Recently read: Terry Pratchett edition
Jun. 16th, 2019 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxGood Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
I finished the new miniseries adaptation last week and immediately had to re-read the book; I finished it at about 3:45 on Friday morning, because by the time I finished packing and cleaning my apartment for my trip home this weekend it was past midnight and I only had four hours before I had to leave for the airport so I was like... Good Omens it is!
This has been one of my favorite books since I was 14 - I’ve re-read it probably half a dozen times since then - so the actual experience of (re)reading it was like pulling on an old, cozy favorite sweater. For most of those re-reads, I hadn’t read anything else by either Gaiman (except Coraline) or Pratchett, so this time - having finally gotten around to reading Gaiman’s American Gods and a decent percentage of the Discworld series - I had a better sense of who likely wrote certain scenes/lines/jokes.
(Speaking of jokes, though: there were definitely some that, uh, haven’t aged fantastically well. Especially when it comes to throwing around a certain slur and then insisting that people shouldn’t read the main characters as being part of the group said slur refers to, Neil.)
When watching the miniseries, I was pickier than I expected about how the human characters lined up with my mental image of them; the Anathema, Newt, and the Them storylines all felt ever-so-slightly off from what I remembered, and I couldn’t tell whether it was actually different or my memory was just fuzzy. It turned out to be a mix of both! In the case of Anathema - who I liked in the show, but felt was a little Quirkier than in the book - my mental image of her had always been shaped by the line about how “precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife she kept in her belt” and completely missed the line that described her as wearing a cloak outside, at night, in 1990, so her whole Hogwarts Chic look was more in-character than I thought. (Although, as others have pointed out, I do think it’s a bit weird that they didn’t update Anathema’s list of causes, especially given how Heaven and Hell, and Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationships to their respective sides, were updated to be less Cold War metaphor, and more corporate whistleblower.)
On the other hand, I was right about how Adam felt more charismatic in the book, while in the show, he came across as more serious. I also think that the scene where Adam really comes into his powers as the antichrist – when he talks about starting the world over and splitting it up between the Them and physically controls them with his mind – was better in the book than the show. The show very much went full supernatural horror with it, all glowing red eyes and writhing levitation and lowkey body horror, in a way that felt more ridiculous and distracting and ultimately less powerful than the book’s imagery of a tousle-haired eleven-year-old standing in the middle of a crazy wind storm, with a manic but clearly human expression, confidently explaining how he should – and could – just wipe the slate clean and start the world again in his image.
Also, I re-discovered that my absolute favorite scene in Good Omens (right up there with Az. and Crowley’s drunken conversation about dolphins and eternity) is the little two-page scene with the random janitor and the random office-lobby tree that starts visibly growing after Adam uses his power. For anyone who hasn’t read the book or doesn’t particularly remember this one little throw-away scene: as the trees start growing like mad and destroying streets and buildings as they take up more space, this one, insignificant guy climbs up and breaks through the glass panels on the ceiling so the tree can get the sunlight it needs to grow as wildly as the ones outside. It’s just such a sweet moment, and sort of a microcosm of the overall theme of human action > divine plan, and I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING.
Also, I always just... assumed that I was equally fond of Crowley and Aziraphale, because they’re two sides of the same coin, etc., and my feelings on the TV show supported this view, because in retrospect I think they had more screen time together in the miniseries than in the book, but it turns out I am a LYING LIAR WHO LIES because Crowley is my favorite. Like, I love Aziraphale, of course, but....... I really love Crowley.
(Similarly, I had completely forgotten that Aziraphale does, in fact, Say Fuck in the book. Like, for some reason I thought it had merely been implied in the book and then in the TV show they finally Let Aziraphale Say Fuck. Good for him!)
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
Finishing Good Omens made me want to read more Pratchett; I picked this one pretty much at random from the Discworld novels available on Libby, but I really enjoyed it! I liked the tongue-in-cheek takes on the clichés of vampire folklore and fairy tales, and the element of religious satire. I haven’t read any of the other witches’ sequence except for Equal Rites, but I’d osmosis-ed enough about, say, Nanny Ogg and Magrat, that skipping around wasn’t a problem.
Agnes was probably my favorite character, but I developed a definite mental eye-twitch by the end of the book due to all of the, uhhhhh, “humorous” references to her weight/appearance. I also had a soft spot for Mightily Oats, especially when he teamed up with Granny Weatherwax. The way he pretended he was the one that needed her help in order to give her the assistance she would never, ever ask for? Good! Their discussion of “believing in gods vs. believing in people” culminating in Oats actually having to make a decision between theory and practice in order to help a person in need? Really good!
I really, really liked the quote:
It actually reminded me of a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters:
Speaking of quotes, the parallels (or is it the contrast?) between Oats’ and Lacrimosa’s “everywhere I look I see something holy” made me feel some kind of way. In Lacrimosa’s case, the point was that symbols are just patterns of lines and shapes and you can see those patterns everywhere if you look hard enough, it’s just the fact of people’s belief that gives them significance. The context of Oats’ quote took the theory a step further, to the point that faith can’t - and shouldn’t - just be constrained to symbols; by focusing too hard on the importance of a symbol, you can lose sight of what’s really important about whatever you believe in.
Up next:
I’m keeping with the Pratchett/Discworld theme for the time being, and just started Small Gods!
I finished the new miniseries adaptation last week and immediately had to re-read the book; I finished it at about 3:45 on Friday morning, because by the time I finished packing and cleaning my apartment for my trip home this weekend it was past midnight and I only had four hours before I had to leave for the airport so I was like... Good Omens it is!
This has been one of my favorite books since I was 14 - I’ve re-read it probably half a dozen times since then - so the actual experience of (re)reading it was like pulling on an old, cozy favorite sweater. For most of those re-reads, I hadn’t read anything else by either Gaiman (except Coraline) or Pratchett, so this time - having finally gotten around to reading Gaiman’s American Gods and a decent percentage of the Discworld series - I had a better sense of who likely wrote certain scenes/lines/jokes.
(Speaking of jokes, though: there were definitely some that, uh, haven’t aged fantastically well. Especially when it comes to throwing around a certain slur and then insisting that people shouldn’t read the main characters as being part of the group said slur refers to, Neil.)
When watching the miniseries, I was pickier than I expected about how the human characters lined up with my mental image of them; the Anathema, Newt, and the Them storylines all felt ever-so-slightly off from what I remembered, and I couldn’t tell whether it was actually different or my memory was just fuzzy. It turned out to be a mix of both! In the case of Anathema - who I liked in the show, but felt was a little Quirkier than in the book - my mental image of her had always been shaped by the line about how “precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife she kept in her belt” and completely missed the line that described her as wearing a cloak outside, at night, in 1990, so her whole Hogwarts Chic look was more in-character than I thought. (Although, as others have pointed out, I do think it’s a bit weird that they didn’t update Anathema’s list of causes, especially given how Heaven and Hell, and Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationships to their respective sides, were updated to be less Cold War metaphor, and more corporate whistleblower.)
On the other hand, I was right about how Adam felt more charismatic in the book, while in the show, he came across as more serious. I also think that the scene where Adam really comes into his powers as the antichrist – when he talks about starting the world over and splitting it up between the Them and physically controls them with his mind – was better in the book than the show. The show very much went full supernatural horror with it, all glowing red eyes and writhing levitation and lowkey body horror, in a way that felt more ridiculous and distracting and ultimately less powerful than the book’s imagery of a tousle-haired eleven-year-old standing in the middle of a crazy wind storm, with a manic but clearly human expression, confidently explaining how he should – and could – just wipe the slate clean and start the world again in his image.
Also, I re-discovered that my absolute favorite scene in Good Omens (right up there with Az. and Crowley’s drunken conversation about dolphins and eternity) is the little two-page scene with the random janitor and the random office-lobby tree that starts visibly growing after Adam uses his power. For anyone who hasn’t read the book or doesn’t particularly remember this one little throw-away scene: as the trees start growing like mad and destroying streets and buildings as they take up more space, this one, insignificant guy climbs up and breaks through the glass panels on the ceiling so the tree can get the sunlight it needs to grow as wildly as the ones outside. It’s just such a sweet moment, and sort of a microcosm of the overall theme of human action > divine plan, and I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING.
Also, I always just... assumed that I was equally fond of Crowley and Aziraphale, because they’re two sides of the same coin, etc., and my feelings on the TV show supported this view, because in retrospect I think they had more screen time together in the miniseries than in the book, but it turns out I am a LYING LIAR WHO LIES because Crowley is my favorite. Like, I love Aziraphale, of course, but....... I really love Crowley.
(Similarly, I had completely forgotten that Aziraphale does, in fact, Say Fuck in the book. Like, for some reason I thought it had merely been implied in the book and then in the TV show they finally Let Aziraphale Say Fuck. Good for him!)
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
Finishing Good Omens made me want to read more Pratchett; I picked this one pretty much at random from the Discworld novels available on Libby, but I really enjoyed it! I liked the tongue-in-cheek takes on the clichés of vampire folklore and fairy tales, and the element of religious satire. I haven’t read any of the other witches’ sequence except for Equal Rites, but I’d osmosis-ed enough about, say, Nanny Ogg and Magrat, that skipping around wasn’t a problem.
Agnes was probably my favorite character, but I developed a definite mental eye-twitch by the end of the book due to all of the, uhhhhh, “humorous” references to her weight/appearance. I also had a soft spot for Mightily Oats, especially when he teamed up with Granny Weatherwax. The way he pretended he was the one that needed her help in order to give her the assistance she would never, ever ask for? Good! Their discussion of “believing in gods vs. believing in people” culminating in Oats actually having to make a decision between theory and practice in order to help a person in need? Really good!
I really, really liked the quote:
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
It actually reminded me of a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters:
We [demons] teach them [humans] not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun— the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog,’ ‘my servant,’ ‘my wife,’ ‘my father,’ ‘my master’ and ‘my country,’ to ‘my God.’ They can be taught to reduce all of these senses to that of ‘my boots,’ the ‘my’ of ownership.
Speaking of quotes, the parallels (or is it the contrast?) between Oats’ and Lacrimosa’s “everywhere I look I see something holy” made me feel some kind of way. In Lacrimosa’s case, the point was that symbols are just patterns of lines and shapes and you can see those patterns everywhere if you look hard enough, it’s just the fact of people’s belief that gives them significance. The context of Oats’ quote took the theory a step further, to the point that faith can’t - and shouldn’t - just be constrained to symbols; by focusing too hard on the importance of a symbol, you can lose sight of what’s really important about whatever you believe in.
Up next:
I’m keeping with the Pratchett/Discworld theme for the time being, and just started Small Gods!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-16 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 12:53 am (UTC)With italics!
I like Mightily Oats a lot.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 03:27 am (UTC)find someone to murder a child for mehandle this myself!" as soon as he figured out that Heaven didn't actually want to stop the apocalypse, it wanted to win it.I love Mightily Oats! I have a rather complicated personal relationship with faith/organized religion so I was sympathetic to his inner conflict, and I really liked how that conflict was resolved.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 11:13 pm (UTC)I also felt that the scene where Adam really comes into his powers as the antichrist – when he talks about starting the world over and splitting it up between the Them and physically controls them with his mind – was better in the book than the show.
Yes, definitely. That was another instance of them being like, "Look! We have money for special effects! We'd better go over the top trying to show something with CGI that could be got across with acting." Same problem in the Hogfather adaptation, same problem in Going Postal, I just do not understand why they haven't learned!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 11:34 pm (UTC)