Wyrd Sisters

I came across the Bechdel Test in the context of a film review which decried the number of films which contained only a small number of token roles for women.

The test has three simple rules as follows:

1. The film has to have at least two women in it,

2. The women have to talk to each other.

3. They have to talk about something other than a man.

On this basis many mainstream/blockbuster films fail the test and this failure gives journalists the opportunity to write articles lamenting the number of decent roles for women etc.

What I had not realised until I looked it up was that the Bechdel Test has also been applied to literature. I've not carried out any detailed and wide-ranging analysis of this, but it did occur to me as I was reading Wyrd Sisters that the book passes with flying colours.

I'd struggled a little with Sourcery: it was great fun and really funny, but I've never been a massive fan of classic fantasy novels.  However from its first page I could see that Wyrd Sisters was something different. I'd studied Macbeth (aka The Scottish Play if you are superstitious), but even without this extra level of understanding the plot simply whizzed along.

For me this is the novel that re-confirmed my plan to explore Discworld in sequence: I've started so I'll definitely finish..



 

Pratchett Job

The past few weeks have been busy as I have progressed on with my journey into Discworld.

To date my route has been chronological, in that I have read the books in the order in which Sir Terry published them, and in truth my reading is well in advance of this blog. As I've progressed I've come to realise the truth of Neil Gaiman's comment that this is not necessarily the best way to proceed: the same applies to P G Wodehouse, where everyone reads Jeeves and Wooster and/or Bandings whereas his early school stories are for completists only.

In reading terms I'm about halfway through the Discword canon although in blogging terms I've hardly started... Nonetheless I found that the Pratchett job blog was really useful in giving me direction:

https://pratchettjob.wordpress.com/

I have enjoyed just about every book I have read so far, although some more than others, but the good news is that the best is yet to come.

 

Terry Pratchett: Back in Black

I'd mentally bookmarked this programme even before I'd read the reviews and last night managed to catch up with it on iPlayer.

It was at least as good as the reviews. I enjoyed the dramatisations of the autobiographical fragments, but the interviews with other writers were, for me, the highlight. Inevitably Neil Gaiman, visibly emotional as he spoke about his late friend, was the highlight, but it was one of his comments that really stayed in my mind: it took Terry Pratchett some time to get into his stride and his early books are definitely not his best. as a comparison he mentioned the early school stories of P G Wodehouse, another of my heroes.

I've read many of the Blandings and Jeeves &Wooster novels, plus several selections of short stories, but I've never even seen any of his early works in print. Neil Gaiman specifically mentioned Sourcery as not being one of his best. I read it and enjoyed it, but it was not in the same league as Mort.

Thus it is now time to move on to Wyrd Sisters.


 

Sourcery

Sourcery was published in 1988 and for some reason the version that I recently ordered online is smaller than the other Pratchett books I have bought so far.

I'm not one of those obsessives that keeps books in a specific order, or even like someone I worked with once who stored her books according to the colour of the spine. Thus I note this merely from the perspective of someone who wears reading glasses although of course there was no reduction in the size of the font - merely more pages...

 I enjoyed the book very much but over the holiday period became side-tracked by other things - especially a really funny spin-off book by Mr Pratchett (and others) called Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. I've not had a chance to test any of the recipes but laughed all the way through it. we have a shelf full of cookery books at home, but this is the first one written by a fictional character. I'd love to see it made into a TV series.

And now back to the main Discworld opus...
 

Favourite Terry Pratchett Novels

It's time for another review of the story so far: four novels read to date so only 37 to go.

For me Mort immediately leaps to the top of the chart in terms of favourites, with Equal Rites as number two and The Colour of Magic/The Light Fantastic in last place.

Meanwhile I am enjoying Sourcery: it's good to meet up with Rincewind again, and to revisit the Unseen University.

 

Other 1987 Books

1987 was an interesting year for books.

The NY Times Best Seller List includes an electric selection of books including a fantasy novel called The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. I didn't even know that Stephen King wrote fantasy novels and from the reviews on Amazon it looks quite interesting...

Apart from this the only books that I'd heard of were Misery (King again), Presumed Innocent, and Patriot Games. I've not read any of them, but I've seen and enjoyed the filmed versions.

On the Booker front the winner was Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. I know it is supposed to be an overlooked masterpiece (I recall reading an appreciation by Susan Hill) but it would not be on my current list of reading priorities. With regard to the shortlist the only one that appealed to me was Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd.

I'd love to see a filmed version of Mort, but I suppose it is only in the post-Peter Jackson world that digital technology has advanced enough. I read somewhere recently (and then checked on IMDB) that PJ will produce a film based on Mortal Engines. That is a film I will definitely look forward to.

And now on to Sourcery...



 

Mort

1987 must have been a good year - and was definitely a busy year - for Terry Pratchett as in addition to Equal Rites he also published Mort.

From various articles I'd read I'd realised that it is generally regarded as one of the best (if not just the best) Discworld novel and I'd been looking forward to reading it very much. Also I'd loved the way that Death had appeared in each of the books I'd read so far, so the idea of making him a main character seemed a fascinating decision.

I'd studied The Pardoner's Tale for A Level and had enjoyed the story so much that I later wrote a stage adaptation that worked reasonably well, and obviously Death had a major role in it. Unfortunately Chaucer did not mention if Death had a horse, and, even if he had a horse, what its name was. I'd been watching too many early Bergman films when I wrote the play, but loved the references in Mort to game playing - monopoly?

So now on to Mort...