Finished Perdidio Street Station by Mievelle, loved it. Going to start Anathem by Stephenson this weekend.

I always felt that Rincewind was more of a plot device, and that the Discworld itself was the main "character" in the first couple of books. I never minded him so much, though he's certainly no Sam Vimes or Esme Weatherwax. The newer books are a bit weird to me. I only recently read Gulliver's Travels, and was surprised at the similarities between that and pratchett's last couple of novels, style-wise. I'm actually pretty disappointed that somewhere along the line he discovered about books having chapters. I think the Tiffany Aching books are to blame there, but I will forgive because as noted, they are great. Even if they are YA, they're still great. Harry Potter is also YA, and no one minds!

Just today borrowed the Sookie Stackhouse books from a friend to start - should be fun and mindless.

Jack - I am glad you're enjoying The Metamorphosis. I found it incredibly irritating, which I feel was part of the point, so well done Kafka. I have never tried Dostoyevsky... is it as hopeless and bleak as everything else from the Russians of that period? (Blah blah genius - also terminally depressing.)

I love Death! Reaper Man is my favourite Discworld character.

I guess I can believe that about Rincewind, but going back to read those books his annoyingness just kind of eclipses everything else. That said, I still enjoyed Interesting Times a lot, I think Pratchett had figured out about satire by then. I was a little skeptical of the newer books (I used to mainly enjoy the Vimes ones most) but between Thief of Time and The Truth, which I think are 2 of his best, I've come around.

Also, it's really interesting reading these books after not quite grasping them when I read them as a teenager and noticing just how muslim the dwarves are. The Fifth Elephant and Thud! particularly come to mind here.

trying to finish the J. D. Robb part of Remember When (the part republished as Big Jack) while reading..other In Death books/random books downloaded from a forum with tons of links to downloadable books/and other books I spot and read. I'm procrastinating and I hate it.

I love the JD Robb books!

I'm trying to collect those early reprints of the first novels..so I'm hunting sale book shops before hitting FullyBooked and completing my series. I started with PB, too, so I collect those. heh.

Speaking of hunting thrift shops...

The original Dragonlance Books.

I think what's really good about Pratchett's satire is that even when it's obviously satire, it's not a direct metaphor for the real world. Thud! is very obviously a satire of racism and ethnically-driven violence, but the fact that it doesn't actually correspond to a specific real-world conflict makes it avoid heavy-handedness.

But how are the dwarves muslim? The Klatchians are the obvious middle-eastern analogues.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot of P. G. Wodehouse lately (Jeeves & Wooster, Blandings, etc.). He is incredibly funny and I can see why he's revered so much as the father of modern comedic writing.

With all this love for Pratchett, I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Good Omens", even it it was in collaboration with Neil Gaiman (another amazing author. Loved "American Gods").

My wife and I are currently reading the Gor series, by John Norman. Old books, but they are still rather entertaining. Before that, I was reading the Warlord series, by Bernard Cornwell. A little dark, but very VERY good historical fiction. I'm a bit of a nut for historical fiction (love Judith Tarr. Find her books).

I want to get the newest Terry Brooks novel, as I am a die-hard fan of Shannara.

Nope. He has a very dim view of humanity, but in a teaches-you-a-lesson way.

Well, the dwarves are muslim because:

1. They come from a foreign country, and when they move to London, they sometimes still end up agglutinating into their own little communities rather than assimilating.
2. They have a very different religion and mythology from the Londoners, who have a sort of pragmatic polytheist Christianity analogue (EDIT: I say Christian, but it's more about how the Anglicans don't mind importing foreign Hinduism and Buddhism and whatnot and even occasionally trying to claim they're compatible, the Omnians are the real Christian fanatics of the setting). Not only is it different on its own merits, but their imams ("deep dwarves" I think?) are seen as having a lot of influence, disproportionately so to priests in the native religion in the modern day.
3. They make their women cover up. Feminine clothing is heavily looked down on. Originally began as just a generic dwarf gag but developed into an analogy for the burka, as demonstrated by the rant from the villain at the end of the Fifth Elephant.
4. Although there are fairly respectable, modernised dwarves, the atmosphere they create by "respecting dwarves who keep up the old ways even though they don't" is pretty reminiscent of criticisms made by Western philosophers that special treatment of even mild religious weirdness allows more radical and destructive religious weirdness to thrive, because you're not cutting out the root cause.
5. Also at the end of the Fifth Elephant, the Low King (who is fairly anti-Western world) calls Vimes out on unconsciously assuming people and their morality are sort of defined by their respect for Ankh Morpork's increasing disregard for tradition and progressive value system and thus being somewhat thrown off when both the good guys and the bad guys turn out to be traditionalist muslims. You could probably make the case that anti-communist sentiment and earlier anti-axis sentiment suffered from the same sort of thing but I think it reads much more accurately as a rather pointed jab against even the more progressive Westerners in the real world.

You're right about Klatch, but they're really more Arabic than Muslim. It's like he strained the two things apart. There are elements of things like the Gulf War in Jingo (and it actually seems like the second Iraq War comes up too, even though the book predates it, which agrees with what you said about how it's not always intended as a direct metaphor) but the dwarves becoming muslim is more of an element of post 11/9 cultural paranoia. (Compare the dwarves with Saudi Arabia as opposed to, say, Egypt, perhaps.)

Hmm, well, I haven't read The Fifth Elephant in a long time, but while I think your interpretation of the deep dwarves in that book is probably correct I'm not sure that it really applies to dwarves in general. The coming from a foreign country, forming their own separate/underground communities with race loyalties, etc can apply to pretty much any minority group.

Well, no, the dwarves have evolved over time, it's only really in the Fifth Elephant and Thud they got particularly muslim. Most of the time they don't really need to fit that role, just like how Uberwald doesn't need to be Germany or Romania or Eastern Europe generally all the time, sometimes it can just be vampires and werewolves and so on.

I take back anything I ever said about liking Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Well, not exactly. It is an amazing book. The part I hate is writing out all the answers to the questions for our book study then realizing by some cruel fate I've completely messed them up.

I've been re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire in preparation for when Dance shows up on my Nook. Also watching Game of Thrones on HBO.

Anathem was amazing. I want to live in a math.

Reading another of Mark Haddon's - The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Very fascinating and well worth reading.

Necro.

OMG great book, read this in German several years ago and it was just as awesome. Read his second in English about 18months ago.



So, I have recently finished reading Miracles and Idolatry by Voltaire and also Candide.

FRICKEN brilliant. He is SO sarcastic and witty. I would MOSTEST recommend him.

I have laughed sveral times while reading the short topics in "Miracles and Idolatry".

*errant post* *delete me*