Ed: P is for Pratchett

Terry Pratchett has died.

I have been meaning to write about reading Rising Steam, which I read in January and February, surprisingly slowly. It’s a good bathtub book—the Discworld books generally are—but I didn’t get into it, somehow. I didn’t laugh much, and I found the satire on fundamentalist terrorism a little too serious for my taste. Or my mood, maybe. I mean, considering it was the fortieth Discworld book, it was an impressive achievement to punch out a book that wasn’t filler, wasn’t dreadful, wasn’t overly nostalgic, wasn’t bad and bothered having a plot and at least a few new jokes. But it wasn’t one of my favorites.

What were my favorites? Oh, to pick three… Guards! Guards!, maybe Soul Music, definitely Monstrous Regiment. I also really liked the Bromeliad books, and I enjoy Good Omens quite a bit.

I also feel as if—I never met the man, I have read few interviews with him, I never went to see him at a panel or anything, but he seemed like a Good Person, and one that had a positive influence on the specfic community. I feel I have lost something with his death, not so much the books-not-written, but the man himself.

Thanks,
-E.

Ed: M is for Morrow

I like James Morrow's books, and I liked Galápagos Regained. So there's that.

The thing about James Morrow's books, though, is that even when I like them, I never find them quite satisfying, if you know what I mean. The experience of reading them isn't complete. That's probably deliberate on the part of the author, who presumably wants the readers to keep thinking about the stuff after the book is over. It's not intended to be absorbing as such, but provoking, which means that I am less invested in the characters' happiness than in the author's illustrated arguments, and am correspondingly less satisfied when the plot is wrapped up. Chloe Bathurst, our Protagonist, is pleasant enough, but seeing her end up—

Spoilers after the cut.