Wednesday 1 February 2012

Snuff

(January 2012)



The man is a genius. Simple as that really.

I’m a bit of a cranky reader, to be honest. If I’m reading I’m reading, it’s not some placeholder activity until something else more interesting turns up. Friends and family have learned that if I’m holding a book and they just start talking at me I’m probably not going to hear what they have to say. This is my time and my space. It’s not for sharing.

The only author I’ll regularly break that for is Terry Pratchett. Not that I’m keen for people to interrupt, but every page has a line or two which is so good it just has to be shared. Of course it’s never as funny read out loud in isolation as it is read in your head in context, but still.

I rarely get sad or upset about the illnesses or deaths of famous people I don’t know and have never met. When good people die I can see that, in the abstract, the world is a poorer place, but I can’t take it personally. I was genuinely upset when Pterry announced he had Alzheimer’s though. I’ve grown up reading his stuff and it’s probably true to say that he’s shaped my worldview more than anyone outside my immediate family. I know that’s fairly selfish on my part, but he’s one of the good guys, he’ll understand.

2 comments:

  1. Such creativity....and he's going to forget it all. Life is a long ironic path that has "rest stops" where stuff makes sense for what seems like brief seconds.....then it all returns to one WTF moment after the other.

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  2. Sometimes I wish it was actually ironic, because that at least would suggest some kind of conscious driving force behind it all.

    Then I give myself a mental slap and remember that it's good that there's not, because that means it's all down to us. I wouldn't want to delegate responsibility for that, y'know?

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