Soul Music

Soul Music 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Let's go home. I'm not sure I'm that interested in music anymore. It's a world of hertz." (p. 407)

This novel is part of the Death sequence of Discworld novels, but in some ways it felt like part of the industrial revolution series. It was about the creation (at least temporarily) of " Music with Rocks in."

It was an entertaining book and brought in a new group of characters that I hadn't seen before. It also featured "Cut my own Throat" Dibbler which was interesting as he is usually a minor walk-on character. 

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall challenge. 

Turtle Recall Planning

There are 10 books left in the Discworld series that I have not read (not counting the .5 volumes). I signed up to read 5 books for the Turtle Recall Challenge in 2022 and decided that I should plan out my reading a bit. I have been reading randomly through the series for years, so I have a book left here and there in the various sub-series. For a change I am going to read the remaining books in order within the sub-series. I have made my list and requested the books from the library so I should get one basically every-other month.

1. Soul Music (Death #3) is on my reading pile now.
2. Eric (Rincewind #5) requested for April
3. Jingo (City Watch #4) requested for June
4. Pyramids (Discworld #7) requested for August
5. Interesting Times (Rincewind #5) requested for October

That will complete the Death sub-series and the City Watch sub-series for me and leave these books still to look forward to:

1. Small Gods (Discworld #13)
2. The Last Hero (Rincewind #7)
3. Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld #28)
4. Lords and Ladies (Witches #4)
5. Maskerade (Witches #5)

Turtle Recall Wrap-up

A Dance with Books hosted the 2021 Turtle Recall Discworld Reading Challenge. At the beginning of the year I had read 21 of the 41 Discworld books and I committed to the Klatch level of the challenge which meant reading 6-10 books. I also set it as a goal to finish the 2 books I hadn't read in the Tiffany Aching sub-series.

I successfully completed this challenge with these 10 books:

1. Equal Rites
2. Guards! Guards!
3. The Wee Free Men (one of the Tiffany Aching books)
4. A Hat Full of Sky (the other Tiffany Aching book I hadn't read before)
5. Mort
6. Men at Arms
7. Wyrd Sisters
8. Reaper Man
9. The Fifth Elephant
10. Hogfather

That leaves me 10 more Discworld books to read.

Hogfather

Hogfather 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Besides dealing with the importance of belief in the Hogfather this novel takes a wider view and considers the tooth-fairy, and bogeymen, and similar characters. Ultimately it is exploring what it means to be human. Many Discworld novels focus on one character or group but this one is pretty evenly balanced between Death and the Wizards of Unseen University. A few familiar watchmen even make an appearance.

Pratchett raises a lot of very valid questions (this is one of my favorite parts of his books) in ways that kind of sneak up on you. 

“Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snow-plough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.”

“The phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider 'and that someone is me'.”

This book was on my Literary Christmas list and also counts toward the Turtle Recall Challenge.

The Fifth Elephant

The Fifth Elephant 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 30th DiscWorld book I have read (there are 41 books in the series, not including the "half" ones). This story is part of the City Watch sub-series, which is one of my favorites. It takes place mostly in Uberwald, which gave the usual characters an opportunity to observe the contrasts with Ankh-Morpork. It also gave Pratchett a chance to create some new scenery.

"As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small squad of not very efficient soldiers. Its builder had not been thinking about fortifications. He'd been influenced by fairy tales and possibly by some of the more ornamental sorts of cake. It was a castle for looking at. For defense, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer." (p. 164)

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall Challenge. 

Reaper Man

Reaper Man 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”

This book follows Mort in the Disc-world Death sub-series. It is funny, philosophical, and full of adventures. Typical Terry Pratchett. It is my 6th book read this year for the Turtle Recall Challenge. 

Wyrd Sisters

Wyrd Sisters 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three witches work together (or as together as you get with witches) to make sure the right person ends up on the throne. This is the 6th Discworld novel and the second in the witch sub-series. I love the practicality of the witches. Also how they are always works-in-progress.

“Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.”

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall challenge.

Men at Arms

Men at Arms 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone’s really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made the effort, and he believes that so strongly it burns like a flame which is bigger than he is. He’s got a dream and we’re all part of it, so that it shapes the world around him. And the weird thing is that no one wants to disappoint him. It’d be like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe. It’s a kind of magic.” ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

This book is about how the Watch came to be the diverse force it is in later books under the leadership of Commander Vimes (and C. Carrot) In it we learn the backstories of several watchmen, and Gaspode the dog. There is also a murder spree going on which the Watch investigates. It was a typical Disworld novel, fun and full of clever observations on how the world works. 

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall 2021 Challenge.

Mort

Mort 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book (#4 in the Discworld series) introduces us to Death and to his apprentice, Mort. It is typical of Pratchett's novels in that it is a tale of adventure with a hero who really doesn't know what he's doing and makes it up as he goes along (this works out some, but not all, of the time) and includes a lot of commentary on the absurdity of human life. The theme of this particular book seems to be "There is no justice, there is just us." Mort struggles through the book, especially at the beginning, with figuring out which is right or wrong in the situations Death deals with. The guidance he gets from Death about this gives the story a bit of a philisophical quality.

I am in the midst of reading another book about the peace negotiations in Paris in 1919 which is probably why this bit about history jumped out at me:

"Mort thought that history was thrashing around like a steel hawser with the tension off, twanging backwards and forwards across reality in great destructive sweeps. History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always--eventually--manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time." (p. 135)

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall 2021 Challenge.

A Hat Full of Sky

A Hat Full of Sky 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book completes the Tiffany Aching sub-series for me (it is the 2nd of 5--I read them out of order). I liked learning the back-story of the various young witches, especially Petulia whom I liked in the later books. 

As always with Pratchett's witch books (actually most of his books) this one is full of wise advice and observations about how to live mixed into the escapades:

• “Rain don’t fall on a witch if she doesn’t want it to, although personally I prefer to get wet and be thankful.” “Thankful for what?” said Tiffany. “That I’ll get dry later.” (Granny Weatherwax)
• “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
• “There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
• Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.”
• “It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.”
• “You couldn't say: It's not my fault. You couldn't say: It's not my responsibility. You could say: I will deal with this. You didn't have to want to. But you had to do it.”

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall 2021 Challenge. There are 41 main Discworld novels (I am not counting the in-between numbers ones) and as of this book I have read 20 of them. That is a life-time count, not for this year's challenge.

The Wee Free Men

The Wee Free Men 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read several books in the Tiffany Aching series, but had not read this original one before. It was interesting to learn the back story of the relationships Tiff has with various people on the chalk. Tiffany is a wonderful, practical girl:

“Yes! I'm me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!”

The Nac Mac Feegle are among my favorite Discworld characters and they were their wonderful rowdy selves in this adventure. I especially loved that the most horrible monster of all--the one that makes their swords glow blue--is lawyers.

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall Challenge.

Guards! Guards!

Guards! Guards! 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 8th Discworld book and the start of the City Watch sub-series. Having read a bunch of the later City Watch books it was fun to learn the 'origin stories' of some of my favorite characters. This book was also an excellent adventure with dragons and damsels to be rescued. It was also filled with Prachett's usual wry observations of the world. It even had a romance (I omitted the name to avoid spoiling things).

"And then it struck ___ that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn't do worse, but then, he couldn't do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn't getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn't, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city. And eventually, under seige, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done--unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own."

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall challenge. 

Equal Rites

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the Discworld series and the first in the Witches sub-series. 
It begins with the arrival of a great wizard in a village where the birth of the eighth son of an eighth son is occurring. The wizard is dying and passes his power, and his staff, to the infant in the last moment of his life. There is one small hitch with his plan though: that eighth son was a daughter.

This novel was an entertaining adventure, as the daughter sets out to be a wizard despite the "fact" that girls can't be wizards. It was also very funny. Pratchett has a wonderful way of backing into familiar phrases.

“The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbours.”

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall challenge. 

Turtle Recall 2021

A Dance with Books is hosting a Discworld Challenge in 2021 and I am definitely in. How can I resist a challenge called Turtle Recall? At this point I have read 21 of the 41 Discworld books and am going to commit to the Klatch level which means reading 6-10 books. There are readalongs planned for February, April, June, August, October, and December (The Hogfather) which I will participate in if they end up being books I haven't read yet. (and can get hold of). 

I always do better with challenges if I don't plan too specifically what I will read, but I am going to aim for finishing the 2 books I haven't read yet in the Tiffany Aching sub-series.

Best Books of the Year So Far

This week The Broke and the Bookish asked for the top 10 books read so far this year.

Looking back through my list I decided these were my favorites so far:

1. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (a 5 star re-read)
2. Alena by Rachel Pastan
3. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
4. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
5. Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 
6. Transatlantic by Colum McCann
7. Dodger by Terry Pratchett
8. Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois
9. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
10. Truth in Advertising by John Kenney

Review: Dodger

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel was a great melding of history, fantasy, and humor. Unrelated to the Discworld novels this book includes Charles Dickens and an assortment of other actual people in Victorian London mixing with assorted fictional characters, some familiar (Sweeney Todd for example) and others new to this book. I listened to an audio book version of this narrated by Stephen Briggs who did a wonderful job of bringing the story alive.

Review: Good Omens

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oddly, when you combine Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman you seem to get Douglas Adams (but with fewer space ships). As I really like all 3 of these authors it is not surprising that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I thought the relationship between the demon and the angel was interesting and the parallels among the various sets of characters was well done. Also, as I expected, the book was quite funny.