95, WG51, M46, E92 / NG44, F49, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Eric

Ich lud mir den Band noch auf den Paperwhite, weil ich mich nicht mehr erinnern konnte, wann und wie Rincewind aus den Dungeon Dimensions zurückkehrt und fast alles, was ich von diesem Buch noch wußte war, dass es ziemlich kurz ist. Warum ist mir immer noch ein Rätsel. Man sollte meinen, dass Pratchett noch viel mehr über Dämonen und Hölle zu sagen gehabt hätte. Vielleicht hätte es zuviel vorweggenommen. Wer weiß.

94, WG50, M45, E91 / NG44, F49, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Diesen Band hab ich auch schon sehr lange nicht mehr gelesen, streckenweise konnte ich mich überhaupt nicht mehr dran erinnern. Nur dass der Vater des Sourcerers es beinahe schafft die Welt zu vernichten und es der Anfang von Rincewinds Irrfahrt um die gesamte Scheibenwelt ist.
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It wasn't lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always here.
It was just that everywhere else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.
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'Talent just defines what you do,' he said. 'It doesn't define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.'
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(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery, 1988)

92, WG49, M44, E89 / NG43, F48, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Moving Images

Das ist einer der Discworldbände, die ich schon länger mal wiederlesen wollte, aber mich irgendwie nie zu aufraffen konnte (genau wie z.B. Last Continent, Interesting Times, Thud ... etc. etc.). Und dann war ich einmal mehr überrascht, wieviel ich daraus komplett vergessen hatte. Einmal mehr machten die ganzen Anspielungen auf Filmklassiker und das ganze Hollywood-Drumherum so richtig Spaß und wie Pratchett das alles so gekonnt in eine Horrorgeschichte einbindet. Es gibt eigentlich keinen Discworldband bis nach Nr. 37 den ich nicht mag, aber dieser läuft bei mir wahrscheinlich unter den ersten 10 - 20 oder so.
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Over Holy Wood, the stars were out. They were huge balls of hydrogen heated to millions of degrees, so hot they could not even burn. Many of them would swell enormously before they died, and then shrink to tiny resentful dwarfs remembered only by sentimental astronomers. In the meantime, they because of metamorphoses beyond the reach of alchemists, and turned mere boring elements into pure light.
Over Ankh-Morpork, it just rained.
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The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and noone will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.
And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for the second house.

(Terry Pratchett, Moving Images, 1990)

91, WG48, M43, E88 / NG43, F48, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Making Money

Ja, es war absehbar, dass ich 'Making Money' auch wiederlesen würde. Ein paar andere Discworldbände folgen vielleicht noch - nicht unbedingt 'The Truth' aber wer weiß - aber dieser machte wieder richtig Spaß. Und erstaunlicherweise fand ich auch diesmal wieder einiges an Zitaten.
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What harm can it do to find out? It's a question that has left bruises down the centuries, even more than 'It can't hurt if I only take one' and 'It's all right if you only do it standing up'.
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Gods wanted belief, not rational thinking. Building the temple first was like giving a pair of wonderful shoes to a man with no legs. Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.
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He'd bought it - why? Because it was like the lockpicks: a token to prove, if only to himself, that he hadn't given in, not all the way, that a part of him was still free. It was like the other readymade identities, the escape plans, the caches of money and clothes. They told him that any day he could leave all this, melt into the crowd, say goodbye to the paperwork and the timetable and the endless, endless wanting.
They told him that he could give it up any time he liked. Any hour, any minute, any second. And because he could, he didn't ... every hour, every minute, every second. There had to be a reason why.

(Terry Pratchett, Making Money (Discworld 36), 2009)

90, WG47, M42, E87 / NG43, F48, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

Diesen Band, vielleicht der letzte "echte" Discworld-Band, wollte ich schon länger wiedergelesen haben, schon weil es nicht nur um Fußball geht sondern dieser auch so herrlich erklärt wird, dass selbst totale Fußballmuffel ihren Spaß haben. Leider zum letzten Mal - der ganze Wortwitz und die typische treffene Charakterisierung sind in den Bänden danach einfach nicht mehr da.
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Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this, Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would have to choose which pair - the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. Indeed, as a goddess she would have lots of choices: comfy shoes for home truths, hobnail boots for unpleasant truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth.
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"We'll eat early," said Ridcully, "and I am told that the pies at the game are just - amazing."
Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth.
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(Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals, 2009)

83, WG42, M38, E80 / NG41, F45, NA9, D3, B7, C1

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Ich könnte ja nachzählen, wie oft ich dieses Buch schon gelesen habe, aber es ändert nichts an der Tatsache, dass ich es vermutlich noch mehrmals in meinem Leben lesen werde. Und dass es wahrscheinlich mein Lieblings-Discworldband ist, immer noch dicht gefolgt von 'The Truth', aber doch an der Spitze. Ich weiß nicht, ob es diese Geschichte des Betrügers mit Herz ist, oder die ganze Post versus Clacks Sache, das verrückte alte mit alten Briefen vollgestopfte Postamt mit der Höllenmaschine im Keller, die Golems, besonders Anghammarad, den wahrscheinlich ältesten Postmann der Scheibenwelt, der seit 19000 Jahren auf seine Chance wartet seine Botschaft zu überbringen - egal. Wahrscheinlich alles zusammen, wie so oft.
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Words spilled out of Mr Groat like stashed mail from a crack in the wall. Sometimes the machine had produced a thousand copies of the same letter, or filled the room with letters from next Tuesday, next month, next year. Sometimes they were letters that hadn't been written, or might have been written, or were meant to have been written, or letters which people had once sworn that they had written and hadn't really, but which nevertheless had a shadowy existence in some strange invisible letter world and were made real by the machine.
If, somewhere, any possible world can exist, then somewhere there is any letter that could possibly be written. Somewhere, all those cheques really are in the post.

(Terry Pratchett, Going Postal, 2004)

Wiedergelesen:

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

Der Band paßte gerade noch in meine Lesezeit bevor das neue Buch von Julian Barnes auf dem Paperwhite eintrudelte. Immer wieder schön: das ungleiche und unharmonische Team Detritus und Cuddy - schade, dass es nur für dieses Buch reichte, aber im Grunde verständlich.

It was the way he wore the place. You expected him any moment to break into the kind of song that has suspicious rhymes and phrases like 'my kind of town' and 'I wanna be a part of it' in it; the kind of song where people dance in the street and give the singer apples and join in and a dozen lowly matchgirls suddenly show amazing choreographical ability and everyone acts like cheery lovable citizens instead of the murderous, evil-minded, selfcentred individuals they suspect themselves to be. But the point was that if Carrot had erupted into a song and dance, people would have joined in. Carrot could have jollied a circle of standing stones to form up behind him and do a rumba.

(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms, 1993)