One hears the tales of drugs so tricky that it only takes a single exposure and blammo! You're hooked for life.
I wouldn't know. Smoking cigarettes took me almost as much effort to start as it did fifteen years later to stop and I had the advantages(?) of youth, incipient juvenile delinquency and having grown up around smokers.
The effect of any such drug is as nothing, a sigh in a windstorm, compared to impact of the wondrous world Terry Pratchett has created!
It took about six pages into one (1) book (Going Postal) and I was aitch-oh-oh-kay-ee-dee addicted.
If you haven't read any of the Discworld books, you've missed one of the finer treats. Cross Cyril Kornbluth's take on fantasy with Heinlein's politics and toss in a generous spoonful of "Monty Python" and "Red Dwarf" and you're starting to approximate it. What I've read so far (One Entire Book, With Blurbs) would have been right at home in the long-gone and much-missed fantasy mag Unknown but would have outshone anything ever printed in it, up to and perhaps including "Magic, Inc."*
My thanks to the many friends who recommended this author!
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* A citation from memory that took fifteen minutes to verify, including an enjoyable digression into a magazine article about RAH's self-designed home in Colorado Springs. Alas, I've yet to see one as complete about his circular house in Bonny Doon, CA, which is instantly familiar as a smaller version of Jubal Harshaw's home in Stranger In A Strange Land.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
9 comments:
Lol!
Welcome home Roberta....
Missed you....
Pratchett is twisted, good twisted.
I've enjoyed every single book of his I've read or listened to.
Pratchett has claimed another victim.
It's a club, see? And the members don't recruit, they just wait like people outside the exit door of a PT Barnum museum the other side of which is a sign advertising, "This Way to the Fantabulous Egress!"
You stepped through. Now you're stuck with the rest of us. Waiting for the next victim. And enjoying a few dozen books while we're at it.
I just finished Witches Abroad and am now halfway through Hogfather.
And I have a Barnes & Noble Yuletide gift card from Mumsy & Daddums which I'm about to go convert into more Pratchett. :)
On Roberta's recommendation I ventured out at lunchtime to Border's at 18th and L Street ... none in stock! And me with a gift card burning a hole in my pocket.
I have The Colour of Magic and Wyrd Sisters on request at the library!
I got two (Color of Magic, Monstrous Regiment) at Barnes and Noble on the way home from work, but the strangest thing happened. When I handed the books to the checker, she said,
"Oh, Terry Pratchett!"
"I've never read any of his."
"Well, you're in for a treat. He's my favorite. I taught a class about him. Too bad about the dementia."
"Dementia?"
"Yeah, he's showing early signs of dementia. Would you like to use your Barnes and Noble card today?"
Weird.
Not dementia.
Alzheimers (sp?)
Minor, and early so far.
I was hoping for a lifetime of new Pratchett books.... That would be sweet indeed.
Our days alloted are numbered... there is a lesson in that.
I'm still reeling from the announcment of his illness. That is a mind, a wit, a method of conveying the madness of the world wrapped in language, that should not be silenced.
I have every one of his books and someone special just sent me "The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld".
It is sad indeed. The good news is "early and mild," plus there's a lot of medical research into Alzheimer's going on right now. Might be he'll be writing for a long time yet!
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