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Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Feb. 10th, 2019 10:18 amI have a few other books on my to-read list but I felt like the past few books I’ve read have been quite dark and/or depressing, so I needed something to lighten the mood— and immediately turned, of course, to Terry Pratchett. Unfortunately, my library has a pretty limited stock of Discworld e-books and I’ve already read most of the ones they do have, but there’s a couple I haven’t read yet and of those, I decided to go with Unseen Academicals.
...and here is where I have to publicly dig into a big slice of humble pie, because I’ve bypassed this book a couple of times mostly on the basis of judging a book by its cover, and its back-cover blurb. Wizards playing football (or soccer, depending on your geographic/cultural context)? Not really my cup of tea.
I WAS WROOOOONG.
It is, technically, about wizards playingsoccer football, but the focus is less on the wizards than on four of Unseen University’s servants, giving it an upstairs/downstairs theme alongside its satire of Ye Olde Oxbridge Academia. There’s also a subplot concerning the fashion industry, and - Pratchett being Pratchett - musings on mob mentality and the crab bucket theory. Basically, there’s a lot going on here.
It might actually be my new favorite Discworld novel? One of my favorites, anyway. It certainly has the sharpest, funniest footnotes, and the puns!!! It’s a tie between “my fare, lady?” (to a character with an exaggerated Cockney accent) and “that’s a fallacy!” (in a conversation about the Freudian implications of a cigar) for the one that made me laugh the hardest.
It has a lot of great characters (Glenda! Nott! Pepe! Glenda!) but, uh, as you may have guessed, I’m not above playing favorites. I think Glenda, a cook at Unseen University and official Mom Friend, was such a delightful character because she’s a combination of some of the things that Pratchett does best: a certain type of plain, sensible, underestimated, extremely clever woman, and characters who are constantly seething with barely-concealed righteous fury about social injustice. (To paraphrase from another Pratchett novel: My community! My friends! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine! I have a duty!) There’s a lot of very good character development in this book, and she’s one of the main beneficiaries of that as well.
( Vaguely relevant tangent under the cut )
...and here is where I have to publicly dig into a big slice of humble pie, because I’ve bypassed this book a couple of times mostly on the basis of judging a book by its cover, and its back-cover blurb. Wizards playing football (or soccer, depending on your geographic/cultural context)? Not really my cup of tea.
I WAS WROOOOONG.
It is, technically, about wizards playing
It might actually be my new favorite Discworld novel? One of my favorites, anyway. It certainly has the sharpest, funniest footnotes, and the puns!!! It’s a tie between “my fare, lady?” (to a character with an exaggerated Cockney accent) and “that’s a fallacy!” (in a conversation about the Freudian implications of a cigar) for the one that made me laugh the hardest.
It has a lot of great characters (Glenda! Nott! Pepe! Glenda!) but, uh, as you may have guessed, I’m not above playing favorites. I think Glenda, a cook at Unseen University and official Mom Friend, was such a delightful character because she’s a combination of some of the things that Pratchett does best: a certain type of plain, sensible, underestimated, extremely clever woman, and characters who are constantly seething with barely-concealed righteous fury about social injustice. (To paraphrase from another Pratchett novel: My community! My friends! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine! I have a duty!) There’s a lot of very good character development in this book, and she’s one of the main beneficiaries of that as well.
( Vaguely relevant tangent under the cut )
