Quick glimpses from the real life

[jack_babalon]

Woke up to goodbye kisses and a car alarm disco shrieking from across the street. The house sits in low light - a comfortable soft gray gloom and a bed not easily abandoned for morning concerns. The church bells peel ten times through the pitter-patter of some much needed rain. Skylight frames a collage of wet leaves casting vague shadows across a half-eaten breakfast. Cigarettes, coffee and internet addictions almost satisfied.

Read a few more pages of Terry Pratchett's Small Gods this morning. I've never read any Pratchett before and the Little Lady found this a literary sin that could not go ignored a day longer. Digging it so far - I'm reminded a bit of Gaiman's American Gods only finding it much funnier with a smoother prose flow. Love the idea of an angry Jehovah type God trapped in the body of a little turtle that constantly threatens to smite everyone around him. Really love the idea that a God can die when people believe in the rituals and organizations of a diety more than they do in the diety itself. So far I kind of feel like I'm reading a mash-up between Robert Asprin and Douglas Adams... but that's just my opinion off what I've read so far.

The script is one scene away from finished. Funny how the last scenes are always the hardest. Then it's back to the third draft on Unity... but you're all probably tired of hearing about books and scripts and resumes and other things I write when I'm not writing here. Fair enough. However I will just say that when I finish the third draft and the script I'm going to take a nice month long literary vacation and focus on playing around on my CD mixers for a bit. For some reason my brain has trouble mixing music when I'm writing and vice-versa (in the same day not at the same time), not sure why that is really, when I used to spin the Secret Rom (dot net) I found myself thinking about beat matching and odd samples to loop rather than the usual odd, little stories and snippets of dialouge.

All right, back to the grind I suppose.

Comments

[entropic-om.livejournal.com]

Small Gods is a good starting place for Pratchett. As well-beloved as they are, other than Good Omens (which of course he co-authored with Gaiman), his books get rather confusing. Although that could have much to do with reading them out of order. Hmm.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I forgot that he co-authored Good Omens, which means then I have read some Pratchett before. As for confusing if I could muddle my way through Faulkner's The Sound & the Fury (which begins a stream of consciousness narration from a mentally handicapped man-child as I recall) then I'm sure I can handle a massive, sprawling continuity on something called a disc-world.

Still not man enough to tackle Joyce's Ulysses though.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Joyce is better if you read it out loud. I still can't hack through it, but the little chunks I can manage are more fun when declaimed.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I can see that (though 'hear' would be a better word), having read only The Dead and the Portrait of the artist as a young man - though I enjoyed The Portrait of Dorian Gray as a young man much more:)

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm reading them completely in order (the Discworld books) and there's lots of little details that make connections that way. But each one is more-or-less able to stand alone.

I'll also second Good Omens. And for pathos, Night Watch, though that probably relies on a good deal of backknowledge of who the hell Sam Vimes is.

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

Small Gods was the first Pratchett book I ever read and it left me hopelessly addicted. ::studiously doesn't look at the shelf crammed full of Pratchett books she now owns::

I'm not tired of reading about your writing, but that's probably because I'm also a writer. ;)

Enjoy this gorgeously rainy day!

(I'm using my Granny Weatherwax icon for the Pratchett reference.)

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I can see why. Good stuff.

Ah thanks, I do tend to go on about it though.

So far so good.

I haven't ran into her yet... but I gather Small Gods takes place ages before the other Disc World stuff.

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

You'll find, as you read, that most of the books can be put into a "character category": e.g. the Death books, the Witches books, the City Watch books, etc. Death and the Witches are my favorites, so I've collected all the books on them first. Granny Weatherwax appears in Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Jesus Hussein Christ... does the man write in his sleep or something? Well the good news I won't run out of books to read anytime soon:)

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

Dude, seriously. He's written 47 novels in the past 25 years! I loves him to pieces, but I'm not even going to try to emulate him.

(Sadly, he's been diagnosed with PCA, a form of Alzheimer's. He writes honestly and painfully about it here. He's still writing books, but it makes me sad to think we'll lose him earlier than we should have.)

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

i seem to recall an inside cover blurb that explained pratchett's sense of humor... to paraphrase the entire blurb, "terry pratchett is british."

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Well so's Benny Hill and I don't think he's funny.

But maybe he's the exception to the rule.

[vomikronnoxis.livejournal.com]

I was rather fond of his book "Pyramids." I have a lot more on audiobook (read by Neil from the Young Ones, who does an amazing job) but haven't given them a listen yet.

~rl

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Actually my first introduction to discworld was some kind of BBC Christmas special you and Bonnie tried showing me but we didn't have time to get all the way through.

So far I'm really digging Mr.Pratchett and look forward to working through his 47 books at some point. Let me know if any of the audio books really stand out...

... and I hope you had an excellent birthday party btw. Sorry I didn't make it out.

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

Hogfather! (Which, er, you should read. In December. Please?)