I've got a large and growing pile of books that need to be read but if you keep coming back looking for the next Bookshot, you'll be waiting awhile. I've taken a mild detour to visit an old literary friend- I'd call these books guilty pleasures but the writing is too good for that.
Yes, I've taken a detour back to Discworld and if you haven't dipped your toes in the satirical fantasy world of Terry Pratchett, you, kids, are missing out in a major, major way. The British Press ladles out praise for this man by the spoonful and it's entirely likely he's going to carve himself out a place in the Mount Rushmore of fantasy authors before he's done. But here's the rub: Pratchett isn't just good fantasy, he's good literature- he's quality writing and every so often I get the itch to plunge back into his books and just can't resist.
So, I'm back.
Since 1983, Pratchett has churned out 39 Discworld Novels. I haven't read them all and the neat part about this is you don't have too either. I know what you were all thinking- you were all thinking: 'Holy Shit, 39 books? No waaaaaaaaaay!' Yeah, not so much- this is actually several loosely connected series' woven into one overarching world/universe that just keeps getting bigger and bigger all the time. My two favorite storylines are The Witches and The City Watch books which break down thusly:
The Witches: Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum
The City Watch: Guards! Guards!, Men At Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, Snuff
There are several other storylines clustered in Discworld that I haven't quite gotten into quite as much as these two. I'm not entirely sure why- but these two storylines clicked the most for me whereas the others didn't. One of these days, since Father Cigar has pretty much every Discworld book ever written (the bottom two books in the picture are actually on loan from the library of mis padres... 'on loan' meaning of course, I just purloined them for a bit.) I'm going to have to sit down and take a run at a few of them just to see if I can get back into them.
The Witches I find to be a fun storyline because of the sheer brilliance of Wyrd Sisters (take the three witches from Macbeth and build a story around them? Pretty ballsy to mess with Shakespeare but Pratchett pulls it off in hilarious fashion- Lords and Ladies drops the witches into a plot line bears a passing resemblance to A Midsummer Night's Dream, while The Phantom of the Opera floats by in Maskerade.)
The City Watch seems to resonate even more with me, especially now that I work in Law Enforcement. When Sam Vimes remarks in one of the books that the the trouble with policing is that you just can't turn it off, I know exactly what he means.
I know some of you might be rolling your eyes at witches, wizards and trolls and dwarves but this isn't your average fantasy. What makes Pratchett's Discworld so accessible is that it's a reflection of our own world- and what makes science fiction and fantasy work so damn well to me is when they tell a story that sparks the imagination and says something about the world we live in today.
Pratchett's Discworld does just that-- if you haven't checked him out, you should.
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