Feet of Clay
by Terry Pratchett

It’s murder in Discworld!- which ordinarily is no big deal. But what bothers Watch Commander Sir Sam Vimes is that the unusual deaths of three elderly Ankh-Morporkians do not bear the clean, efficient marks of the Assassins’ Guild. An apparent lack of any motive is also quite troubling. all Vimes has are some tracks of white clay and more of those bothersome “clue” things that only serve to muck up an investigation. The anger of a fearful populace is already being dangerously channeled toward the city’s small community of golems - the mindless, absurdly industrious creatures of baked clay who can occasionally be found toiling in the city’s factories. And certain highly placed personages are using the unrest as an excuse to resurrect a monarchy - which would be bad enough even if the “king” they were grooming wasn’t as empty-headed as your typical animated pottery.

Full disclosure - I’m a Pratchett fan. You’ll note this is a pattern with me. I find a series or an author that I really like and I spend a lot of time going through whatever’s available. Also, there are enough books in the Discworld series that I can pick up a new one when I happen to be at a bookstore.

Feet of Clay is witty and hilarious and shines a fantastically twisted light on the issues of racism, gender conformity, and slavery. The Watch are busy with a series of mysterious murders, Golem suicides, an ill-turn for the Patrician, and the unexpected inclinations of their newest dwarf. Nobby Nobbs gets a taste of aristocracy, Angua makes a new friend, and Sam Vimes is a cunning bastard.

That’s all well and good on its own, but woven in between Wee Mad Arthur’s antics and Captain Carrot’s unfailing good charm are important questions about whether Golems count as people or property, whether race can drive a wedge between friends, and whether long held traditions regarding dwarfculinity and the brand new procedures for forensic investigation will keep the newest member of the Watch from being taken seriously.

If you’re a fan of Pratchett’s, this book is a must-read. If you like satire, social commentary, and humour, all with a touch of careless frivolity, you should pick this one up. I had a blast with this adventure through the streets of Ankh-Morpork. I highly recommend it.

Unseen Academicals

Unseen Academicals
by Terry Pratchett

The wizards at Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University are renowned for many things – wisdom, magic, their love of teatime – but athletics is most assuredly not on the list. So when Lord Vetinari, the city’s benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university put forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff – or lose the funding that pays for their nine daily meals – the more-than-usually-at-sea UU wizards find themselves in a quandary. To begin with, they have to figure out just what it is that makes this sport of foot-the-ball so popular with Ankh-Morpork of all ages and social strata. Then they have to learn how to play it. Oh, and on top of that, they must somehow win a football match without using magic.

And the thing about football – the most important thing about football – is that is is never just football.

Terry Pratchett is a master of turning ordinary things into satirical commentary on the state of society. I have read a fair number of his Discworld series books and they never fail to make me laugh and make me think. I asked for this book for Christmas knowing nothing about it other than the fact that it was Pratchett and that, from the cover, it was about sports.

I don’t even like sports. I never really got into playing them – with the exception, of course, of No Rules Band Class Soccer – and I have never been interested in watching them.

I loved this book. Even for a sports-outsider like me, this book turned the world of competitive football on its head and I loved it. Pratchett literally takes apart the game and boils it down to its base components and by the end of the process you discover that it isn’t even about the game at all in that fantastic mockingly respectful way that Pratchett writes. He makes the sport on even ground and I was rooting for the Academicals along with everyone else by the time this book concluded.

I also really enjoyed Nutt’s self-discovery story as well and how seamlessly it attached itself to the football story. It was a very real and raw story with real trauma there that was poorly handled by Nutt by brilliantly handled by Glenda, who has very definitive ideas about how people should and should not be treated, even if they are something you didn’t expect.

I’d like to point out that Glenda is, perhaps, one of my favourite Discworld characters to date. I believe this is her, as yet, only appearance in the series and she’s wonderful. She’s the head of the Night Kitchen at the University and is a descendant of a brilliant line of pie makers. She herself makes fantastically renowned pies - renowned enough that when she got it into her head to march into the chambers of Lord Vetinari (which is never done if you expect to continue living) and berate him for his Ideas about football, she was actually admitted because she brought a pie with her. She’s wonderfully stubborn and no-nonsense and so real world ordinary that she comes right around to the other side of fantastic.

I’d definitely recommend this to anyone – sports fans, non-sports fans, people who like books who make them think, people who like books that make them laugh… Pratchett’s got something for everyone, I think, and this is just another brilliant addition.

Making Money

The thing about all of Terry Pratchett’s books that I love is that they are laugh out loud hilarious. Pratchett is a master of puns and irony, and the satirical landscape of his work never ceases to bring forth a chuckle or two.

If you haven’t read any Pratchett, fear not. Although Making Money is a part of a series (and is, indeed, a sequel to a book in that series), this series has no beginning or end. You can pick up any Discworld book and you’d be starting at the beginning. Really. No joke.

I say series, but it’s more of a conglomeration of books. Some books focus on one set of characters on one side of the world, some on another set, and some even follow one man cross the continents on adventures that he never wanted to have.

And the Discworld is instantly recognizable. It’s exactly like our world in every way, except for all the ways that it isn’t. Huzzah for satire!

Quick English lesson-

Satire is a literary device used to point out ridiculousness or folly. It’s an indirect method of saying, “What the hell are you doing that for?” Each of Pratchett’s books have a specific habit, industry, or practice on the stand to be laughed at.

Making Money is about banking.

Main character Moist von Lipwig (the Post Master General) is put in charge of the biggest bank in the city of Ankh-Morpork through a series of odd circumstances and without any threatening whatsoever. He is told that he needs to make some changes because the bank is losing its credibility, but the only thing he knows about banks is how to break into them. Throughout the course of the novel, Moist deals with the gold standard, the issue of coinage vs. paper money, what a bank should do with deposited cash, and how to deal out loans.

Even though this book is mocking the banking system and tearing all of its practices to pieces in order to fit them together funny, it was actually very helpful. It taught me more about banking than any parent, teacher, or banker ever did. It certainly answered questions I had about why money is what we think it is.

The answer to those questions is, of course, “It is what we think it is because we said so.”

Obviously, I’m an of Mr. Pratchett’s, so of course I’ll be recommending Making Money to anyone in search of humor. It does have some adult humor, so it’s not for kids, but it wouldn’t be inappropriate for anyone in middle school and high school.