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Wednesday Walking After Midnight
Aug. 3rd, 2016 01:44 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
The Masters by C. P. Snow( was not too bad )
Men at Arms was full of surprises, and one very welcome non-surprise: Vimes is back in the Watch where he belongs, even if it means having a knighthood foisted on him. No sacrifice too great! I'm not sure that I'm competent to summarize the plot, but it involves a string of mysterious murders committed by a terrifying new weapon, and another attempt to restore hereditary monarchy in Ankh-Morpork, this time with adopted dwarf policeman Carrot Ironfoundersson as the (unwilling and uninterested) long-lost heir. The inventor of the "gonne," Leonard of Quirm, is normally so ahead of his time as to be incomprehensible, but there's always a market for new ways to kill people horribly. In the end, the prototype is destroyed, but is that really the end of it? It seems like there's a parallel here with the failed restorations, here and in Guards! Guards! re: time only going one way. In Star Trek people are always destroying prototypes and never thinking about them again, but I have a feeling the weapons developers of Ankh-Morpork are going to be performing a lot of experiments with gunpowder from now on.
As before, after saving the city, the Night Watch presents a list of "new arrangements" for its organization, including
<3
I also didn't expect to be SUDDENLY IN TEARS when Vimes' secret account books were revealed, but here we are. It's not like it was unexpected, or even "not a cliche," but both those things made it absolutely perfect. Vimes may have the bad luck to inhabit a landscape of subversion, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to go on playing it straight. And now he has buckets of money! What will he do with it? And the Watch, here and in the future, is rapidly being restored to its former state of "functioning non-vestigial organization." It'll be interesting to see how Vimes responds to the new status quo. I hope the next book doesn't twist itself into knots trying to lead him back to the bottle, but we'll see.
I liked so many things about the book that the things I didn't like as well have sort of shriveled from my mind. I can't decide, looking back, whether I liked the Clown Murders subplot overall or not. I think "clowns aren't really funny" may be one of those humor tropes that have worn out through overuse, though Pratchett can't necessarily be blamed for using it in 1996. And the business with the dogs left me feeling a little squeamish, though I'm not completely sure why yet. I wish there'd been more Sybil -- she was mostly in the background here, and subdued compared to the booming, tweedy human mountain in rubber boots I know and love from Guards! Guards! I loved the asides about famous historical landscape architect Bloody Stupid Johnson, who never met a measurement he didn't foul up somehow, leading to one-inch-wide trout lakes and statue gardens so small they are kept in a drawer for safekeeping, who also "had 2,000 tons of earth built into an artificial hillock in front of Quirm Manor because 'It'd drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?'"
What I'm Reading Now
The Dark Lantern by Henry Williamson, first in the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight novel series listed as one novel for 99 Novels purposes. ( Burgess spends more time warning readers about these books than praising them )
Also: Eugenie Grandet byeveryone's my favorite walking disaster, Honore de Balzac! I've immediately been seized by the same reaction Balzac's contemporaries must have had, and every other reader for almost two hundred years: How can Balzac describe this miser so thoroughly while being incapable of saving any money himself? It's pleasant to share this simple bafflement with so many invisible strangers, even if it isn't really that baffling when you think about it: knowing how other people do things and bringing yourself to do them are different skills. It's a little strange to read a novel for the first time after reading a biography of the author. It's like reading my brother's fiction: I feel like I can see all the little pieces of himself rearranged - I imagine I can see them even when I have no evidence.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm going to be completely without internet access for the next two weeks, so I'll be finishing the books I've started but without posting for a while. I'm bringing Guermantes with me, The Caine Mutiny and maybe Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell (but maybe not). Also: The Just City by Jo Walton. There was a free ebook giveaway at Tor (you can get it here through the 7th) but I don't have an ereader so I just got it from the library.
What I've Finished Reading
The Masters by C. P. Snow( was not too bad )
Men at Arms was full of surprises, and one very welcome non-surprise: Vimes is back in the Watch where he belongs, even if it means having a knighthood foisted on him. No sacrifice too great! I'm not sure that I'm competent to summarize the plot, but it involves a string of mysterious murders committed by a terrifying new weapon, and another attempt to restore hereditary monarchy in Ankh-Morpork, this time with adopted dwarf policeman Carrot Ironfoundersson as the (unwilling and uninterested) long-lost heir. The inventor of the "gonne," Leonard of Quirm, is normally so ahead of his time as to be incomprehensible, but there's always a market for new ways to kill people horribly. In the end, the prototype is destroyed, but is that really the end of it? It seems like there's a parallel here with the failed restorations, here and in Guards! Guards! re: time only going one way. In Star Trek people are always destroying prototypes and never thinking about them again, but I have a feeling the weapons developers of Ankh-Morpork are going to be performing a lot of experiments with gunpowder from now on.
As before, after saving the city, the Night Watch presents a list of "new arrangements" for its organization, including
"--a department for, well, we haven't got a name for it yet, but for looking at clues and things like dead bodies, e.g., how long they've been dead. . ."
<3
I also didn't expect to be SUDDENLY IN TEARS when Vimes' secret account books were revealed, but here we are. It's not like it was unexpected, or even "not a cliche," but both those things made it absolutely perfect. Vimes may have the bad luck to inhabit a landscape of subversion, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to go on playing it straight. And now he has buckets of money! What will he do with it? And the Watch, here and in the future, is rapidly being restored to its former state of "functioning non-vestigial organization." It'll be interesting to see how Vimes responds to the new status quo. I hope the next book doesn't twist itself into knots trying to lead him back to the bottle, but we'll see.
I liked so many things about the book that the things I didn't like as well have sort of shriveled from my mind. I can't decide, looking back, whether I liked the Clown Murders subplot overall or not. I think "clowns aren't really funny" may be one of those humor tropes that have worn out through overuse, though Pratchett can't necessarily be blamed for using it in 1996. And the business with the dogs left me feeling a little squeamish, though I'm not completely sure why yet. I wish there'd been more Sybil -- she was mostly in the background here, and subdued compared to the booming, tweedy human mountain in rubber boots I know and love from Guards! Guards! I loved the asides about famous historical landscape architect Bloody Stupid Johnson, who never met a measurement he didn't foul up somehow, leading to one-inch-wide trout lakes and statue gardens so small they are kept in a drawer for safekeeping, who also "had 2,000 tons of earth built into an artificial hillock in front of Quirm Manor because 'It'd drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?'"
What I'm Reading Now
The Dark Lantern by Henry Williamson, first in the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight novel series listed as one novel for 99 Novels purposes. ( Burgess spends more time warning readers about these books than praising them )
Also: Eugenie Grandet by
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm going to be completely without internet access for the next two weeks, so I'll be finishing the books I've started but without posting for a while. I'm bringing Guermantes with me, The Caine Mutiny and maybe Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell (but maybe not). Also: The Just City by Jo Walton. There was a free ebook giveaway at Tor (you can get it here through the 7th) but I don't have an ereader so I just got it from the library.
