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PTerry Thoughts (Late to the Party)
I have a very curious habit when it comes to books, because I almost only ever borrow them from libraries. I guess I developed that habit because I had the fortune of having access to many good libraries1 in my time2, and my reading habits outstripped my spending ability3
When I turned 16 I was in a good library located near the lecture theatre my lessons were held at. The gravitational eddies of the fiction section had tugged me somewhere in the P section, and I found myself staring at a collection of books with garishly coloured covers. One of these had witches and wizards facing each other underneath a title that screamed "Equal Rites", and just so happened to be written by a person called Terry Pratchett.
Why not? I figured, and borrowed the book.
From then on, you could find me in biology lectures stuffing my fist in my mouth4 trying to keep my laughter in even with choice phrases such as these:
"A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos, because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering like the dandruff on the shoulders of God."
"(...) magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.”
"Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilta Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff." (insert multiple descriptions and footnotes5 elaborating the different sounds according to which instrument/musician fell off.)
“Esk, in fact, moved through the fair more like an arsonist moves through the hayfield or a neutron bounces through a reactor, poets notwithstanding, and the hypothetical watcher could have detected her random passage by tracing the outbreaks of hysteria and violence.”
With that, Pterry had me firmly hooked on the Discworld series. I read more books. I shamelessly copied long bits of text6. I tried to find more Esk7 and Granny Weatherwax8 and so ploughed my way through all the Witches books. But it was the Death books that really got me to stay. While Granny was resolutely being herself, I found comfort with Death and later Susan who struggled with being human while needing to be not human too. I struggled with Vimes' cynicism, but by Nightwatch he too had convinced me to hang around, and Tiffany Aching added to the magic.
Through his characters and his narrative voice (which is almost a character on its own) I found friendly faces who were squabbly and stubborn and didn't hesitate to point out the cynical side of things but also were equally willing to hope too. And after all the characters and the connection with his writing, I was grateful to Pterry for sharing all these treasures with me.
So this is an tribute to Pterry for being a part of my life, no matter how late he entered it or how early he left. He'll be missed, even as the friends he brought are just a book away, waiting to be opened so that his voice can reach out to me from Discworld all over again. And while the cynical side of says yeah yeah he had to go sometime, like his characters and stories there's the hope that Death, perhaps, could be just as he had imagined.
Edit: OK the links don't work, but the sentiment is there. Sorry for the html fail.
1. A good library is a library where the fiction section looms large enough that you can ignore all the other books (nonfiction, what nonfiction) when you walk in, hopefully containing worlds so far removed from our own that the combined gravitational pull makes you leave the current world you inhabit behind.
I never said it was an objective measure.↩
2. Younger than books but older than the internet↩
3. In the past, in bad times I'd be reading 8 books a month. In good times I'd be reading 8 books a week. If every book was about $10, then I'd be spending a $1000 a year, and if the books weren't $10 each then there would be a lot more zeros behind that.
Thank goodness for libraries helping me to save money.↩
4. OK, fine I lied. I listened to enough of my biology lessons to learn about things like hygiene and why stuffing a hand that had to touch a lecture seat and associated parts into my mouth was probably certainly a very bad idea.↩
5. No wonder I tried to imitate him with all the footnotes in my post.↩
6. I called the word doc my quotes files, though it was really a study on how much of the book I could type out.↩
7. No luck there↩
8. Maybe a little too much luck here, as if a certain Weathertop witch had tilted the odds in her favour, but I like my shape a little too much to say for sure.↩
When I turned 16 I was in a good library located near the lecture theatre my lessons were held at. The gravitational eddies of the fiction section had tugged me somewhere in the P section, and I found myself staring at a collection of books with garishly coloured covers. One of these had witches and wizards facing each other underneath a title that screamed "Equal Rites", and just so happened to be written by a person called Terry Pratchett.
Why not? I figured, and borrowed the book.
From then on, you could find me in biology lectures stuffing my fist in my mouth4 trying to keep my laughter in even with choice phrases such as these:
"A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos, because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering like the dandruff on the shoulders of God."
"(...) magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.”
"Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilta Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff." (insert multiple descriptions and footnotes5 elaborating the different sounds according to which instrument/musician fell off.)
“Esk, in fact, moved through the fair more like an arsonist moves through the hayfield or a neutron bounces through a reactor, poets notwithstanding, and the hypothetical watcher could have detected her random passage by tracing the outbreaks of hysteria and violence.”
With that, Pterry had me firmly hooked on the Discworld series. I read more books. I shamelessly copied long bits of text6. I tried to find more Esk7 and Granny Weatherwax8 and so ploughed my way through all the Witches books. But it was the Death books that really got me to stay. While Granny was resolutely being herself, I found comfort with Death and later Susan who struggled with being human while needing to be not human too. I struggled with Vimes' cynicism, but by Nightwatch he too had convinced me to hang around, and Tiffany Aching added to the magic.
Through his characters and his narrative voice (which is almost a character on its own) I found friendly faces who were squabbly and stubborn and didn't hesitate to point out the cynical side of things but also were equally willing to hope too. And after all the characters and the connection with his writing, I was grateful to Pterry for sharing all these treasures with me.
So this is an tribute to Pterry for being a part of my life, no matter how late he entered it or how early he left. He'll be missed, even as the friends he brought are just a book away, waiting to be opened so that his voice can reach out to me from Discworld all over again. And while the cynical side of says yeah yeah he had to go sometime, like his characters and stories there's the hope that Death, perhaps, could be just as he had imagined.
Edit: OK the links don't work, but the sentiment is there. Sorry for the html fail.
1. A good library is a library where the fiction section looms large enough that you can ignore all the other books (nonfiction, what nonfiction) when you walk in, hopefully containing worlds so far removed from our own that the combined gravitational pull makes you leave the current world you inhabit behind.
I never said it was an objective measure.↩
2. Younger than books but older than the internet↩
3. In the past, in bad times I'd be reading 8 books a month. In good times I'd be reading 8 books a week. If every book was about $10, then I'd be spending a $1000 a year, and if the books weren't $10 each then there would be a lot more zeros behind that.
Thank goodness for libraries helping me to save money.↩
4. OK, fine I lied. I listened to enough of my biology lessons to learn about things like hygiene and why stuffing a hand that had to touch a lecture seat and associated parts into my mouth was probably certainly a very bad idea.↩
5. No wonder I tried to imitate him with all the footnotes in my post.↩
6. I called the word doc my quotes files, though it was really a study on how much of the book I could type out.↩
7. No luck there↩
8. Maybe a little too much luck here, as if a certain Weathertop witch had tilted the odds in her favour, but I like my shape a little too much to say for sure.↩