Another Pratchett book??!

My wish list just got longer...

Pratchett has an interview with Neil Gaiman you might like to get into.

Striker Pratchett

I got Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals for Christmas last year, and just pulled an all-nighter to read it. I've given up criticizing Pratchett's work, except in egregious cases of cut-and-paste composition no editor should tolerate, considering the heavily soldered seams — Going Postal comes to mind. U.A., on the other toe, is a gripping romp composed of three or four long strips of narrative laid side by side and clamped together at the denoument. There is Juliet's Tale, A Likely Story, Glenda and the Nutt Case, Foot the Ball With Wizards, Foot the Ball With Shove & Mayhem, High Hats and Dudgeon, Bully Lads, Old Sam's Obligatory Mention, Havelock and Margolotta Make Out, Fashionistas At Large and the usual slurry of Pratchett's Best Orangutan Glue holding it all together. Good book, good night's read. Wit 6, Wisdom 4.

Wearing Midnight

Pratchett's been uneven lately — you could feel the stitches in his crazyquilt Going Postal, e.g. — and I still have to go back and read Unseen Academicals — but I think I'll make an effort on this one.

Everything except buy it for myself before Christmas.

Jie Revorse chews dust...

For someone who's not impressed (I may have said this once upon a time) with Star Ocean First Departure, I've spent enough time replaying it. Hngh. I'm just trying to fill in the movie gallery, and now I've got all but one. Then too, it bugged me first time around that I couldn't even find some of the optional characters, like Pericci and Welch Vineyard. Welch's hut is well-hidden (heh) in the forest, and Pericci is impossible if you overlook an eensie weensie little detail (especially winzig on the PSP screen) early early in the game. Still can't find Ioshua Jerund, and can't get Mavelle "Don't Call Me Erys" Froessen. Or Ashlay (sounds like GWTW). L8R...

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It's Like This

Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk.
        — Linux fortune cookie

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Fortunately, Pratchett's Unseen Academicals is starting to pick up a bit. Very slow start (is it Massive Pussy or Massive Posse, and is this a sign of slowly spalling faculties?) I tried re-watching Hogfather, but this Sky TV sort-of-like-Christmas two-parter is a Pratchett shrine, so the tone is hyper reverential and the pace is slower than ... slower than ... (just say it!) ... ok, molasses! Although Pratchett is not dead yet, it's worth reminding his Massive Pussy (oh, I get it now...inside joke) that Mt. Rushmore is actually reserved for just four U.S. Presidents. If they try to add Ronnie Rayguns or, Lords help us, a banana-eating Librarian, George will crack in two and fall off.

The Three Wise Men of the Dianaic Age

Let's face it, nobody would read George Eliot if she weren't a woman named George, nobody would ever read Jane Austen if she weren't Required, and nobody reads Dickens when they can watch five or six recent flavors of A Christmas Carol on television. Mercifully, thankfully, 99.9% of the English speaking world is clueless about Dame Edith Sitwell, and if claws scuttle across anybody's silent floors, it is only in the abyssal brains of a few shell-shocked English majors stunned by the Dianaic Age.

For all that, reading is not dead. The Three Wise Men of recent English literature are J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling. Nobody from the Ivy Leeks even comes close.^†

Of course, prophetic utterance like this requires neither proof nor elaboration, so I simply invite you to check back in 100 years and see who's still reading who^*. But the proximate cause of this little whoop was my concluding weekend, in which I read Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series (trilogic in form, so far; I invite you to Google your own self, and by all means buy from amazon.co.uk to get the gnarly book covers — goes for Rowling, too.) Great literature is read first without reverence, but a second reading of much Pratchett^‡ places him among the finest (and sneakiest) moralists of the modern age.

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^†This includes the 0.0000166 percent of web-bound immoderati who are even marginally aware of Dory Dockertoe.

^*Aaaaauuuuuuummmmmmmm... — Swami Prabhavananda
 Aaaaauuuuuuuuuu... — Hermione Granger

^‡A third reading makes you wonder why he cast a streetwalkin' floozy yclept (*ahem*) "Tiffany Aching" in the role of a 13 year old witch, but, hey...! If Henri-Georges Clouzot can cast his randy old lady opposite Yves Montand (Le salaire de la peur, 1953) as a fun-loving heart of gold 40-year-old loli named "Linda," why not?