Things I read during July

[roadrunnertwice]

Things I Read During the Second Half of July

Mostly, I just spent my time freaking out. ♥♥♥ Also, I kind of packed most of my books into boxes partway through the month. Keep an eye out for the August report, though -- my sibs and I recover from major stress by deploying the ol' "two foot stack of YA from the library" coping strategy.

But I did reread Terry Pratchett -- Feet of Clay (july 18) as kind of a drag-chute after Iron Council. This is the one with the golems, and it was one of the first Discworld books I'd read. It's not among the top tier,* but it's a pretty decent City Watch book. Somewhat heavy-handed in its treatment of Sam Vimes' class guilt, but with lots of nicely creepy stuff, especially once golems start suiciding with all those "CLAY OF MY CLAY" messages.

New characters in this one: Dorfl, Cheery Littlebottom. Maybe Constable Downspout. Plus, I think this was Constable Angua's second book, and she's one of my favorites. (Shut up, I like werewolf girls.)

Oh, and I'm about a third of the way through that inaugural adult readthrough** of The Fellowship of the Ring. It'll be going on hold as soon as I crack HP7 and Whiskey and Water on That Ole Westbound Train, but don't let that fool you; I'm enjoying it a hell of a lot.

(And it's much drier and wittier than I remember it being. Everyone else went ahead and copied the ethereality and ineffable beauty of Tolkien's elves, but precious few ever bothered to copy the bits where they giggle about how borrrrring hobbits are.)

Final ratio of [words of body text] / [words of footnotes]: ~.62. I get a prize now, right?


_____
* In my estimation? Probably something like Small Gods (see "Champion, undisputed"), Night Watch, Lords and Ladies... maybe Men at Arms (need to re-read it). After that, it's an essentially arbitrary interleaving of Granny Weatherwax and City Watch books. Rincewind books mostly suck, and the standalones like Soul Music usually have some good jokes, at least one clever idea, and an untenably fragile plot built around some arbitrary force that doesn't have any impact on the larger worldbuilding project once it's been safely dealt with in the denouement. (They're canon fanfic, really, kind of like the Bount arc in the anime version of Bleach.)

Do you know, I haven't read any of that newer YA subseries yet. I'll certainly get around to it; I like the idea of exploring another persistent character/location corner of the Disc, especially one that's relatively fresh. Some of the older ones are hampered by decisions Pratchett made when he wasn't nearly as good a novelist.

And unrendered enjoyed 'em.

** Right, timeline. Dad read us the whole dam' series, starting with The Hobbit, when all three of us were Quite Young, and it kind of put the fire in our brains. There were a whole bunch of things in our childhood pushing us towards the Fantastickal and the Scientifically Fictional, but that episodic, several-camping-trip reading of LotR was about as early and as significant as one could ask for.

Then, eventually, intermediate school and middle school. I managed to make it all the way through The Hobbit, but faltered partway through Fellowship,*** and never quite found time to attack it again. Which is funny; it's the ur-epic that, frankly, informed my entire sense of everything a Proper Story ought to be -- from what, preschool on?**** -- and I really only had that one juvenile listen at it. Plus the movies, once I was in college.

Actually, I think I'm going to stop thinking about that for now, because the closer I look at it, the more it boggles my mind.

*** Although I made at least one, maybe two passes through the entire Shannara trilogy,***** getting all the way through Sword when I was still in third grade. Make of that what you will.

**** That reminds me, I need to talk timeframes with someone who had a less elastic sense of time during that period.

***** Best described as Tolkien methadone. These were the books that Dad moved on to once LotR was finished and all three of us were asking for more! more! more! And come to think of it, they probably played an identical role in his own reading career.

They have less lasting interest, and significantly less literary merit, but I have to admit that they were some pretty poppin' adventure stories at the time.

Comments

[nightswatch.livejournal.com]

Going Postal is also top-tier Discworld, at least in my estimation. Pratchett is at his best, for me, when he's examining the matter-of-fact delusions that humanity puts in place to get on with life, and Going Postal does a great job of that with one of Pratchett's more memorable one-off protagonists as well. If you've read The Truth, it was like what that could've been if it had just been much tighter and funnier.

[roadrunnertwice]

Ooh, and go figure I haven't read that one. Well, it's on the list now.