Lord Samper's Library

Page Count: 284 (and a half) pages And the ‘Discworld Re-Read’ continues at its meandering pace ;o) This isn’t so much ‘working my way through the books’ as it is ‘picking up the books whenever I need a laugh’ and I really needed a laugh after the last few days (work mostly…) Some Discworld books are re-read more than others in this house. ‘Guards! Guards!’ and ‘Eric’ are old favourites while ‘Equal Rites’… I can’t remember the last time I read ‘Equal Rites’. So what was it like then, going to back to a book that I knew I’d read but couldn’t remember much of it past the blurb on the back? Let me tell you about it… 'They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.' Everybody knows there's no such thing as a female wizard. So when the wizard Drum Billet accidentally passes on his staff of power to an eighth daughter of an eighth son, a girl called Eskarina (Esk, for short), the misogynistic world of wizardry wan...

Okay, there will be a ‘Discworld’ re-read but I won’t be doing it in any order, not at all. Nope, this will be more about ‘certain reads for certain particular moments’, curated comfort reads if you like ;o) Which brings me round to Terry Pratchett and ‘Guards! Guards!’. Way, way back in the day, it used to be that Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a brand new copy of the latest ‘Discworld’ novel. These days, the Discworld is a place that I like to come back to whenever things get a little bit too much. A bit like going into your local, you know everyone already so there’s no pressure; you can just kick back, enjoy a pint and let the world just happen around you. I’ve been after some of that, these last few weeks, so it was pretty much inevitable that I’d head back to ‘Guards! Guards!’, one of my favourite ‘Discworld’ novels. There, I’ve said it :o) ‘Guards! Guards!’ is one of my favourites, if not my favourite ‘Discworld’ book (My top five ‘Discworld’ books can change, mayb...

Page Count: 285 Pages. I’ve got at least three TBR Piles on the go (that I can see right now, there may be more in the other room) but sometimes, you just have to set them all to one side and go with a book that barges in and demands you read it first. I had a lot of fun with ‘The Colour of Magic’, last week , and it felt natural to just jump straight into ‘The Light Fantastic’ so that’s exactly what I did ;o) Let me tell you all about it... 'What shall we do?' saidTwoflower. 'Panic?' said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival. As it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld could do with a hero. What it doesn’t need is a singularly inept and cowardly wizard, still recovering from the trauma of falling off the edge of the world, or a well-meaning tourist and his luggage which has a mind (and legs) of its own. Which is a shame, because that's all there is... So, more of t...

Page Count: 285 Pages. It’s not often that I pick up a ‘Discworld’ book these days; nothing against ‘em but I have developed a habit of buying loads of other books and then feeling guilty that I’m not reading them. I really should do something about that, shouldn’t I…? Maybe one day… That’s the way things usually go but with a nasty case of readers block happening, and a week that’s swiftly shaping up to be one of those weeks. I wanted some comfort reading and something that would make me laugh a bit (I really need a laugh…) Terry Pratchett and ‘Discworld’ it was then. I’m not going to go through the whole series (and not just because I gave my original copies away), just pick out a few that I haven’t read it in a while, and with that said, where better place to start than at the beginning? Lets talk about ‘The Colour of Magic’… On a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown), a gleeful, explosive, wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There’s an avaricious but inept...

Welcome back to another entry in that 'very occasional' series where I revisit 'Discworld' books, often after a number of years since I last read them. Back when I was a lot younger, I made it a point of, well... being a very geeky twenty something to read every single 'Discworld' book as soon as it appeared in paperback. Many a Christmas game of Monopoly was deliberately thrown by me so that I could get back to reading whatever 'Discworld' book was published that year (and I don't regret it). As time went on though, I fell out of love with the series (it had to move away from its fantasy roots but that didn't mean that I had to like it) and I eventually stopped reading... And then a few years ago, I started reading 'Discworld' books again. I was having a particularly shitty time and needed some comfort reading, 'Discworld' was there and I've been slowly catching up ever since. All of which brings me to 'Carpe Jugulum...

'Eric' was the first Terry Pratchett book that I ever read (when I was young enough to have absolutely no idea why the word 'Faust' had been crossed out on the cover) and therefore my favourite. Yep, it even beats 'Guards, Guards!', although that's a very close run race, so you probably need to know that this isn't so much a review as it is a post about a book that I love. I first read 'Eric' in its massive hardback form where the gorgeous Josh Kirby artwork found it's way off the covers and into the book itself, a wonderful mix of Pratchett's words and Kirby's art. That is the Discworld as far as I'm concerned :o) That book ended up going back to the library but I had my own copy not long after and that led to me reading (and laughing) my way through a large chunk of the Discworld books. So, what better book to read when I've got an ongoing 'readers block' thing happening? I know I've likened reading the 'Disc...

I used to love the Discworld books when I was (a lot) younger, up to and including deliberately losing the family Christmas game of Monopoly just so I could get back to whatever the latest paperback was. As I got older though, and the lens of the Discworld turned on our world instead of the fantasy genre, I gradually stopped reading. If I wanted to see the real world, well… I’d just look out of the window. And then it all turned full circle. The last (utterly horrible, yes I’m looking at you 2017…) few years have seen me go back to the early Discworld books for some comfort reading and a few friendly chuckles with some old friends. They say you should never go back but that clearly doesn’t count with Discworld books, you should always go back. So I’m all about the re-reading then but when I saw a copy of ‘The Last Hero’ in the Cancer Research shop, I had to have it. I’d never read ‘The Last Hero’, and was keen to give it a go, but a whole book about Cohen the Barbarian? I lov...