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Terry Pratchett!

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Sat 02 Jul , 2016 12:53 am
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Oh, hey - look what I found!



But they stole Verdi's music from La Traviata. In fact, after the first two lines, they stole the words, too.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Sat 02 Jul , 2016 2:26 am
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That was my favorite joke in the entire book! :LMAO:
Quote:
Questa maledetta porta si blòcca.
Questa maledetta porta si blòcca comunque diàvolo lo faccio.
C’è scritto 'tirare', e io sto tirando.
Forse dovrebbe esserci scritto 'spingere'?

This damn door sticks.
This damn door sticks no matter what the hell I do.
It’s marked "pull", and indeed I am pulling.
Perhaps it should be marked "push"?
I guess the video was in Czech? I could just barely follow along.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Sat 02 Jul , 2016 11:08 am
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Yes, it was in Czech.

My experience of Czech was singing a Janáček cantata with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. I still remember the high proportion of consonants to vowels ("Vstrshem! Mrzhizh!").

Our guest conductor, who actually was Czech, informed us, "Czech is not a language - it is a throat disease".

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Fri 08 Jul , 2016 1:14 pm
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A Terry Pratchett book that has apparently been available since October but I just heard about today:

Shaking Hands with Death
Quote:
This is an amazing piece of writing from a master of the written word regarding his life since the diagnosis of a rare form of Alzheimer's.

Sir Terry Pratchett was asked by the family of the late Richard Dimbleby in 2009 if he would give the annual address televised by the BBC. Given the nature of his condition it was a monumental task and he rose to the challenge with the help of family and close friends. The result is this fantastic essay on how he felt at the diagnosis, the anger that threatened to consume him, the fear of an undignified exit and the pain that his family would endure throughout. He speaks passionately for the option of assisted death being legalised to allow everyone the right to decide how far they went on the road to losing themselves.

This is a piece of work that will pitch people from one side of the argument against the opposite faction quite literally. He speaks out about the reality of the condition and how it affects even the smallest things we take for granted being able to do. His fervent wish to be allowed the dignity of physical death before the cognitive death that Alzheimer's grants its victims is heartbreaking coming from a man who has entertained us for many years with his brilliant works about the disc world and others.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Mon 07 Nov , 2016 7:48 pm
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Frelga wrote:
It's better than many regular, prehumous fantasy books, too. ;)
Just popping in to say that I finally picked up a paperback of The Shepherd's Crown, and you were right, Frelga. It doesn't read like Pratchett's voice/ style, for the most part, but it's written well enough. And there are no jarring annoyances, like conversations that turn into speechifying, or characters that act or speak very differently than they did in previous books. Whoever turned Pratchett's last manuscript into something readable did a good job.
[SHOW]
And I thought Granny Weatherwax's death was beautifully done.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Sun 04 Dec , 2016 11:22 pm
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I was reading something totally unrelated, and found a reference to Rembrandt's "The Night Watch", which it called possibly the world's greatest painting. So of course I had to google it to have a look. And now I know what the illustration on my copy of Pratchett's Night Watch was based on.

Here's Rembrandt's version (click to embiggen):

[ img ]

Here's the cover of my Pratchett book:

[ img ]

I guess since the painting is apparently well-known, this may not be news to any of you, but it was certainly news to me.

Oh, and just for fun, a Night Watch flash mob:

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 26 Jan , 2017 4:08 am
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Saw this on the net:

How does an Igor think the unthinkable?
.
.
.
.
.
.
With an itheberg

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 26 Jan , 2017 10:03 am
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Brilliant!

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Mon 13 Feb , 2017 12:02 am
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I just came across this article about a docudrama on Pratchett while browsing the Guardian website:

Terry Pratchett docudrama is a fittingly imaginative tribute to Discworld's genius
Quote:
You might quibble that showing him mostly in the context of his hardcore fans makes him look more like a cult hero and less what he truly was: a novelist for everyone, for all ages and for the ages. Certainly, Terry did yearn at times to be taken more seriously by the literati. But then after a clip of one of its more gormless members declaring that “no woman would ever read” him, there is a clip of crowds of Pratchett’s female fans dressed up as his brilliant and bracing feminist hero, Granny Weatherwax.
Quote:
Val McDermid pointing out that, in Sam Vimes, Pratchett created one of the great detectives is a nice moment of recognition beyond the fantasy fandom, but the greatest and most important of all his characters is surely Death. In a society that avoids discussing the subject, Pratchett made Death – with his horse Binky – his central creation, and his favourite. Seven of his books were written in the terrible interval between his being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and finally walking away with his most beloved character.
Quote:
There is an image in what I think is Pratchett’s masterpiece – the Bromeliad Trilogy, one of his children’s series – of a tree frog that has lived inside a bromeliad all its life, believing it to be the whole world. One day he climbs out and sees the entire rainforest canopy, with its constellations of other unexplored bromeliads. It’s an image he kept coming back to. I can think of few thinkers and writers who have explored so eloquently the dialectic between belief and knowledge, between faith and reason. Time and again, in both his adult and children’s books, we find that a ludicrous idea or mad tradition – the Thing that will lead us home – turns out to be true in some surprising way.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Fri 24 Mar , 2017 12:28 am
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Re-reading Jingo right now is a bit disturbing.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 03 Aug , 2017 12:54 pm
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There's a collection of Christmas stories by Pratchett being published in October: Father Christmas's Fake Beard

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Tue 15 Aug , 2017 2:07 am
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"Michael Sheen and David Tennant have been cast in the lead roles in the Amazon series adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s “Good Omens,” Variety has learned"

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/neil-ga ... 202522663/

I squeed a little.

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 17 Aug , 2017 7:53 pm
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I've got to get started on this series again. We stalled out after "Moving Pictures."


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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Wed 30 Aug , 2017 2:24 pm
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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Wed 30 Aug , 2017 8:02 pm
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I saw that. And thought the data is probably still recoverable. ;)

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Alatar
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 31 Aug , 2017 9:57 am
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I guess the point is, those were his wishes and the should be honoured, even if the data could be recovered.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 31 Aug , 2017 2:42 pm
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Oh, absolutely. Still, the destruction was more symbolic than really secure. Unless they also took a magnet to it.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Sun 24 Sep , 2017 8:15 pm
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[ attachment ]
tumblr_owst9gBGfX1v44u8co1_1280[1].jpg (109.42 KiB) Viewed 20005 times
Via incorrectdiscworldquotes.tumblr.com, which is hilarious.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 30 Nov , 2017 4:00 pm
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For fans and followers of the Night Watch: there's actually a 19th-century painting by Alexander Carse on sale on Dundas St. in Edinburgh called... The Recruiting Party or The King's Shilling

You can see the painting and click on the thumbnail to see the bigger version in the link above.

I'd enquire, but it's almost certainly beyond my means. I'm somewhat distrustful of prices that aren't actually listed...

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Terry Pratchett!
Posted: Thu 30 Nov , 2017 5:43 pm
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Made me think of Monstrous Regiment, too. Needs more trolls, though.

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