Booklog
...so now melissajm has some idea how deep my to-be-read pile is.
Anyway, Wintersmith. I enjoyed it; I pretty much always enjoy Pratchett, who is very good at hitting the sweet spot for me between making fun of humanity for being weird and then being frequently secretly fond of it after all. Wintersmith is actually the third book about a young witch named Tiffany Aching, which is officially positioned as YA. Other than the fact that the main character is a teenager, I failed to see any particular difference between this book and the adult books I've read by him, though, which makes me kind of wonder what kind of marketing theory lies behind the difference. (I suspect it may just be as simple as the age of the main character after all.)
So I didn't have some background, but I was able to get into the swing of things all right. I quite liked Tiffany; there's a niggling feeling in my gut that she's a Sue and I shouldn't, but the heck with you, niggling feeling. She's exasperatedly practical, smart and talented but not the most of either in the book, and she has a pet mobile cheese. A stinky mobile cheese. And she learns an important lesson! Which is that it's not good when personifications of major seasons get a crush on you. Useful information to learn and know.
I suspect there's a conversation to be had about Pratchett's portrayal of men's and women's magic in the Discworld books; I haven't read enough of them to be sure, but my impression is that they're presented as quite different, such that the women come off as more magical rather than engineers-with-magic-powers, but on the other hand the women live in huts while the men get a big old university with servants. Ah well. I also suspect the Scottish stereotypes of the Wee Free Men could bug, though I'm too American to really have any connection with ethnic stereotypes as they play out in Britain.