2 July 2003
This morning, I cut myself shaving. Not particularly noteworthy, you might think, but this was a cut on the wrist. I managed to slice along the top of my left wrist as I brought down the razor. I’d brought the razor back up to my face befoe I realised, and then I went ‘ah-owwwwww’ . (Or something like that, anyway.)
I’ll spare you the horror and the agony, the lives and limbs that were lost. Suffice to say that, through a succession of heroic acts, I stopped the flow when the blood on the floor was a mere two inches deep.
I took myself to the kitchen. Now I don’t like bananas, I’ve never really been able to get on with them, but today has been bananamazing. I had Ready Brek for breakfast, with copious amounts of banana. Then for lunch, I went for the somewhat unconventional banana sandwich, made with — wait for it — banana bread. To wash that down I had a hastily-whipped-up banana milkshake, and for dessert this evening I had banana in custard.
But anyway, I’ve got a bit sidetracked there. The Wee Free Men . (I always type that as ‘The Wee Fremen’ .)
It’s got chapters, which is a bit of a shock. Actually, I’m lying: I only notice chapters if they’re used to divide up genuine plot segments. As this was yet another of the more recent Discworld books to follow just one character for the most part, there wasn’t really any need for them. I’m not sure if my lack of noticing them counts as a plus or a minus.
The book itself is quite funny. There are some books that are intellectually funny, like Rory Bremner, where I’ll think ‘that’s astoundingly funny’ and then not laugh. Others aren’t perhaps as witty but make me laugh a lot. Perhaps I’m getting jaded (already!) but there were only a few moments where I even smiled, let alone laughed. The dinner party dream was the funniest, on balance.
Something about the later books has irked me, and perhaps that didn’t show in my top ten Discworld novels list. What it is, is that I seem to read them from a more detached perspective and analyse them as I go along. This is most likely down to me changing, as I’ve read a lot since the early days of Reaper Man and Sourcery . So when Pratchett tries to be dark, I shrug my shoulders. When he tries to put more depth into the descriptions, I think ‘that’s not bad.’ When he gets all expositionary, I get annoyed, and when he tells us his characters are thinking more logically, I get even more annoyed that they’re ignoring something fundamental (this happens a lot when I read a book with Susan or Granny Weatherwax in).
This is all leading up to my point: The Wee Free Men’s plot is slow. There’s so much exposition, so many attempts to pack detail and a world in, that the plot hangs a little loose on the pages. About halfway through I looked at the page number and thought about the story arc, thought about when the major events were going to happen. I don’t do this if the plot’s barrelling me along.
Oh, the dialogue! I haven’t mentioned the dialogue! Well, I shall. This is the perfect Pratchett bit of dialogue: ‘…I don’t know!’ It contains the four Es that litter his novels, completely without justification: exclamation mark, ellipses, and er, emphasis (italics).
And I was reminded of why I don’t like buying Pratchett books. See for yourself:
Doesn’t it just make you shudder? There’s marketing crap and there’s marketing crap, but this most definitely falls into the latter. On the plus side, there was a good gag about it in Nostradamus Ate My Hamster . I believe it went something like ‘ “Ernest Fudgepacker is one of those rare directors who can always make me cry.” — Terry Pratchett®’ It’s probably funnier in the book.
I’m being negative, aren’t I? Forgive me, please: I did read it the day I got it (thanks Cathy!), although admittedly during the rain breaks at Wimbledon. It’s a children’s book, which I don’t normally react well to, Alice in Wonderland aside, and I was getting frustrated with Tim Henman’s performance. So don’t get me wrong: it’s good, but I’m judging Pratchett by higher standards than most, and he’s not met them.