‘Lords and Ladies’ – Terry Pratchett (Corgi)

I have got some reading done this week… It’s been a few minutes here and there, over several days, but I actually managed to finish a whole entire book. Yay, look at me and my being able to finish a whole book! I’d forgotten what it felt like…

It was still comfort reading although to be fair, most of what goes into this blog is comfort reading ;o) It’s particularly the case at the moment though. January is a crazy busy time of the year for work and easy reading/viewing is all I’m good for by the time I turn the ol’ laptop off. So, what was the comfort read? Terry Pratchett of course!

I used to love the Discworld novels back in the day and looked forward to getting the latest paperback as a Christmas present. I’d actually play to lose the traditional ‘family game of Monopoly’ as quickly as possible so I could get back to the tales of Vimes, Granny Weatherwax or whoever it was. And then I gradually fell out of love with the series as it slowly became less of a ‘fantasy piss take’ and more about holding a mirror up to our own world. I don’t need a mirror held up to our own world, I live in it and can quite easily see its foibles… I’ve still got a soft spot for the older books though so when I wanted something easy going to read, I went back and picked up ‘Lords and Ladies’ for a little read…

 The fairies are back – but this time they don’t just want your teeth …

It's Midsummer Night – no time for dreaming. Because sometimes, when there's more than one reality at play, too much dreaming can make the walls between them come tumbling down.
Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place – to keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.
Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven of witches are up against real elves. And they’re spectacularly nasty creatures. Even in a world of dwarves, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers – and the odd orang-utan – this is going to cause trouble . . .

It’s always good to go back and revisit favourite books, it’s like hanging out with an old friend that you haven’t seen for a while and just rediscovering all those old things that made you really get on. On the other hand, that time apart can make your realise that maybe you weren’t really great mates after all, or at the very least you have moved on. My reconnecting with Terry Pratchett, with ‘Lords and Ladies’ kind of fell somewhere in the middle of these two points…

I think the bottom line for me is, how many times can you hear the same joke before it stops being funny? I’ve got a fairly high ‘joke tolerance’ (repeated viewing of ‘The Naked Gun’ will attest to this) but even for me, there’s a point where I’m like, ‘actually, I’m not laughing now’… Reading through ‘Lords and Ladies’, it became clear pretty quickly that the jokes weren’t making me laugh out loud like I used to. There were a few smiles and the odd chuckle, no belly laughs though and I do have a larger belly than most. The thing is though, it’s not the books fault at all; more mine for reading the book to death (back in the day) and quite literally exhausting the jokes ability to make me laugh. If you read it through, it’s no secret that Pratchett has all the ingredients to make you laugh and the timing to pull it off time after time. If you’ve read the book repeatedly though, it may not work. I didn’t laugh as much as I’d hoped but that was totally on me.

It’s a good job then that Pratchett isn’t just about the jokes then, he’s also a master storyteller and fills his stories full of characters that you end up just loving to pieces and wanting to hear more about. I’ll admit to being a ‘Vimes Fan’ mostly but I have a real soft spot for the Witches who are absolutely dysfunctional but always seem to pull it together without you even realising that they were on it the whole time. It’s like they’re using their ‘Headology’ on the reader, the fourth wall isn’t broken but Granny Weatherwax (I suspect) is giving it a real kicking with those boots of hers.

Yeah... I'm at a point now where I can take or leave the jokes (and there are a few that I still like) but definitely take time to appreciate the Librarian knowing that the guy who asked him about monkeys is the victim of a practical joke... and take action accordingly. Ok, the end of that little bit did make me laugh. It was great. And I still love the footnotes, I'll always love the footnotes.

And the story itself...? Pratchett takes a simple question (that we’ve forgotten about now, in our world of iron…) and makes a whole book out of it… What if elves were actually nasty bastards and people have forgotten? It's a simple question that he somehow opens up into a story that is all action (in that special way of Pratchett's where the action somehow happens to the least likely yet most suitable person, go... erm... Magrat? It works) and makes you stop and think about where legends may come from and how the act of forgetting the truth can cause legends to come about. There is a lot here to get your teeth stuck into and I'd recommend you do it if you haven't already. There are good writers and good storytellers and Pratchett had the fortune to be both at once.

I may not have laughed that much, this time round, but 'Lords and Ladies' was still the ideal comfort read and I'm really glad that I picked it up again. It's been a while since I read any 'Discworld' books, maybe I'll pick a few more up (he says, looking at the TBR pile of everything else...)