Category: Books

A Hat Full of Sky and Going Postal…

The recent traveling as given me a chance to read some more Discworld books.

A Hat Full of Sky – Another mission for the new witch Tiffany Aching. A nice story, but like the other Young Adult Discworld books, it lacks a little edge.

Going Postal – Against his will, a conman called Moist von Lipwig becomes Ankh-Morpork’s latest postmaster. So does he make a go of it, use it to continue his life of crime, or make a run for it? I’m always hesitant when a new character is introduced, but this one works really well.

Cheers

Tim…

A few more Discworld books…

I’ve not been reading too much recently, but I managed to get through a few more Discworld books:

Night Watch: Vimes goes back in time and teaches a new recruit (his young self) to be a good copper. Probably my favorite book in the series so far. It has a bit of everything in it.

The Wee Free Men: Another in the “Young Adult” series of books. A young witch is on a mission to save her borther. Nice enough story, but being aimed at young adults, it doesn’t have the depth of some of the other books.

Monstrous Regiment: A young girl joins the army to search for her missing brother. Not nearly as similar to the last book as the one-line summary would have you believe. Some proper belly-laughs in this book.

Cheers

Tim…

More Discworld Books…

The recent travelling means I’ve been able to do some more Discworld reading:

The Truth: Ankh-Morpork gets its first newspaper. It’s all downhill from there on…

Thief of Time: The perfect clock is built, time stops and the world as we know it ends. Susan, Death’s Granddaughter, and the History Monks come to the rescue.

The Last Hero: Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde decide to give the Gods what-for! Could this mean the end of Discworld?

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents: A talking cat, talking rats and a stupid looking kid pretending to be the Pied Piper. Life is never quite as simple as a fairy tale.

Next stop, book 29. The journey continues…

Cheers

Tim…

Maskerade, Feet of Clay, Hogfather, Jingo, The Last Continent and The Celestine Prophecy…

I’ve read a five more of the Discworld series.

Maskerade: The witches get involved in a Phantom of the Opera plot.

Feet of Clay : The City Watch are involved in a detective story involving Golems, men made out of clay.

Hogfather : Death takes over the role of the Hogfather and leaves his granddaughter to carry on the family business.

Jingo : Ankh-Morpork goes to war with Klatch over a mysterious new island.

The Last Continent : Rincewind and the Wizards get mixed up in the creation and evolution of the continent XXXX, which has striking similarities with Australia. This was especially funny as I started reading it when I was in Australia. No Worries! 🙂

On a completely different tack, one of my friends recommended The Celestine Prophecy. It’s written in the first-person, so it has the feel of fact, rather than fiction. Quite an interesting book really. Anything that makes you question your belief system is interesting, even if it is a bit fanciful.

That brings me up to date I think. I best get out to a book shop and get the next Discworld book. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Soul Music and Interesting Times…

Rock and Roll is born on Discworld in Soul Music and Rincewind frees the Counterweight Continent in Interesting Times.

Although both books are pretty good, by the standards of previous offerings I felt they were a little flat. Maybe some of that is down to the manner in which I read them. Most of the previous books were read in comparatively few sittings. Maybe 50-100 pages at a time. These two books were read in chunks of about 10-20 pages at a time. I guess you lose some of the momentum when you are constantly starting and stopping. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms…

My quest to read the Discworld series continues:

Lords and Ladies – This book starts where Witches Abroad finished. This time the witches have to prevent elves returning to the Discworld. Love, marriage, death and elves. What more could you want. 🙂

Men at Arms – I keep reading these books and saying, “This one is my favorite!”, only to read the next and have it become my new favorite, but Mean at Arms is a classic!

Cheers

Tim…

Reaper Man, Witches Abroad and Small Gods…

It’s a while since I mentioned any books, so I thought I’d get myself up to date…

Reaper Man – Death takes a holiday and chaos ensues. Death is my favorite character in the Discworld series, so I really enjoyed this one.

Witches Abroad – Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick have to go “abroad” do some “fairy god-mothering” to make sure a few fairy tales don’t end they way they should. These three characters work really well together as they are all so different. The funny thing is 4th fro last sentence is, “There’s a billion places like home. But only one of ’em’s where you live.”, which seemed really appropriate as I was reading it whilst feeling totally at home in Vienna.

Small Gods – What happens when people worship the politics and process of their religion rather than their God? Answer… Their God becomes a one eyed tortoise who can only be heard by the last person who actually truly believes in him. A very funny book with more than a hint of truth in parts.

That’s 13 books done and I’m still only 1/3 of the way through…

Cheers

Tim…

Post New Year Life Update and Moving Pictures…

Today marks the end of my first full week of “normal” life for quite some time!

I’ve managed to:

  • Swim every day.
  • Get to all my Karate lessons.
  • Do Yoga with my Yoga-buddies, as well do my regular stint of teaching.
  • Get to the gym.
  • Stretch a couple of times a day.
  • Do a bit of writing for the website. I’m concentrating on the OCP 11g new features stuff, but I still don’t think I’m going to be ready in time for the exam going live.
  • Do a bit of reading.

Things are starting to feel something like normal again. My routine has been all over the place since November. First I was in OpenWorld. Then I had a cold for a couple of weeks. Then my dad died. Then it was the Christmas and New Year holiday. I must admit I feel a lot more settled and positive now I’ve got back into my usual rut. 🙂

I finished reading Moving Pictures last night. As I said before, it’s been hard to connect with this book. I’m already starting to remember little bits of it fondly, but the overall experience was that it was a hard slog. I can’t explain why.

I opened up the next book, Reaper Man, and the first 40 pages flew by before I noticed how late it was.

Life goes on…

Cheers

Tim…

Guards! Guards! Eric and Moving Pictures…

I recently finished reading Guards! Guards! and Eric. Guards! Guards! has got some great characters and is probably one of my favorite books so far in the series. Eric is a really short story, but it quite pacey, so it was pretty good.

I’m about a third of the way through Moving Pictures and I’m really struggling. There are lots of elements I should find funny, but it’s just not fitting together for me. I think the subject matter is just too dull. I don’t really care about a bunch of sideways references to Hollywood, or in this case Holy Wood. I’m hoping it’ll click so I’m going to persevere.

Cheers

Tim…