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I've never read a Tiffany Aching book, for some reason. Going to treat myself after Christmas.
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Dec 22, 2022 17:35
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Xander77 posted:You just like the characters enough not to notice the flaws (random new love interest with no characterization, a villain that's menacing on paper whom the plot treats like an utter random nuisance). Thud (for example) is generally regarded as one of the best Discworld books. It also really helps that almost all of the central characters are relatively new ones. Vimes and Carrot and Vetinari and such have been around forever, and if something's a bit off with them you're probably going to notice it. All the characters in the Aching books are new to the series, aside from Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax and they're both in supporting roles where they don't get a ton of camera time.
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Dec 22, 2022 20:39
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I've been thinking about it and Tiffany's love plot isn't really so hamfisted. It develops through a few scenes and encounters as he goes from an acquaintance to a friend to an intimate. It's not Pride and Prejudice, sure but...
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Dec 23, 2022 04:16
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Gambrinus posted:I've never read a Tiffany Aching book, for some reason. Going to treat myself after Christmas. The first three (?) are blinders.
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Dec 23, 2022 04:26
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CommonShore posted:I've been thinking about it and Tiffany's love plot isn't really so hamfisted. It develops through a few scenes and encounters as he goes from an acquaintance to a friend to an intimate. It's not Pride and Prejudice, sure but... Terry is terrible at writing romance. He seems too cynical to give in to it.
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Dec 23, 2022 04:41
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Kesper North posted:Terry is terrible at writing romance. He seems too cynical to give in to it. Maybe yeah. Sam and Sybil had an interesting romance though. Perhaps he was just trying to give romantic representation to awkward, cynical people! Anyway speaking of Sam and Sybil I'm about 100 or so pages into Snuff and the premise is now on the table and the plot just is starting to show itself a little bit. I have to say, I like the premise/maguffin of this one so far - it's like Vimes has been transported from one genre of detective fiction to another: what happens when the hard boiled rough and tumble copper finds himself as the protagonist of a Dorothy Sayers novel? I suspect that he won't remain the country aristocrat amateur sleuth for too long...
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Dec 24, 2022 05:06
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Gambrinus posted:I've never read a Tiffany Aching book, for some reason. Going to treat myself after Christmas. Look up when it is, and read the short story "The Sea and Little Fishes." If you can't get a hard copy, there are alternative ways to access it, and it's really good.
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Dec 24, 2022 05:18
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Beachcomber posted:Look up when it is, and read the short story ONE YEAR LATER posted:The first Pratchett I read was a short story featuring Granny Weatherwax, then I went and started from The Color of Magic.
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Dec 24, 2022 05:30
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Kesper North posted:Terry is terrible at writing romance. He seems too cynical to give in to it. Hark at me using the present tense. GNU Terry Pratchett
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Dec 24, 2022 05:31
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Kesper North posted:Terry is terrible at writing romance. He seems too cynical to give in to it. Other folks already mentioned Sam and Sybil, but I rather like Moist and Adora's romance in Going Postal. I think he when he wrote romance it worked best when it was kinda odd.
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Dec 24, 2022 20:29
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Beachcomber posted:Look up when it is, and read the short story with a little personal horn tooting, i did a reading of this story on youtube if you would prefer someone you dont know reading the story to you with silly voices and the like https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMPq5PkQzH7M3y0KDPAjSzBE9revzvPxY
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Dec 24, 2022 21:39
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The bit in (i think?) The Fifth Elephant where both Sam and Sybil both have a tacit agreement not to bring up how much the other snores hits me different now that I'm married. That and her trying her best to make him socks and him wearing them because she made them. Terry can't do meet/cute but he can do romance like that.
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Dec 25, 2022 00:34
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Happy Hogswatch to all!
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Dec 25, 2022 17:23
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quote:Wherever people are obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach ... and wherever people are inanely credulous, thematically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather!
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Dec 25, 2022 23:26
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citybeatnik posted:The bit in (i think?) The Fifth Elephant where both Sam and Sybil both have a tacit agreement not to bring up how much the other snores hits me different now that I'm married. He’d be shite at Valentine’s Day cards but great at wedding speeches.
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Dec 28, 2022 00:25
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Ok I finished Snuff last night. It took the turn out of the Dorothy Sayers mode about 5 pages after I posted about it, and Vimes started the shakedown again, so I'll describe the premise as the rough-and-tumble gumshoe visiting the setting usually inhabited by the sly English aristocratic detective. It's pretty fun in that respect. Aside from the fish-out-of-water or character-out-of-subgenre parody, it's a pretty standard Vimes story, where the self-assessed unrefined brute of a copper is once again baffled by the fact that he's somehow the most civilized guy in the room. The goblins are a perfectly fine addition to the setting, and the plot works well enough, though the "dyk that other races are people too" is something Terry had worked through already with ... uh every non-human sapient species in Discworld. Some of the fantasy solutions to plot problems (see: Wee Mad Arthur's teleportation) are a bit much (I'm not a fan of the practice of introducing an insurmountable plot problem and immediately solving it with a new, fantastic solution) but it's Discworld and not The Three Body Problem that we're discussing here, so I'll shrug at that. The whole plot resolves itself, again, along the lines of the standard Vimes-Vetinari formula of the world being kept safe in a tenuous balance of power by the enlightenment of the fortunately good tyrant, in a compromise that leaves every stakeholder unsatisfied but allowing the system as a whole able to move forward. The villain, and Vimes's relationship to him, felt to me like it was revisiting Night Watch, which again is another point where the book is only weak in its relation to the other books, not a flaw in its own right. Likewise with Vimes's relationship to the younger watchmen. We've simply been there before. The freshest part is probably Vimes's family life and his relationship with Young Sam, which imo is a solid development of previous books and not just a retracing. I don't think it's a "bad" book and any weaknesses that it has probably owe more to it being the 40th Discworld book than anything else, and the characters and setting having been stretched too thin: much of what we've seen, we've seen before, and the new characters necessarily displace the things that we like about the setting and subseries, e.g. we don't get much of Cheery or Detritus, but Willikins is a delight. It would probably be more enjoyable for someone who hadn't read Night Watch and Thud, if not for the fact that many of the fantasy techs don't get explicated in Snuff because they had been more thoroughly explored elsewhere. I somehow doubt that it'll be on my list of rereads, though - the witches books, especially Lords and Ladies, the early watch books, Reaper Man and Hogfather are my favourites (do you see the thematic pattern with my recent posts adoring the Tiffany Aching books?). Starting Raising Steam today some time.
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Dec 28, 2022 18:39
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All of the problems that begin in Snuff come terribly to a head in Raising Steam. "Stretched too thin" is the words to describe it - Snuff was the first Discworld book I just plain didn't like, and I have since softened up to it, but Terry's preachiness dial really gets maxed out in it. And I don't mean the obvious stuff like "slavery is bad", it's like the "why don't you fine young ladies GET A JOB" stuff. Incredibly grateful that The Shepherd's Crown exists, because if Raising Steam was the final Discworld book it would be a poor sendoff for such an amazing series.
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Dec 29, 2022 04:44
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Youremother posted:All of the problems that begin in Snuff come terribly to a head in Raising Steam. "Stretched too thin" is the words to describe it - Snuff was the first Discworld book I just plain didn't like, and I have since softened up to it, but Terry's preachiness dial really gets maxed out in it. And I don't mean the obvious stuff like "slavery is bad", it's like the "why don't you fine young ladies GET A JOB" stuff. I read that more in terms of them emancipating themselves from Uncle Vanya's gloomy trousers than telling the avocado toast eaters to get a job
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Dec 30, 2022 06:12
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I'm about 40 pages into RS now and... Too many irons in the fire so far.
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Dec 30, 2022 06:22
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Resurrecting favorite quotes just because I didn't see this one posted in the last 50 or so pages I just read through.pterry posted:Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor. Also, the best band name in Soul Music is "Dwarves With Altitude"
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Dec 30, 2022 09:02
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Offler posted:Resurrecting favorite quotes just because I didn't see this one posted in the last 50 or so pages I just read through. Wrong, it's "We're Certainly Dwarves"
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Dec 30, 2022 09:13
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Wrong, it's "We're Certainly Dwarves"
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Dec 30, 2022 09:15
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DWA for life!
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Dec 30, 2022 10:38
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Wrong, it's "We're Certainly Dwarves" This took me like twenty years to get the joke
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Dec 31, 2022 13:54
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The_Doctor posted:Happy Hogswatch to all!
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Dec 31, 2022 20:01
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Quote-Unquote posted:This took me like twenty years to get the joke Same. Just a bit longer than me realizing he's Casan-unda instead of Casan-ova because he's a dwarf.
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Dec 31, 2022 20:10
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tribbledirigible posted:Same. Just a bit longer than me realizing he's Casan-unda instead of Casan-ova because he's a dwarf. Oh my god.
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Dec 31, 2022 22:23
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I've been trying to figure out the joke in his name and I was way.... Over thinking it. (Casa? House? House nunda? Nova? New? Nunda?)
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Dec 31, 2022 22:33
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Wrong, it's "We're Certainly Dwarves" Okay explain it for me Oh goddamit I just got it
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Dec 31, 2022 22:44
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Dec 31, 2022 22:48
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Adeptus posted:Oh my god. Best thread on the forums, just for reactions like this.
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Jan 1, 2023 02:22
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Let's not forget about what "millenium hand and shrimp" comes from
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Jan 1, 2023 02:30
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Quote-Unquote posted:This took me like twenty years to get the joke A lot of Soul Music was like that - I had to check the L-space annotations when I got the internet. I got my copy of Soul Music signed in Waterstone's in Cardiff when the paperback came out. I think it's an Oxfam now, or a Pieminister.
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Jan 1, 2023 02:30
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Just particle men, doing what particle men can
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Jan 1, 2023 02:34
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Adeptus posted:Oh my god.  Both the Casanunda and We're certainly Dwarves.
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Jan 1, 2023 21:16
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The reference I feel proud of myself for getting is the Selachii and Venturi families who are rivals in Ankh-Morpork high society. Selachii is the clade for most sharks, and the Venturi Effect is used for some jet pumps. I have no idea where I picked up the knowledge for that one, it sounded familiar when I was reading Night Watch and about a year later things clicked but they're not topics I know well. Bruceski fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 02:16
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Bruceski posted:The reference I feel proud of myself for getting is the Selachii and Venturi families who are rivals in Ankh-Morpork high society. 
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Jan 4, 2023 03:52
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Quite a bit farther into Raising Steam now and I've put my finger on how it's different from the rest - it has huge sections of tell rather than show, and at times it's structured more like a narrative history than like a novel. Elsewhere, too it's guilty of pointless-seeming side plots/events which are just poorly integrated. I've just gotten through the part where Moist and Harry King arrange the expulsion of the bandits from Quirm. This is one of the worst-integrated scenes in any Discworld book as the problem of the bandits is introduced only one or two chapters before and then resolved without any difficulty and without any clear implications, mostly by side characters who we haven't met before and probably won't meet again. Now I'm sure that all of this has something to do with the Quirmian goblins and Moist is up to something in that way, but it was just so blandly integrated into the unfolding story that it seems pointless. That isn't to say that I'm not finding things to like so far, but it's just uneven and worse in sum than nearly any other book - it reminds me of The Colour of Magic, honestly, the way it bounces between scenes and then just leaves them and their characters in the dust behind.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:27
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Raising Steam really has the burden of being The Final Discworld Book! so it's crammed packed with as much stuff as possible to remind you that our heroes are all really cool. It's the start of a new Discworld era, it's a cross-continent tour, it's got action, it's got commentary on religious fundamentalism, it wants to be a Vimes book and a Moist book and a novel about a new protagonist! Too much to deal with at one time.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:50
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Youremother posted:Raising Steam really has the burden of being The Final Discworld Book! so it's crammed packed with as much stuff as possible to remind you that our heroes are all really cool. It's the start of a new Discworld era, it's a cross-continent tour, it's got action, it's got commentary on religious fundamentalism, it wants to be a Vimes book and a Moist book and a novel about a new protagonist! Too much to deal with at one time. was it known when it was written/published that it was carrying that burden?
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Jan 4, 2023 06:01
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