|
I just finished re-reading Monstrous Regiment, largely because it was the book people were talking about in this thread most heavily when I caught up. I feel like it's a really great read but that, sadly, the ending just sort of hangs there. Everyone being acknowledged as soldiers is nice and I'm always happy with the last scenes back at The Dutchess but, I guess because mainly when I want to read Discworld I'll pick up a Watch book or a Death, everything in MR felt comparatively low-stakes. It's a good story with some quality characters and a decent message (that... also gets slightly muddled at the end) but I can't see myself coming back to it over and over the way I have some of my favorites. Did anyone else have a similar reaction?
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 01:25 |
|
|
# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:32 |
|
Ccs posted:But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable That doesn't happen anyway? They have limitless Earths, after all...
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 02:05 |
|
VagueRant posted:There's so many Night Watch quotes beyond that. God, Vimes is so loving good. Truth. Terry Pratchett posted:He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy’s face was white in the gloom. Might be my favorite thing Pratchett ever wrote. We never find out what happened in that last room, only that more than thirty years later Vimes remembers exactly what's in there and has no interest in seeing it again. Terry was always very sparing with tackling really dark stuff, but whenever he did, drat...
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 07:06 |
|
And on a slightly light note, the Every drat Day monologue, which is also so, so good.quote:Vimes climbed back up the barricade. The city beyond was dark again, with only the occasional chink of light from a shuttered window. By comparison, the streets of the Republic were ablaze.
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 07:15 |
|
Terry Pratchett was so loving smart.
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 11:52 |
|
That's my favorite part of Night Watch except for the very last sentence, which is pretty clumsy. But while Pratchett's a great writer, it's not because of his prose on a sentence-by-sentence basis.
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 11:53 |
|
Skippy McPants posted:Terry was always very sparing with tackling really dark stuff, but whenever he did, drat...
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 12:08 |
|
My Lovely Horse posted:The best thing is how this is probably the darkest scene he's ever written and it still has the "steadied himself" line in it. The really impressive bit, is that the unabridged passage contains an interruption from Death and is maybe the most tonally dissonant thing Pratchett ever wrote, but that last line still has enough punch that it somehow doesn't kill the scene. FactsAreUseless posted:But while Pratchett's a great writer, it's not because of his prose on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I can't think of a single prolific writer who has really, truly, crisp sentence-by-sentence construction. That sort of commitment to prose is something a lot of working writers just don't have time for, because it can only be achieved through obsessive rewriting. That's not a bad thing mind you, I have a ton of respect for people with the gall to beat their head against that wall until every bit of text flows like poetry, but take's a different kind of madman than Pratchett himself was. He was more the--Oh my god there are so many, get them out of my head makeitstoptoomuch!--kind of writer.
|
# ? Aug 11, 2015 20:18 |
|
Great, now I have an urge to re-read Watch books but no time to do so. :-/
|
# ? Aug 12, 2015 01:02 |
|
Vimes and Detritus is a combination that just plain didn't happen often enough. And he never had the time to get around to Scouting for Trolls... Feet of Clay, take it away. quote:'Incidentally, Sergeant, I've got a report here that a troll in uniform nailed one of And, of course, the coda... quote:'Dis is der ole privy wot we don't use no more, you can use it for mixin' up stuff, it the only Nobody remembers it because it falls down the cracks of Jolly Littlebottom and Beaky Littlebottom, but it's absolutely fantastic.
|
# ? Aug 12, 2015 01:40 |
|
I think Thud had a brilliant Vimes/Detritus moment where they slightly clash on how people react and deal with Trolls, Thuds a great book too. The hide dis hammer line in Feet of Clay is brilliant. The books needed more Dorfl.
|
# ? Aug 12, 2015 03:23 |
|
I approve of all this quote posting. Which is why it makes me so sad that Equal Rites hasn't really thrown up any quotes so far. I'm a little past halfway through and I just haven't gotten into it at all, it hasn't held my attention, I don't care much for Esk or Granny or their weird little adventure, and haven't noticed anything particularly interesting or funny. Maybe it was a bad idea to go from Prime Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment) and a subject I'm interested in (soldierin'), to very very early Pratchett and a subject I find annoying (magic!). But on the other hand, I thought Mort was super good and that's the very next one, so, I don't even know.
|
# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:29 |
|
Mort was when Terry got the hang of plots. Interestingly, Esk is so named because he wanted a short name for the character that would be quick to type out repeatedly and, as he was pondering what to call her, his gaze fell on his Esc key.
|
# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:35 |
VagueRant posted:I approve of all this quote posting. Have you gotten to the Zoons? I liked that concept.
|
|
# ? Aug 15, 2015 18:42 |
|
Ccs posted:Has anyone read "The Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter? The premise is basically humans suddenly discover they can step into alternate parallel worlds without any humans in them, so they start colonizing these places and exploring and building new societies. But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable, a huge amount of the population decides to settle these new worlds like old-school pioneers; farming and making stuff like candles and tools from scratch. If you found Long Earth interesting, you should check out Rumfuddle by Jack Vance. It does parallel worlds really well. Also, Chronicles of Amber does it well too, but that's more a fantasy thing. I won't recommend Dark Tower, because despite what my username might suggest, I was bored shitless by book 3. Lots of other people think it's great though, so I might have to give it another chance... tooterfish fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 15, 2015 |
# ? Aug 15, 2015 19:28 |
|
I started Raising Steam in the hope that people were exaggerating the problems with it. ...they weren't. That makes me sad.
|
# ? Aug 15, 2015 19:57 |
|
There a release date for the last Tiffany book yet?
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 07:56 |
|
Ccs posted:Has anyone read "The Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter? The premise is basically humans suddenly discover they can step into alternate parallel worlds without any humans in them, so they start colonizing these places and exploring and building new societies. But I just can't adjust to the premise that instead of corporations mining these worlds for resources and making humans very comfortable, a huge amount of the population decides to settle these new worlds like old-school pioneers; farming and making stuff like candles and tools from scratch. For a lot of people, life in the modern world goes something like this: Wake up, go to work, do meaningless poo poo for 8+ hours, go home, have a few hours for yourself and family, go to bed. Repeat every weekday of every week of every year until you're 65+. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a significant percentage of the population looked down the barrel of a 30-40 year stretch of shuffling papers and decided that they'd rather go play pioneer.
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 08:35 |
|
fluppet posted:There a release date for the last Tiffany book yet? The 27th.
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 10:23 |
|
VagueRant posted:I approve of all this quote posting.
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 13:52 |
|
I like Equal Rites a lot, but it's a sad moment when you realise that, standing on its own, it really never needed to be any more than this speech that he gave at 80s conventions, somewhere between The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.quote:The archetypal wizard is of course Merlin, advisor of kings, maker of the Round Table, and the only man who knew how to work the electromagnet that released the Sword from the Stone. He is not in fact a folklore hero, because much of what we know about him is based firmly on Geoffrey de Monmouth's Life of Merlin, written in the Twelfth Century. Old Geoffrey was one of the world's great writers of fantasy, nearly as good as Fritz Leiber but without that thing about cats. He then goes on, rather amusingly, to point out the growing ursupation of Merlin's place in culture by Gandalf, something which I would say is now complete thanks to Ian McKellen waving his enormous staff (it's got a knob on the end) around everywhere.
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 18:29 |
|
He can't bugger a hedgehog though.
|
# ? Aug 16, 2015 19:53 |
|
I've been tearing through the Discworld books during unemployment and the local library's generous having of most of them. I went through published order because why not. Just finished I Shall Wear Midnight and am on to Snuff. Feeling kind of broken hearted that this is it for my fix of Vimes, Carrot and company (well, maybe they appear in Raising Steam, but not as focus). Maybe I'll get some Weatherwax/Ogg/Magrat in the last Aching book, but I feel like I'm missing a lot without them around anymore. And I never read this series much until two years ago when I slowly started going through them. But with this long, extended tear of them, I feel really sad that I'm almost done with them. I love the god damned writing in these. While The Watch is my favorite group, the Witches had some of the best quotes or points about anything. "She had been deep in conversation with the fool, although it was the kind of conversation where both parties spend a lot of their time looking at their feet and picking at their fingernails. Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrasment" It just hit the sap in me perfectly. And the moment in Carpe Jugulum (I don't have it handy, so I can't quote it) where Granny asks what horrible thing the husband did, and hears nothing as the answer and replies that's why she couldn't make HIM choose.
|
# ? Aug 20, 2015 23:36 |
|
Interested to see how accurate I am: What's he ever done to me, that I should make him choose?
|
# ? Aug 20, 2015 23:44 |
|
rejutka posted:Interested to see how accurate I am: Close. quote:'You still reckon I should've asked Mr Ivy?' she said.
|
# ? Aug 21, 2015 00:25 |
|
Jedit posted:Close. This is one of my favorite single quotes ever. Probably tied with "Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."
|
# ? Aug 21, 2015 03:13 |
|
I was re-reading Watch books, and the transition from Night Watch to Thud to Snuff is depressing. :-/
|
# ? Aug 22, 2015 15:30 |
|
Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett?
|
# ? Aug 22, 2015 17:05 |
|
I haven't read too much latest Pratchett but it's gotta be that. Early Pratchett is just unpolished, late is a constant reminder how much better things should have been.
|
# ? Aug 22, 2015 17:10 |
|
VagueRant posted:Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett? only pratchett i stopped reading was was the latest
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 00:41 |
|
VagueRant posted:Bit of a tasteless question, but what's worse - Earliest Pratchett or Latest Pratchett?
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 01:41 |
|
(Although, I think some of it isn't Alzheimer's so much as an increasingly-large web of relationships and established characters who all have to be reintroduced for new readers each time, frequently requiring a new joke about an old thing.)
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 02:12 |
|
One issue with late Pratchett is that it reads like a first draft. No good book is written alone, and a lot of what makes Pratchett great is how refined his writing is. For example, someone should have had a discussion with him about why a character who was written as a pacifist is killing a bunch of bandits. The disease may have made that kind of collaboration and review much more difficult, which is a shame.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 02:51 |
|
Konstantin posted:One issue with late Pratchett is that it reads like a first draft. No good book is written alone, and a lot of what makes Pratchett great is how refined his writing is. For example, someone should have had a discussion with him about why a character who was written as a pacifist is killing a bunch of bandits. The disease may have made that kind of collaboration and review much more difficult, which is a shame. He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed. His last books were only rough proofed because that was the best he could do when he had to have them dictated to him, and he wasn't strong enough to spend the months doing iterative revisions that he used to.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 05:01 |
|
Liquid Communism posted:He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed. His last books were only rough proofed because that was the best he could do when he had to have them dictated to him, and he wasn't strong enough to spend the months doing iterative revisions that he used to. Jesus Christ. To have passed away a happy man at peace with himself is the least I could've ever wanted for Pterry
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 05:06 |
|
Liquid Communism posted:He lost the ability to read a year or two before he passed. It was Pterry's capacity to read that was lost, not his ability. What happened was that his visual cortex was attacked, causing a variable loss of data output. The way he described it was like a reflection in a broken mirror with missing pieces, except some of the "missing" pieces were just blurred. And because it wasn't the eyes not seeing but rather the brain losing the ability to continuously tell him what they saw, the pieces would move around. This meant he couldn't adjust to a new focal point, because sometimes he'd have perfect central vision and mess around the outside while other times he'd be blind outside his peripheral vision. (Also it was only about eight months before the end that it got really bad. He'd certainly been planning to attend last year's Discworld Con as late as July; most people found out he wasn't coming at the Opening Ceremony.)
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 10:38 |
|
The issues with his later books are a combination of: - Dictation changing his writing style, especially with the sudden appearance of large monologues. I suspect dialogue was much more fun to dictate. - Lack of editing. The refusal to slow his release schedule and give the books a second run hurt them. You see this even before he starts dictating: Thud is riddled with errors. Basically I think he needed more support than he got in terms of saying "this isn't ready to be published."
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 14:35 |
|
FactsAreUseless posted:Basically I think he needed more support than he got in terms of saying "this isn't ready to be published." Wasn't his daughter one of his primary editors? I could it being really difficult to criticize your father's writing when he was in that state.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 14:54 |
|
Mokinokaro posted:Wasn't his daughter one of his primary editors? I could it being really difficult to criticize your father's writing when he was in that state.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 15:24 |
|
|
# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:32 |
|
I'm actually re-reading Raising Steam at the moment and one thing I've noticed in this book is that it's got a breakneck pace, I don't think any other Discworld books pushes through things this quickly, but then I suppose the nature of the railway means it has to take place over a longer course of time.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2015 18:40 |