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sebmojo posted:I liked it. The super-devout novice assassin sacrificing a goat in the dorm room was hilarious. I could so watch a series made about life at the Assassin Guild school.
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Sep 29, 2013 00:04
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sebmojo posted:I liked it. The super-devout novice assassin sacrificing a goat in the dorm room was hilarious. It's more everyone taking the piss out of him because he says his prayers. There's a lot of Tom Brown's Schooldays in that section. Assassins do kill people, but as is pointed out most wealthy people send their sons there for the quality of the non-lethal education. It's thus quite hilarious that most student assassins die in the course of training that is completely irrelevant to them.
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Sep 29, 2013 00:51
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Jedit posted:It's more everyone taking the piss out of him because he says his prayers. There's a lot of Tom Brown's Schooldays in that section. Having said its his worst standalone book, you guys are making it sound better than I remember (and it has been may years since I read it); I might have to pick it up again and give it another go
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Sep 29, 2013 12:06
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Jedit posted:It's more everyone taking the piss out of him because he says his prayers. There's a lot of Tom Brown's Schooldays in that section. I'd always assumed that children sent to the Assassin's guild purely for the quality of the education didn't participate in the assassin training, but I guess that doesn't make much sense. Still, there must be a certain amount of cachet for an aristocrat to have an heir who can read ancient Ephebian and knows whether it's polite to use the fish knife or the dessert fork to inhume a man at dinner.
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Sep 29, 2013 13:19
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Plus, if you're rich and powerful enough, at some point somebody is probably going to pay an assassin to kill you, so knowing their tricks is useful. And it does solve the too many spare heirs problem if some of them aren't very bright.
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Sep 29, 2013 18:21
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Fideles posted:Having said its his worst standalone book, you guys are making it sound better than I remember (and it has been may years since I read it); I might have to pick it up again and give it another go
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Sep 30, 2013 00:44
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Feeble posted:Having read it for the first time 5-6 months ago I can safely say it's pretty decent. Certainly a dip in quality but by no means bad. I have downloaded onto my kindle now so I will read it again this week and see if I find it any better this time around
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Sep 30, 2013 20:58
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I loving love Pyramids and have always been confused by people who don't. It strikes me that I own a pretty random assortment of Discworld books and I don't think I've ever read any two in the right order, maybe that'll be the reading challenge for next year to go through the series start to finish.
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Oct 1, 2013 00:12
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Corrode posted:I loving love Pyramids and have always been confused by people who don't. It strikes me that I own a pretty random assortment of Discworld books and I don't think I've ever read any two in the right order, maybe that'll be the reading challenge for next year to go through the series start to finish. I am halfway through Pyramids and I may be forced to admit I was wrong. Still not his best work but it is funnier than I remember
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Oct 2, 2013 12:55
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In case anyone else is interested, The Long Earth is currently $1.99 this month on the US kindle store. I had been going back and forth about buying this book, but decided to jump in at that price.
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Oct 4, 2013 19:22
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I have now finished Pyramids and I was definitely wrong, there are some truly classic Pratchett moments in there. You Bastard is definitely the best character in the book.
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Oct 6, 2013 15:26
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If Pyramids has any faults it's that the best sequence is right at the start, but there are many other highlights.
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Oct 7, 2013 00:28
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Arbite posted:If Pyramids has any faults it's that the best sequence is right at the start, but there are many other highlights. The start's cool, but the bit where the dead pharaohs start waking up is great too.
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Oct 7, 2013 02:08
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So, I'm a pilot in training. Recently, in class, we were going over theory of flight, and the topic turned to jet engines and how they operate on a venturi principal. Now, see, I knew what a Selachii is from way back in the days I was obsessed with being a marine biologist(Ah the dreams of children), so I may have lost composure when I finally got the joke. BTW, it's incredibly hard to explain the joke to a group of trainee pilots who are 8 years younger than you....
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Oct 7, 2013 03:37
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bunnyofdoom posted:So, I'm a pilot in training. Recently, in class, we were going over theory of flight, and the topic turned to jet engines and how they operate on a venturi principal. Now, see, I knew what a Selachii is from way back in the days I was obsessed with being a marine biologist(Ah the dreams of children), so I may have lost composure when I finally got the joke. I remember my "oh, wow" moment with that. I used to race sailboats and one of the ways of getting water out uses the venturi principle and is referred to as the "venturi", and being a nerdy kid I looked that poo poo up and hey, it's used in jet planes too, loving awesome! I didn't get the joke until I was about 20 when I was drunk and bored and watching some show about sea craetures with friends, and then I laughed and laughed. How do you even start to explain why? "So there's this fantasy series and there's these two families..." and pretty much anyone has stopped listening by that point.
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Oct 7, 2013 05:25
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There's also an opera singer mentioned in Maskerade named Dame Tessituri. Tessituri is the Italian word for "texture", and in opera it's used to refer to the quality of a singer's voice.
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Oct 7, 2013 10:38
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AlphaDog posted:I remember my "oh, wow" moment with that. TRy explaining West Side Story
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Oct 7, 2013 17:20
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bunnyofdoom posted:TRy explaining West Side Story Ow...
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Oct 7, 2013 21:25
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I like Pyramids except when Ptraci is around. The first third (assassins) and the last third (mummies) are awesome, but the middle part has waaaaaay to much Ptraci. You Bastard is loving awesome, though.
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Oct 8, 2013 04:39
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http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2013/10/announcing-the-discworld-collectors-library/ New hardcover editions (with new art) for UK. They look awesome! edit: None past Jingo though, Gollancz only has the rights to the first 21 books. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 13:21
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Hedrigall posted:http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2013/10/announcing-the-discworld-collectors-library/ "The contract is for the UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada)." Well that's just not nice UK 
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Oct 10, 2013 13:41
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Interesting cover art.
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Oct 10, 2013 14:46
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Honestly, I prefer the Kidby art.
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Oct 10, 2013 14:52
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Jesus, it's the Mondo posters of literature. I'm glad I own those books already, so won't feel tempted.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:04
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Oh my those are tempting.
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Oct 10, 2013 20:37
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John Dough posted:Oh my those are tempting. I don't really find them all that tempting. I definitely prefer the Kidby covers. Maybe it's nostalgia though.
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Oct 10, 2013 21:45
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I'd find it more tempting if they had the rights to do all 40 books 
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Oct 10, 2013 22:50
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I want the Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters ones as posters.
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Oct 11, 2013 05:48
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Looks like there may be hope after all
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Oct 11, 2013 13:01
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A good day for humanity really, I hope Terry knows and is feeling a lot better  .
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Oct 11, 2013 13:33
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I'd love a poster of all four Death covers. Soul Music and Hogfather, especially.
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Oct 11, 2013 16:56
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Science of Discworld 4 REALLY does not feel like he wrote it. The dialogue feels forced and the characterizations feel...also forced, as if it's fanfic. No, not fanfic, because fanfic already assumes one knows the characters. It's written as if it feels the need to remind people of the characters they're talking about...like a ghostwriter or something hastily thrown together based upon Pratchett notes. It wasn't funny and the librarian felt like a self-insert. And the actual PLOT was just boring, the fundamentalist religious types were barely there enough to be strawmen, much less a credible threat. I wanted to like it, too.
Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 09:39
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Did it feature the sentence ' "Ook" sighed the librarian as he unsheathed his katana...'? I reread Small Gods this week, and I think its probably his best book. My favourite discworld books are the one-shots like this or Pyramids or Thief of Time where it feels like he either has a point or is letting his imagination lead it, rather than shoe-horning in another "Nobby Nobbs does not much resemble a human" joke.
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Oct 17, 2013 19:38
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Eau de MacGowan posted:Did it feature the sentence ' "Ook" sighed the librarian as he unsheathed his katana...'? In some ways, yes... Also, it has lots of footnotes, but they're not...Pratchett footnotes. They're not funny, they're actually footnotes. As in [Rincewind remembered this event in small gods]* *See Small gods That's a little detail that is actually pretty telling. Instead of using the footnotes for the usual extra jokes, they're flat out just boring footnotes. Either someone convinced Pratchett that he needed to remind his readers of his own references, or...well, I'm not sure there is an or, other than the possibility that he really had to phone it in without any attempts at humor. "Add footnote to bottom, "see Small gods". Or it could lend credence to the theory that it's someone trying to EMULATE Pratchett's style but not quite grasping it, such as what the footnotes are ACTUALLY for: jokes.
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Oct 17, 2013 19:51
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Mister Roboto posted:In some ways, yes... Or that he's using real footnotes on this one because it's a Science book, like he did in the previous three SOD books that were all written before his diagnosis.
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Oct 17, 2013 20:09
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I left my copy of Guards Guards on a train today. Later on in the day I walked into a tree. Overall a bad day.
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Oct 17, 2013 23:33
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Jedit posted:Or that he's using real footnotes on this one because it's a Science book, like he did in the previous three SOD books that were all written before his diagnosis. There were lots of footnotes in SOD1 that were humorous and not just "see book x."
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Oct 18, 2013 04:20
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Mister Roboto posted:There were lots of footnotes in SOD1 that were humorous and not just "see book x." I liked the idea of SOD, but struggled to get along with them; felt like there was a lot of pushing the whole humanist agenda throughout, though maybe I'm being unkind. I'm an atheist-leaning-humanist, but I think Dawkins is a oval office so perhaps that's just where me and Terry disagree.
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Oct 18, 2013 23:15
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Finding out Pratchett thinks highly of Dawkins would be the second most depressing thing I've ever heard about him.
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Oct 18, 2013 23:37
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Shelvocke posted:I liked the idea of SOD, but struggled to get along with them; felt like there was a lot of pushing the whole humanist agenda throughout, though maybe I'm being unkind. I'm an atheist-leaning-humanist, but I think Dawkins is a oval office so perhaps that's just where me and Terry disagree. Just out of curiosity, where do you live? There's some cases where the standard accepted way things are in Britain would be pushing the atheist/humanist agenda in America.
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Oct 19, 2013 04:18
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