regshoe

I re-read Night Watch over the weekend. It's one of my favourite Discworld books, and I felt like commemorating the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May.

It is as good and heart-wrenching as ever. I don't have a huge amount to say about it, but I appreciate it a lot. <3

The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon, in the taste of the cigar, in the warmth that comes from sheer exhaustion, Vimes saw it.

History finds a way. The nature of events changed, but the nature of the dead had not. It had been a mean, shameful little fight that ended them, a flyspecked footnote of history, but they hadn't been mean or shameful men. They hadn't run, and they could have run with honour. They'd stayed, and he wondered if the path had seemed as clear to them then as it did to him now. They'd stayed not because they wanted to be heroes, but because they chose to think of it as their job, and it was in front of them—

And now I'm thinking about time travel, and the possibility of time travel as applied to Flight of the Heron (could 'history find a way' if one went back and changed the events of the Jacobite rising??? Who knows).

14. An old favourite.

I've loved the Discworld books ever since I first began reading them about ten years ago, which is currently about as old as old favourites get without my tastes having changed too drastically. Since then I've read the whole series, all 41 of them, and re-read particular favourites many times—whenever I'm in a reading slump, or I realise I haven't read one for a while, or I just suddenly find myself missing them, I'll pick up a Discworld book again and it's like coming home.

It's not actually possible to overstate how wonderful they are. Pterry's unique and brilliant narrative voice; the beautifully drawn, compelling and heroic characters; the way the humour and seriousness go together without ever clashing; the puns; the silly names; the idiosyncratically intricate worldbuilding; etc., etc; and, of course, the insight and compassion which with Pterry deals with highly various social and philosophical themes. These books were a fairly important influence on the way I still think. I'm very glad it was them—my life at the time when I first picked them up contained a good deal of potential influences far less wise and humane, and Pterry's books were not only a great comfort but a reminder of how to be better than that.

My username (and this icon!) is after my favourite minor Discworld character, and six years later I still think it was a good choice.

The last re-read was Night Watch, on the 25th of May, of course, so I'm probably due for another one soon—I think it might be Small Gods.