Nostalgia

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

What book (or books) from your childhood do you think about most often? That had the most effect on your life? 

I devoured books even as a child, but the ones that I really reread and took in most were Terry Pratchett's wonderful Discworld series. I read the lot (and the new ones as and when they came out) several times over, in chronological order, or sorted by character groups, and so on.

I also really loved Jane Austen's novels, particularly Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. George Eliot's Middlemarch was another one - it was my gran's favourite book, and she gave me her own copy before she died. The variety of characters and the depth and complexity of their feelings and situations kept me coming back to reread it.

Bonus review: The Shepherd's Crown - Terry Pratchett

This afternoon I took Terry Pratchett's last novel, The Shepherd's Crown, to a café (accidentally buying 3 more books on my way into town), and finished it in 3 hours.

This novel follows Tiffany Aching as she comes into her own as a professional witch and has to face up to the increase in responsibility that entails, as well as another threat of elven invasion.

I don't want to give spoilers to anyone who hasn't read it, but I will say there's a major character death, which feels so autobiographical, almost as though it's Pratchett's own goodbye to the world, that it really was very moving above and beyond its implications for the character within the novel.

The Shepherd's Crown is full of a joy of life and an optimism about human nature, with laugh-out-loud moments and some truly wonderful awful puns. It feels much better put-together than a few of his later works, which for me felt as though they were lacking in structure, whereas this one feels like one complete story in its own right. There are a few loose ends, which is unsurprising for a posthumous publication, but overall it was a fantastic read, a good balance of plot, humour and pathos.

Now that I've finished it it's occurred to me that I'll never again be able to read a new Pratchett novel, and that makes me very sad indeed.

Next up: Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding

Books into Film

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

What book would you love to see turned into a movie?

(Yes, with the understanding that it would be everything you hoped it could be, doing justice to the story, the characters, the writer’s vision, and so on. Not a hatchet-job horror.)


While there are many, many, MANY books that I love and think would make great films if adapted properly, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels always struck me as the easiest to convert into films. He actually said (when I was lucky enough to hear him speak at a literary festival) that he saw the action like a film in his head when he wrote them, and that really translates onto paper.

I know a few Discworld films have already been made, but personally I found them all a bit... wrong. The Colour of Magic majorly miscast David Jason as Rincewind, and then recast him as Albert in Hogfather, which is a much better fit, but the problem for me is that in another novel Albert and Rincewind actually meet each other, so to cast them as the same actor is just so non-canon. They weren't terrible adaptations as such, and it was great to see some Discworld stories make it to the big screen, but personally I think they started with the wrong ones.

Mort would make a fantastic film - it's already written very much like a screenplay, and has plenty of visual jokes written into it that would translate well straight to the screen. I always felt as though The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic were more of a warm-up for Sir Terry than fair examples of the Discworld series, and that the series improved very much from Equal Rites onwards.

Terry Pratchett

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness - Men at Arms

More than 10 years ago, I was lucky enough to meet this wonderful man and heard him speak about writing. It was before his Alzheimer's had begun, and he was sharp, witty and full of self-deprecating humour.

I've read his entire Discworld series at least 3 times, and I'm sorely tempted to do so again now, although I have far too many fresh books to read first.

Alzheimer's is a frighteningly common condition these days, and while I'm lucky enough not to know anyone closely with it (yet), I see so many patients on the ward with dementia on top of their physical problems, and it must be heartbreaking to see someone you love losing part of themselves in front of your eyes, and terrifying to be the one with the condition.

I wish he'd been with us for longer.

Recommendations

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

If a friend asks you to recommend a really good book—good writing, good characters, good story—but with no other qualifications … what would you recommend? 


I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no way I can settle for just 'good' as a descriptor - there are so many different kinds of books. I'm going to be a bit of a rebel and go through a few categories here:

Vaguely historical drama: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters are both absolutely wonderful and very thought-provoking.

Fantasy: Anything in the middle-range (chronologically) of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - most of them from Mort (1987) through to Carpe Jugulum (1998) have endless rereading appeal for me. I find his very first novels are too much parody and too little substance, and the later ones are too much like a straightforward novel to take many repeated readings. That middle range for me is the perfect balance.

Historical mystery: Ellis Peters' Cadfael series, and C J Sansom's Shardlake series. The Unquiet Bones is amazing too.

Modern thriller: Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (of which I'm currently reading the second novel) is great so far - gripping, intense and very clever.

'Real' historical novels (as in written a couple of hundred years ago+): Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and all of Charlotte Brontë's novels are so poignant in their sense of human nature, as is Jane Austen's Persuasion. If you're looking for something lighter, Austen's other novels or Henry Fielding's works are perfect for an amusing social critique.

I'm sure there are infinitely more amazing books that I've missed off here, but those are the main ones off the top of my head. If you have any recommendations please let me know below - I'm always excited to find new novels!