Reading - February 2023

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett (1999)

Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, particularly the later ones, often leave me feeling that I've missed something that I'm not quite intelligent enough to grasp. Perhaps that's the point in this case, since we experience most of the story through Samuel Vimes' perspective, who also has that feeling. Nevertheless, this is masterly storytelling, teeming with ideas and sweeping you along. Great stuff.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie (1941)

Classic Christie, classic Poirot. A surprise twist that made sense once explained, but I never work out these things in advance - even though, in this case, I've read it before! Easy reading for bedtimes.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins (2022)

Terry Pratchett was a phenomenon. I'm no publishing expert but I can't think of another writer with such quality and quantity, and his books are stuffed full of ideas in almost careless abundance. It might be a bit of a cliché but lesser authors would have reserved whole books for just one or two of the kind of ideas that Pratchett seemed to have by the dozen. Rob Wilkins was Pratchett's PA for over twenty years and clearly regards his late boss with awe and love. Yet despite all of these things and despite being written by an obviously partial observer, Pratchett comes across as, well, a bit of an arse. I've said before that if someone is described as "blunt", "direct" or "not suffering fools gladly" then what you're actually hearing about is just rudeness, dressed up to try and excuse it. Perhaps he was charming enough in person to get away with it, but it honestly doesn't sound like it. It doesn't exactly disappoint me because it has no bearing on the books, which I will still really enjoy, but I don't accept the reasoning that says this kind of behaviour is okay because "artistry" or "specialness" or something. Anyway, notwithstanding all this, the biography itself is interesting and very moving towards the end as it describes Pratchett's slow - and then not so slow - descent into dementia. Worth a read.