In Good Omens, I’ve just met the Four Horsemen. I was telling Maribou that, so far, the book hadn’t really felt like a collaboration but more of a Gaiman told Pratchett something and Pratchett told Gaiman to shut up… but I’m finding the occasional scene that doesn’t make me laugh, or snort, or smirk, and I’m guessing that Gaiman was in charge of that particular scene.
Maribou tells me that, no, there’s a very particular wry British style that they’re running with. Douglas Adams did it for Sci-Fi, Pratchett did it for high fantasy, and anybody sufficiently British can write a book in the style of one of the William books. (I should note that last week Schilling pointed out that Pratchett acknowledged having done most of the heavy lifting… I hadn’t really had opportunity to see that quite yet. Lemme tell ya: I’m only 50 pages into the book and Pratchett has done most of the heavy lifting.)
Also, while out running errands yesterday, I picked up Wreck-It Ralph
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Pratchett feels at times like he’s channeling either Monty Python or Douglas Adams Some Python sounds exactly like Beyond The Fringe. Some of Pratchett’s characters might have stepped out of a Wodehouse novel. One of Wodehouse’s main inspirations was William S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan.) British humor is a continuum.
I wouldn’t call the common thread “wry”, though I don’t know a good word or phrase for it. To the best of my knowledge there’s no term of art for the kind of humor that parodies the Meno by having the slave boy tell Socrates to shove it up his bum.
I have started reading Bulfinch’s Mythology, a Christmas gift from my brother. It was intended to enable the cultivated person of the eighteenth century to understand classical allusions in poetry, prose, art and conversation. (My brother excels as creative Christmas gifts.)
It’s very relaxing. Too much time spent on social sciences methods for academic work is soul-eating. I need to remember that I need stories.
Being from the eighteenth century, it has delightful lines even in the preface, like noting that the book is intended for, “the reader of english literature, of either sex“, in a time when that king of thing warranted note, or like:
“Having chosen mythology connected with literature for our province, we have endeavoured to omit nothing which the reader of elegant literature is likely to find occasion for. Such stories and part of stories which are offensive to pure taste and good morals are not given. But such stories are not often referred to, and if they occasionally should be, the English reader need feel no mortification in confessing his ignorance of them.”
Remember, this is Greek mythology we’re talking about!
Do you have just the first volume, about classical mythology, or also the two others about King Arthur and the medieval Charlemagne and Roland legends too? The last of these were completely unfamiliar to me, but they’re a real kick.
All three (in one book). I’m fairly familiar with the Arthurian mythos, but the Charlemagne ones are completely new to me.
I finished all the Lucifer books. Since then I’ve been reading a collection of essays about hunting (all by women, some > 100 years old, some < 10), Heart Shots, and a forthcoming memoir of working for various agencies as one of the people who make trails passable, Dirt Work.
Watching the 3rd season of Republic of Doyle, having finished the first 2 BBC house of cards miniseries.
Age of the essays or age of the writers? I am assuming the former, but the other could be interesting.
Age of the essays. The writers, I think, ranged in age from early 20s to late 80s.
Had you read Lucifer before? If not, what did you think? (if yes, I assume you liked them, since you read them again).
I read the single issues for a while when they were first coming out … maybe enough of them to consist of the first of the trades and then the first couple single issues after that? But this was essentially my first time.
I really really liked them, and will be buying the trades when they start reissuing them this summer – I expect to want to reread them eventually. It’s not as good as Sandman, or Transmet – not even as good as the very best stretches of Fables – but that is a damn short list of things to not be as good as.
(Nor is it as good as Astro City – which I can’t believe I left off the list. But still! A very short list.)
I am reading The Eye of the World. I decided to take the plunge and read the entire series, though I will intersperse other books as I go to prevent getting burned out.
Yesterday, I finally watched Memento and the first Police Academy. The first because I really wanted to see it, the latter because I wanted something light and brainless to watch (and I saw all of the others when I was younger).