Book Challenge: 1/12
Jan. 7th, 2016 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsYesterday I scratched off my first entry in the 2016 Book-Reading Challenge: the "book you can finish in a day." I appreciate the flexibility that it says a book you "can" finish in a day not necessarily a book that you "do" finish in a day, but, just for fun, I took it as a challenge to binge-read a book in one day and to make it something of an undertaking. So I decided yesterday was my day, and I ended up staying up mildly late finishing, but I did it.
The book: "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett.
This was a bid of a hedge, really. If I'd failed to read it in one day I could have counted it as the "book you've already read at least once." Back in the 90's, I read a few of the early Discworld novels*, enough to get quite fond of them, but I haven't kept up on the series in the meantime. (I will pick up Pratchett's books when I see them in used bookstores, though, so I have a few that I haven't read lying around at random. And I keep getting the idea that I should specifically read the Tiffany Aching books, but I haven't yet).
The early parts of Guards! Guards! felt a bit rough, but once it got going it was as good as I remembered. I don't think I appreciated Sybil properly when I read it all those years ago. Some of the scenes had stuck quite vividly in my mind --- sometimes more vivid in memory than they were in the actual book, but still, that definitely says something for it, that it had stayed with me all this time. Some of it felt new again, though.
Reading it also gave me vague recollections of having tried to ape Pratchett's strenuously-clever style at some point.** Not something I'd do these days, because I think that's just not who I am as a writer, but not something I can hold against younger self for wanting to try it on.
So, progress:
-A book published this year (2016)
-A book you can finish in a day
-A book you've been meaning to read
-A book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller
-A book you should have read in school
-A book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF
-A book published before you were born
-A book that was banned at some point
-A book you previously abandoned
-A book you own but have never read
-A book that intimidates you
-A book you've already read at least once
Next I think will be the "book you've been meaning to read.
*Specifically: "Guards! Guards!", "Feet of Clay", "Reaper Man", "Soul Music", "Small Gods", "The Colour of Magic", and I'm sure another Rincewind book that I can't recall the title of. More recently I did read "Equal Rites," still early stuff.
**After much pondering, I figured out that this had happened in the "Externalverse," which... Okay, when I was in college, early in my relationship with my ex, she and I gleefully produced a sprawling, cracktastic corpus set in a fanfiction universe mashup of Highlander, X-Men comics ('90s X-Men comics, mind), and Battle Arena Toshinden. I'm both glad I did it and just-as-glad it'll probably never see the light of day.
The book: "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett.
This was a bid of a hedge, really. If I'd failed to read it in one day I could have counted it as the "book you've already read at least once." Back in the 90's, I read a few of the early Discworld novels*, enough to get quite fond of them, but I haven't kept up on the series in the meantime. (I will pick up Pratchett's books when I see them in used bookstores, though, so I have a few that I haven't read lying around at random. And I keep getting the idea that I should specifically read the Tiffany Aching books, but I haven't yet).
The early parts of Guards! Guards! felt a bit rough, but once it got going it was as good as I remembered. I don't think I appreciated Sybil properly when I read it all those years ago. Some of the scenes had stuck quite vividly in my mind --- sometimes more vivid in memory than they were in the actual book, but still, that definitely says something for it, that it had stayed with me all this time. Some of it felt new again, though.
Reading it also gave me vague recollections of having tried to ape Pratchett's strenuously-clever style at some point.** Not something I'd do these days, because I think that's just not who I am as a writer, but not something I can hold against younger self for wanting to try it on.
So, progress:
-A book published this year (2016)
-A book you've been meaning to read
-A book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller
-A book you should have read in school
-A book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF
-A book published before you were born
-A book that was banned at some point
-A book you previously abandoned
-A book you own but have never read
-A book that intimidates you
-A book you've already read at least once
Next I think will be the "book you've been meaning to read.
*Specifically: "Guards! Guards!", "Feet of Clay", "Reaper Man", "Soul Music", "Small Gods", "The Colour of Magic", and I'm sure another Rincewind book that I can't recall the title of. More recently I did read "Equal Rites," still early stuff.
**After much pondering, I figured out that this had happened in the "Externalverse," which... Okay, when I was in college, early in my relationship with my ex, she and I gleefully produced a sprawling, cracktastic corpus set in a fanfiction universe mashup of Highlander, X-Men comics ('90s X-Men comics, mind), and Battle Arena Toshinden. I'm both glad I did it and just-as-glad it'll probably never see the light of day.
