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Terry Pratchett, Making Money

Ein Discworldband bleibt selten allein, schon garnicht wenn's einer aus meiner Top Ten Liste ist. Der Nachfolgeband von Going Postal scheint sich bei jedem Wiederlesen regelrecht an den ersten zu klammern. Weil er, im Gegensatz zu anderen Discworldbänden knapp unter 5 Euro kostete und ich mein gebundenes Exemplar nicht zur Arbeit schleppen wollte, lud ich ihn mir auf den Kindle. Und es war wieder richtig gut.

'Is Hubert quite ... normal?' said Adora Belle, as they climbed the marble staircases towards dinner.
'By the standards of obsessive men who don't get out into the sunlight?' said Moist. 'Pretty normal, I'd say.'
'But he acted as if he'd never seen a woman before!'
'He's just not used to things that don't come with a manual,' said Moist.
'Hah,' said Adora Belle. 'Why is it that only men get like that?'
Earns a tiny wage working for golems, thought Moist. Puts up with graffiti and smashed windows because of golems. Camps out in wildernesses, argues with powerful men. All for golems. But he didn't say anything, because he'd read the manual.

(Terry Pratchett, Making Money, 2007)

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Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Ich hatte mir einen wunderbaren Kurzgeschichtenband von Margaret Atwood auf den Paperwhite geladen und auch schon fast zur Hälfte durch, als ganz plötzlich mein Lieblingsband von der Discworldsaga wieder gelesen werden sollte, und das pronto, ohne Aufschub. Das letzte Mal ist nach meiner Liste ja auch schon vier Jahre her. Okay, ich hab einige Teile - alles was nicht mit Moists Plänen und Aktionen und vor allem seiner Beziehung zu Adora Belle zu tun hat - übersprungen, aber trotzdem oder gerade deswegen tat es einfach nur gut das Buch über die Macht der Wörter und der Phantasie wieder zu lesen. Immer immer wieder schön.

Moist couldn't have stopped himself how for hard money. This was where his soul lived: dancing on an avalanche, making the world up as he went along, reaching into people's ears and changing their minds. For this he offered glass as diamonds, let the Find the Lady cards fly under his fingers, stood smiling in front of clerks examining fake bills. This was the feeling he craved, the raw naked excitement of pushing the envelope -

(Terry Pratchett, Going Postal, 2004)

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Steven Brust, Iorich

Nachdem der Preis von Iorich relativ zügig um die Hälfte sank (wie kommt's, wie kommt's?) entschloss ich mich doch dazu, noch ein paar Dragaera-Bände nachzuschieben. Solange Tiassa und Hawk noch weiter über 8 Euro bleiben, kann ich mich ja den frühen Bänden zuwenden. Oder bis nächstes Jahr warten ... Iorich war schon deshalb den Preis wert, weil ich mich an fast garnichts daraus erinnern konnte, und weil Brust es auf seine eigene unvergleichliche Weise schafft das verwickelte Gerichtssystem und Politik von Dragaera so spannend zu machen. Die Szene, in der Vlad seinen Sohn zum ersten Mal sieht, hatte ich eigentlich in Tiassa vermutet, das war ein weiterer Bonus.

"It isn't that they're ungrateful."
"I know. It's just that no one wants to be the one being rescued, we all want to do the rescuing."
She nodded. "And this job is all about making everyone else do the rescuing. Which is why you're here right now."
"You want me to rescue someone?"
"No. I just know that Aliera can't thank you, and if she could, you couldn't hear it. So I'm saying it. Thank you."
"I'll have more cheese."

(Steven Brust, Iorich, 2011)
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Margaret Atwood, The Penelopeiad

Diese Version der Odyssee aus der Sicht von Penelope wurde mir vor einiger Zeit empfohlen und ich konnte mich nur wundern, warum ich das Buch nicht schon längst gelesen hatte. (Wobei mir beim lesen hie und da doch einiges vertraut vorkam, vielleicht aus einer Leseprobe o.ä.) Nach dem lesen tut es mir nur leid, dass die Story so kurz ist, gerade aus den zehn Jahren der Odysee und der Zeit danach hätte ich mir mehr Details gewünscht.
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Now that all the others have run out of air, it's my turn to do a little story-making. I owe it to myself. I've had to work myself up to it: it's a low art, tale-telling. Old women go in for it, strolling beggars, blind singers, maidservants, children - folks with time on their hands. Once people would have laughed if I'd tried to play the minstrel - there's nothing more preposterous than an aristocrat fumbling around with the arts - but who cares about public opinion now? The opinion of the people down here: the opinion of shadows, of echoes. So I'll spin a thread of my own.

(Margaret Atwood, The Penelopeiad, 2005)

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Joe Hill, Strange Weather

Manchmal wünschte ich, ich hätte nie erfahren, dass Joe Hill Stephen Kings Sohn ist. Aber dennoch - nach diesem Buch mehr denn je - fange ich allmählich an ihn als eigenständigen Autor zu sehen. Alle vier Novellen in diesem Buch übertrafen meine Erwartungen noch bei weitem. 'Snapshot' erinnerte mich vom Stil her noch am meisten an Stephen King und weckte Erinnerungen an "The Sun Dog", aber die anderen sind ganz eindeutig Hill. Besonders 'Loaded' fand ich so verstörend (und bestürzend aktuell noch dazu) dass ich mich am Ende fast zwingen musste keine Sätze zu überspringen. "Aloft" war wie gemacht für den SF-Fan in mir und "Rain" ist ein besonderes Apokalypse-Scenario mehr. Bleibt zu hoffen, dass das nächste Werk nicht lange auf sich warten lässt ...
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The operating theory - lacking any other credible explanation - was terrorism. The president had disappeared to a secure location but had responded with the full force of his Twitter account. He posted: "OUR ENEMIES DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY STARTED! PAYBACK IS A BITCH!!! #Denver #Colorado #America!" The vice president had promised to pray as hard as he could for the survivors and the dead; he pledged to stay on his knees all day and all night long. It was reassuring to know our national leaders were using all the resources at their disposal to help the desperate: social media and Jesus.

(Joe Hill, aus: Rain, 2017)

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Most of my favorite stories as a reader come at this length. Short novels are all killer, no filler. They offer the economy of the short story but the depth of characterization we associate with longer works. Little novels aren't leisurely, meandering journeys. They're drag races. You put the pedal to the floor and run your narrative right off the edge of the cliff. Live fast and leave a pretty corpse is a shitty objective for a human being but a pretty good plan for a story.
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You want to be able to read such stories in just one or two sittings. You want them to feel like a hand on your throat.

(Joe Hill, Strange Weather - Afterword, 2017)

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Lawrence Block, Small Town

Der letzte Block ist schon wieder etwas länger her und da kam mir dieses Buch, in dem Block 'das Jahr danach', d.h. New York 2002, verarbeitet gerade recht. Die Story in der über ein Dutzend Handlungsstränge und Charaktere ineinander verwoben werden, liest sich unglaublich spannend und bei allem Zynismus sehr bewegend.

One of the questions writers got asked was for whom they wrote their books. The answer he usually gave was that he wrote for himself, and it sounded up to here with artistic integrity, but he'd never been entirely happy with it because it wasn't altogether true. If it was just for himself, why bother writing it down? Why not work it all out in his mind and leave it at that? And, if he really was writing for himself, he'd have to say he was a failure at it. Because how often did he sit down with an old book of his own and read the damn thing?
No, there was someone he wrote for, but unfortunately it was a person who couldn't exist. He wrote for the reader he himself would be if he didn't happen to have written the book in the first place. He wrote for someone who would understand at once everything he did or tried to do, who would always know what he meant, and who would be intellectually and emotionally in tune with every word.
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God damn them anyway, the sons of bitches.
If he could just do something about them ...
But he couldn't, of course, and neither could anyone else. They were safely dead, gone to spend eternity with seventy virgins, and maybe that was punishment enough. He tried to imagine a Catholic equivalent, where St. Peter handed good little boys the keys to a Carmelite nunnery. Here you are, sonny boy. Enjoy yourself. Just be careful they don't smack you with a ruler.

(Lawrence Block, Small World, 2003)

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Lawrence Block, The Girl with the Long Green Heart

Ich kannte den Ausdruck 'Long Green' für einen Haufen Geld vor dem Buch noch nicht, aber obwohl Block ihn nicht erklärt, konnte ich es mir doch nach dieser spannenden Geschichte um zwei Con Men, die sich zu sehr auf ihre Verbündete verlassen, irgendwie denken. Ich hatte die Wendung am Schluß zwar erwartet, aber wie Block dann doch die Kurve zu einem recht realistischen Happy End hinkriegt, ist schon beeindruckend.

I thought about the Dream, and I thought about The Girl, and about all dreams and all girls. No dreams come true, I guess, and no girls are as perfect as the heart would have them.
And beyond all that, I thought that a man must be what he is and do what he is geared to do. He cannot permit himself to be conned out of what he truly is. Not by the scare of a prison cell. Not by the smell of a woman, or the teasing song of a dream.

(Lawrence Block, aus 'The Girl with the Long Green Heart', 1965)