the books written by authors who love Pratchett as much as I do, and you can see it in what they write.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1068484.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
Day 11: Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life.
Ah! A day I was waiting for, because I owe
lost_spook a Discworld ramble for the December meme, and was hoping I could combine it with a Snowflake day, as seemed likely. I've written about LotR as my One True Fandom before, and foundational fandoms by medium, so it's time to talk about something else, and Discworld is as good a candidate as any of the remaining ones.
The interesting thing about Discworld is how late an addition it is to my fandoms-that-changed-your-life roster. I "met" LotR when I was 13, and The Hobbit even younger. Babylon 5 was a high school obsession for me. I first read ASOIAF in college, I think, though I wasn't fannish about it until later. Harry Potter was college as well. But Discworld is probably my first "grown up" fandom: I discovered it the year after I got married (at 22, but I figure I get to count myself as an adult if I was married, right?)
I moved into B's little studio apartment, one of the nice features of which was that it was literally two blocks from the local library. We didn't have a washer/dryer, and laundry became one of my chores: I'd bring down a bunch of stuff, get it going in the laundromat that was also a 2-block walk from the apartment, and then drop by the library, take out something to read, and wait for the clothes to finish doing their thing while reading my library books. So I went through a LOT of library books all of a sudden, because I was just done with college and suddenly had all this time in which I didn't have to do homework. One of the books I found by basically grabbing anything that looked the least bit interesting off the SFF paperback shelves was Good Omens. I read it and laughed and quoted choice bits to anyone who would listen, and then went off to track down other books by the two authors, neither of which I'd ever read before (or so I thought at the time). I started with Gaiman, and fetched up on Stardust -- which I found underwhelming (the movie has made me like that book more, but it's still my least favorite of the Gaimans I've read) -- so I moved on to Pratchett.
The library had no Discworld paperbacks at the time, for some reason, but it did have a fairly random selection of hardcovers in ugly library binding. IIRC, Interesting Times was the first I picked up, because I think it had the most interesting title? It didn't win me over, and I probably spent a lot of it very confused by the whole elephants-and-turtle thing, but enjoyed it enough to take the next book in the random selection: Soul Music. That on wasn't a hit either (and Rincewind and Death are still my less-favorite sub-series). BUT THEN I came across The Fifth Elephant, and that's where I really fell for the series. The Watch books is where it was for me at the start, and I read through all of those that I could find. I concentrated on the Witches next (my second-favorite sub-series), and at some point around Night Watch or so was starting to read each new book as it came out (that would've been 2002, so it sounds about right. Eventually I went back and read all the other Discworld books, including Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic, although it took me until 2010 before I caught up on everything (The Last Hero was the last gap I was able to track down) and was just reading the new books as they were coming out. Well, OK, I guess at this point I'm no longer caught up on "everything", because I couldn't get through Raising Steam -- it just wasn't feeling like a Moist book to me, or a Pratchett book, and that made me far too sad to continue. And I've not read the Science of Discworld books or the other companions, but I think that's a different matter. Oh, and remember how I mentioned that Interesting Times wasn't actually my first Pratchett? Or even my first Discworld, for that matter: once I got to the trolls, I started noticing that the names and the way they talked was feeling oddly familiar -- and then the penny dropped. I'd actually read "Troll Bridge" in the After the King anthology that I got for my birthday back in 1992. But I didn't know it was Discworld then, so I don't think that counts. Anyway, at this point I've read 40 Discworld novels -- which, along with Nation, Dodger, The Carpet People and A Blink of the Screen -- definitely makes PTerry the author I've read the most books by.
But just reading a bunch of books, even a bunch of books I like very much, isn't itself life-changing. But Discworld was definitely more than that. As soon as I was into The Fifth Elephant, I was reading bit of it out to B at the breakfast table (the part about Sam and Sybil's marriage especially, because a lot of it rang so true to us as a newly married couple). At some later point, filling out a character meme, I had to come up with a favorite male and female character of all time, and realized that the latter was definitely Granny Weatherwax and the former as likely to be Vetinari as any of the other couple of strong contenders. My favorite antagonist / scariest villain of all time is also a Discwrold character: Vorbis from Small Gods. Pratchett has straight up ruined me for a number of tropes played straight (like the Rightful King Returns), and pretty much all other comic fantasy because, well... none of the other guys are Pratchett, are they. Conversely, "Pratchettian" is one of the highest compliments I can offer a book, and one of the solidest recs from others that I can receive. And it's not just my reading life Discworld has affected. At some point I noticed that I was using "likes Discworld" as a primary sieve for "should I become LJ friends with this person", and I can't say it's ever steered me wrong. (I know a couple of you are not in that category, and there are even a few who dislike his writing. I don't hold it against you, honest. :P) And when characters in other books quote Pratchett or make references to Discworld, I automatically like those characters (and their authors) more.
Not all of the books are masterpieces (though a lot of them are). I prefer the Wizards in small doses in general, and Rincewind mostly absent. The early books, up through Equal Rites, are more interesting to me as an artefact, a sort of proto-Discworld. Making Money and onward get shaky, for the understandable tragic reason of PTerry's decline. I had to force myself to get through The Fifth Continent (maybe it's funnier if one has been to Australia). But most of the books are very good, and a bunch are downright amazing.
lost_spook asked me for favorite books and characters, and this seems as good a place to list them as any. So here are my top 5, not in ranked order necessarily:
1. Going Postal -- I instantly fell in love with Moist, and with Vetinari's interaction with him (and Vetinari in general, a this stage of his rulership of Ankh-Morpork), and I've always liked the golems, and Adora Belle is also great, and basically I love everything bout this book.
2. Small Gods -- for Vorbis, and several very sharp quotes about religion and faith.
3. Lords and Ladies -- my favorite Witches book, which I think is the perfect showcase for Granny and Nanny both, and has Granny and Ridcully, and Magrat actually being interesting to me for once, and the "wasps vs bees" metaphor, which I love.
4. Night Watch -- my favorite Watch book that I only reread in little pieces, because ouch. (But also, young Vetinari!)
5. A Hat Full of Sky -- surprising me, but it's my favorite of the Tiffany books, and a worthy complement, I think, to the grown-up Witches (and the Feegles are fucking hilarious, OK).
Favorite characters -- I was going to make a list, but it's probably easier just to list them out: Vetinari and Granny at the top, Moist, Nanny, Vimes, Sybil, Tiffany, Ponder Stibbons and Ridcully, and I have a soft spot for Fred Colon, I find. That seems to be a top 10, and that's probably enough. (And like I said, Vorbis and Dios and probably a few others would qualify for special "awesome villain" note.
And let's round up with favorite quotes:
"Tyrant, remember?" -- Vetinari in Going Postal
"And not because you was that bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. [...] You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I'd have been a whole lot worse." -- Granny in Wyrd Sisters
- "It's murder now. Not assassination, not politics, it's murder." -- Vimes in Feet of Clay
- "You really intend to proffer charges?"
"I'd prefer violence," Vimes said loudly. "Charges is what I'm going to have to settle for." -- ditto
- "Yes, sir. I've given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of 'em, sir." -- ditto
- "Lord Vetinari had a very good memory. But everyone wrote things down, didn't they? You couldn't remember every little thing. "Wednesday: 3 p.m., reign of terror; 3:15 p.m., clean out scorpion pit..."
"[Vetinari]'d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He'd made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake." -- Feet of Clay
"I know about sureness," said Didactylos. [...] "I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?"
"It has to be done," Brutha mumbled. "So the soul can be shriven and--"
"Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher," said Didactylos. "All I know is, it was a horrible sight."
"The state of the body is not--"
"Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit," said the philosopher. "I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could"
- Small Gods
"It will help overthrow a tyrant."
"And then?"
"And then what?"
"And then you will smash it to bits? Smash it up? Take the wheels off? Get rid of the spikes? Burn the plans? Yes? When it's served its purpose, yes?"
"Well--"
"Aha!"
"Aha what? What if we do keep it? It'll be a... a deterrnet to other tyrants!"
"You think tyrants won't build'em too?"
"Well... I can build bigger ones!"
"Yes. No doubt you can. So that's all right then. My word. And to think I was worrying"
- Small Gods
- "Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it." - "The Sea and Little Fishes"
Not a lot of books can make me laugh, tear up, and ponder something deep and fundamental within the same book, often within a couple of pages -- by Discworld manages this in practically every book. I know so many of the bits by heart... and yet still regularly find jokes I'd missed (like that "Casanunda" isn't just a reference to Casanova, it's a PUN -- Casan-ova [over] --> Casan-unda [under] -- 'cos he's a Dwarf, see?) And I keep finding out that things which I thought were merely jokes are actually clever references. It's a series that becomes richer and more impressive (and, OK, also more groan-worthy) the more you read it and the more you know -- which is the best kin of book.
I don't tend to feel touched by celebrity deaths, but when Terry Pratchett passed, my whole flist was in mourning, and so was I. And when I read The Shepherd's Crown, you know which bit, I cried for most of my public transit commute and hid in the bathroom to bawl several times throughout the day.
But, to end on a more cheerful note: even though I'm heartbroken there won't be any more, Discworld books have stayed with me, of course, and will continue to stay with me. As will the friends I've made (and will continue to make, I don't doubt -- have I told you guys that Awesome Friend Ali is, of course, ALSO a Discworld fan, and Going Postal is her favorite book, too?), and the books written by authors who love Pratchett as much as I do, and you can see it in what they write.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1068484.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).