Non-Theater Catch-Up

Inspite of my recent crazy-busy theater schedule, I have been able to read and watch a few other non-theater things:

I rewatched the film Cowboys and Aliens, which stands up well to a second viewing.  (Earlier POST.)

I also watched for the first time the art film Toast, based on an autobiographical novel by food writer Nigel Slater.  A young teen boy, a budding foody, lives in a household where dinner might be - seriously! - three cans heated in a pan of boiling water.  He loves his mother, but she can't cook.  After her death, his unsympathetic and bullying father hires a cleaner (played by Helena Bonham Carter)... who eventually becomes his hated stepmother.  But boy can she cook!

Enjoyed it.  Terrific performances all round and Bonham Carter is just mesmerizing.

On the book front, I finally finished Thinking Fast and Slow (earlier POST) which was fascinating and, I think, important.  It's written in layman's language (barring a few "heuristics" etc.) with the ideas presented from an economist's view (natural, what with that Nobel Prize), but if you can tease out smaller fragments from the dense argument, the facts of how humans make decisions are vitally important to anyone who wants to be persuasive: salesmen, artists, designers of all kinds, writers of prose or poetry... everyone basically.  Read!

As lighter fare, I started rereading the Chalionese series by Lois McMaster Bujold, starting with The Curse of Chalion, which features one of my all-time favorite heroes.  Also rereading an early Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth.  I'm enjoying it (and it's the only Heyer on my NOOK), but my real favorites are her later books like Frederica, Venetia, A Civil Contract, or Friday's Child whose paperback copies I've read to rags.  I'm not usually a ROmance reader, but Heyer is witty, frothy, and seriously researched.

Heyer, Austen, Wodehouse, and Pratchett - Public domain images messed with.

When life gets difficult or harried, Heyer's books are in my short stack of refreshing breaks, along with P. G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Jane Austen.  These disparate writers all share the knack of creating engrossing characters and worlds where there exists a wryly humorous (and sometimes inky-dark) view of human foibles...  Their unembittered laughter can polish up my own smudged perspective.

Pratchett's Latest - Snuff

I've just raced through the new Terry Pratchett Disc World R novel, Snuff.

Another adventure starring Sam Vimes (my favorite character) is very welcome.  The humor, invention, and social commentary I expect from Pratchett is here, as well as cameo appearances by other beloved characters.  (Vetinari cursing the newspaper crossword is a hoot.)  None of the new characters introduced, however, particularly caught my fancy, except Tears of the Mushroom.  Her big moment onstage is wonderful.  Young Sam!  I didn't think of his as a "new" character at first, but he's grown so much that he really ought to count as new and delightful.

Image of Commander Samuel Vimes borrowed from ozdw.com

The moral of the story... is maybe a little too obviously a moral.  Perhaps less integrated artistically than in some other Disc World books.  Then again, I read Snuff so quickly, gobbling the plot - as I usually do - that it may come into better balance on rereading - as I always do a Pratchett book.  His novels repay rereading.  There are layers and details and jokes that are easier to catch once the driving question of "What happens next?" is satisfied.

I'll probably reread other books in the series too now; the development of Wilikins the butler here, for instance, casts a new light on earlier appearances.

A good addition to the epic of Disc World.  Highly recommended for Pratchett fans.  (Who don't need me to tell 'em that and are, anyway, busy reading as I type this).  For new readers, I suggest starting at Guards! Guards! (the first Sam Vimes book) or maybe with  more of a stand-alone like Truth, which may be my favorite.

Correction!

In my recent post on Terry Pratchett's novels I suggested starting to read with Men at Arms, saying it was the first of the novels featuring watchman Sam Vimes.  Wrong!  How could I confuse that?  Obviously the FIRST Vimes book was Guards! Guards!  Silly me.

On a Terry Pratchett Tear

I'm a BIG fan of Terry Pratchett's work.  So I'm excited that he has a new Disc World book coming out in October...  Being also impatient, until then I'm rereading earlier novels like Carpe Jugulum, Thud, and now Unseen Academicals.

It's hard to describe a Pratchett book to the uninitiated.

Pratchett is English, first of all, with a sense of humor somewhere between Monty Python, Douglas Adams, and P. G. Wodehouse... plus the astringency of one of the fierier Old Testament prophets.  Oscar Wilde-ishness with quips.  (No other author would admit to his puns.)  He's also very very very bright - interested in everything including, increasingly, philosophy.

Disc World's cosmology depends on four elephants and a giant turtle swimming through space.  Hard to explain.  The (flat) world of Pratchett's stories started as fantasy.  As in Tolkien - to whom he is indebted - there are dwarves, men, and other Grimm Bro.s creatures, but it's characteristic of Pratchett that one of his best characters is Death.  The anthropomorphic representation.  Who speaks in ALL CAPS, rides a pale horse named Binky, and has both a granddaughter and a sidekick who is Death of Rats (also gerbils etc.).

Pratchett's world started as fantasy, whimsy, and humor, but it's not the silly sword-N-sandals stuff people sometimes expect.  Even the earliest books are satirical and they've gotten stranger and deeper over the years, blending plot lines, continuing characters, and genres until now Disc World is social commentary and... who knows what?

I suggest starting at Men At Arms, the first book in the sequence featuring Watchman Sam Vimes.  Sam may show up in the new book, as he's on the cover.

* CORRECTION: the first Vimes book is Guards! Guards! Start there.  (Silly me.)

Image borrowed from WWW.PJSMPRINTS.COM

Where Are the Books?

I'm going through a reading drought.  The library is being remodeled so large parts are shut off and what's left is over-crowded with people, under-crowded with books.  Plus, as I chose my books, I had one of those days when no book pleased me and the few I did pick faded when I got them home.  Ever have that happen?  The jacket blurb sounds promising, the first page or two reads well, but when you really start reading... you lose interest.  This time it was a slim novel that had been a runner up for a National Book Award; the first 30 pages were well written, obviously, with an interesting main character and situation... until the curse of literary fiction set in.  Nothing happened.  Nothing continued to happen for the next 100 pages.  After that, well, I got interrupted and set the book down, it sat on the bathroom counter for a week...  Eventually even I took the hint that I'd never go back to it.

Instead I'm rereading old Terry Pratchett's for the 100th time.  (Mort at the moment - about Death's apprentice.)

Death as a Character

I just finished reading Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job, about a man who discovers he has a new job he describes as like being one of Santa's Helpers...  only it's not Santa he's helping out.

Very funny.  Lively writing.  There is a description I just love of a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham.  Here's a snippet (not the best part, the last sentence is the real kicker):  "...and a 325 horsepower V8 with such appallingly bad fuel efficiency that you could hear it trying to slurp liquefied dinosaurs out of the ground when it passed..."  The book has equally entertaining and outrageous monsters (especially the chicken-feet ones), but also many insights into dying and grieving.

Here's the art - by Monique Motil - that inspired the book's good-guy monsters:

"Sartorial Creature" image courtesy of artist Monique Motil's webpage

Death as a subject fascinates us. Death also makes a fascinating character himself (or herself, see Neil Gaiman's Sandman series).  In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, Death is a recurring character, along with his sidekick Death of Rats, Death's Granddaughter, Susan, plus Death's faithful pale-horse, Binky.  The guy is one of my favorite characters.  He can show up in any Pratchett book (as death does), possibly carrying a folding chair and a book so as not to, you know, rush anybody.  You have to like the guy - he likes kittens.

Some Pratchett books where Death is the leading character and my latest recommended  read, by Moore :