OneOfMany

notasheep: I actually really liked the first two (the first one is one of my favorites). I feel like they are just starting to degenerate into YA boringness.

jmh: I actually went out and bought Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (picked it off the shelf at random) for Yom Tov. Haven’t read it yet, though–too much of a backlog on the old reading list. 😛

writersoul: They are on the BBC website for free. 😀 And lol The Wee Free Men has some of my favorite quotes too–the ooooooiiiiyyyyynnnggg one, and Miss Tick’s thing about following your star, and the swords that glow blue in the presence of lawyers, and the lawyer toad…good stuff. ^_^

k then I don’t get it.

I Shall Wear Midnight…first Discworld novel that I thought was kind of meh. Did you finish it yet?

hmm, do I detect Moffat hate?

And also BBC just aired a radio dramatization of Neverwhere. With Christopher Lee and Benedict Cumberbatch. 😀

whut

^_^

MRS PLONY: You are misunderstanding an essential quality that writers like Pratchett possess–one that I think is best expressed by Chekhov:

That the world swarms with male and female scum is perfectly true. Human nature is imperfect. But to think that the task of literature is to gather the pure grain from the mulch heap is to reject literature itself. Artistic literature is called so because it depicts life as it really is. Its aim is truth unconditional and honest. A writer is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound under compulsion, by the realization of his duty and by his conscience. To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist.

It seems to me that the writer should not try to solve such questions as those of God, pessimism, etc. His business is but to describe those who have been speaking or thinking about God and pessimism, how and under what circumstances. The artist should be not the judge of his characters and their conversations, but only an unbiased observer.

You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist.

You abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: Stealing horses is an evil. But that has been known for ages without my saying so. Let the jury judge them; its my job simply to show what sort of people they are. I writ: you are dealing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beggars but well-fed people, that they are people of a special cult, and that horse stealing is not simply theft but passion. Of course it would be pleasant to combine art with a sermon, but for me personally it is impossible owing to the conditions of technique. You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Otherwise, the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that are lacking in the story.

(Emphasis added.)

just my hapence: lol, I feel like the Adams, Pratchett and Gaiman fandoms all sort of bleed into each other. 😛

writersoul: lol, I find that I never outgrow good writing. I actually was reading Homer Price the other day. 😛 I’d recommend Neverwhere.

Yserbius: My favorite too. (Though I haven’t read it in like six years. :P)

ari-free: That’s not British–that’s Shakespearish.

shnitzy: lol…actually, The Wee Free Men is definitely more girly than Wyrd Sisters. 😛

writersoul: Nice! lol did you read the Guide because of the CR?

ari-free: I don’t know, I think most of the people on this thread aren’t British…

Torah613Torah: lol. I don’t remember where that quote is from exactly, but it is a classic Rincewind quote. Basically, Rincewind is this cowardly wizard (“WIZZARD”) who just wants to be left alone, yet keeps getting swept off on these epic adventures to save all of the Disc, etc. So…yeah.

shnitzy: I agree with writersoul. I started with that one, and I think it was a bad idea. I advise either Wyrd Sisters, Mort, Guards, Guards! or The Wee Free Men.

bump for 42 when he logs on at 3 AM 😛

More favorite quotes, cuz why not ^_^

It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoioioioioioinnnnnggggggg that is the mark of a clang well done.

Time passed, which, basically, is its job.

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.