Spoofs and Parodies

I'd always realised that The Colour of Magic parodied the "classic" fantasy genre, but as my exploration of fantasy had been limited to Tolkien and Peake I thought that I might miss some of the finer points.

In the event I should not have been so concerned. Over the pasty few years the major TV series has been Game of Thrones. As a matter of principle I do not have a satellite subscription but finally managed to catch up with all the series on DVD. In parallel I read all five novels of Martin's proposed trilogy and as soon as I started on The Colour of Magic I found I was revisiting familiar territory: horse people, wizards, dragons.

Wikipedia says that The Colour of Magic includes echoes of the novels of Fritz Leiber and Anne McCaffrey; it may do, but it stands as a novel in its own right. It is also the first part of  sequence far longer than even George R R Martin will (hopefully) finally produce.

The Colour of Magic

The first printing of The Colour of Magic in 1983 consisted of 506 copies and I missed all of them.

In the Roundworld ARPANET was migrated to TCP/IP and the true internet began and I managed to miss that as well, although I've just used it to find out  what books were popular in 1983 and which of those I have read.

The following are from a US list, but I was pleased to be reminded of the following old favourites:

The Name of the Rose: I'd never read anything like this before and Umberto Eco was quickly added to my "must read" list. Subsequently I read and enjoyed his non-fiction as well: his analysis of the opening sequences of Casablanca is a masterpiece.

The Woman In Black: I have read the book, seen the stage play, the TV film and the cinema film. I'd loved the ghost stories of MR James (led to them via the classic BBC adaptations) and TWIB is a worthy successor. Susan Hill's other novels, not just her ghost stories, are excellent too.

The Book of Lost Tales: Unfortunately this is where I gave up on Tolkien, although I have just bought his recently published translation of Beowulf.

The Meaning of Liff: It's by Douglas Adams, it's brilliant and I used to live in Didcot (look it up!).

Waterland: I came to this later on. It was a favourite of my wife: she has a copy but we did not meet until 1985.

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges: this must have been an early entry in the now flourishing Bletchley industry. I enjoyed the film that used this as source, although it famously misrepresented key elements of Turing's life and depended on anachronistic tippex to move the plot on.

Other mentions:

GlenGarry Glen Ross: I missed this as a play but saw the excellent film version. it started my fascination with David Mamet's plays. Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in Speed-the-Plow has to be the highlight so far.

First Among Equals: I'd heard a great deal about Jeffrey Archer's novels but had never read any of them. I borrowed a copy of this and managed just about three chapters before I had to give up. the best thing about this book is the title which Jasper Fforde memorably echoed in First Among Sequels.

I see that the Booker Prize went to The Life and Times of Michael K. I've not read it or any of the others on the short list apart from Rates of Exchange by Malcolm Bradbury

I'm sure I must have missed out many other books from 1983, but various house moves plus the Great Book Cull of 2016 mean that these will need to stay missing.
 

Overture and Beginners

I got hooked on books at an early age. I blame my parents for this as they used to take me to the library on a regular basis and the habit stuck. As a child I worked through the collected works of Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton and FrankRichards: once I'd discovered an author I liked I tended to work my way through the collected works.

We also had shelves full of books in the house and so at a relatively early age I read such wartime classics, as The Great Escape, The Wooden Horse and The Naked Island as well as far too many Agatha Christie novels than were good for a young teenager.

The set books we read in school were either too young (The Wind in the Willows which in any case I had already read) or just plain wrong (David Copperfield). And then in the third year we had a new English Teacher who staggered into class at the beginning of the year with a pile of thick paperbacks by a writer called Tolkien. The first few chapters were slow going, but once I'd reached The Shadow of the Past I was hooked and finished all three volumes in two weeks.

After this I read The Hobbit (unconsciously setting a precedent for Peter Jackson many years later) and everything else that Tolkien had in print. From this point on I was hooked on fantasy and discovered Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast as well as Michael Moorcock., Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter.

There were the inevitable gaps in my reading career for things such as university, work and life in general but I've done my best to keep up to date with fantasy.  But somehow in all this Discworld slipped under my radar. As the years went by I became increasingly aware of Terry Pratchett as he published his latest novel, but realising that they were a sequence I'd never had a chance to make a start and as the years went by the mountain became even higher.

Then shortly after the sad news of Sir Terry's death in March 2015 I had a stroke of luck: having planned to resign from my job I was made redundant literally days before my intended resignation date. I'm now a consultant with the security of an unplanned severance payment and time on my hands to start all those projects that up to now had just existed in my dreams.

I'd already read Good Omens, the novel jointly written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I've also read just about everything else that Neil Gaiman has written after being hooked on the first short story I read (A Study in Emerald, collected in Fragile Things) which was a superb conflation of Conan Doyle and HP Lovecraft.

Now finally it is time for me to pack my luggage and set off to explore Discworld.