Sunday, April 23, 2006
April TBR Challenge
The TBR Challenge for April:
In honor of April Fool's Day, choose a book with a joke or pun in the title.
My challenge: Going Postal by the incomparable Terry Pratchett. What can I say about this book? It is, like all Pratchett's books, amazing. As you can no doubt surmise from the title, it's about the post office. Vetinari [pause for a moment here to drool over Vetinari's oh-so-twisted brain] hires a con artist fresh from the gallows to revive the post office. There's romance and equal rights and ethics and character growth and so much humor he's got you thinking before you even realize it. It's still a little disconcerting to have chapters in a Discworld book, but he has fun with them: I caught the progression of chapters 7, 7a, 9, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. These are books you've got to read more than once.
A couple of people suggested this was a difficult challenge to meet. It must say something about different reading tastes, because I've read several books this month that would meet the challenge. They were already at the top of the stack, though, so I took advantage of the challenge to read one I've been dying to read. Plus, I'd just finished reading Crusie & Mayer's Don't Look Down, and I wanted to read another excellent book afterwards so as not to lose the good-book-high.
The other books I've read this month that qualify:
Categories: TBRChallenge
In honor of April Fool's Day, choose a book with a joke or pun in the title.
My challenge: Going Postal by the incomparable Terry Pratchett. What can I say about this book? It is, like all Pratchett's books, amazing. As you can no doubt surmise from the title, it's about the post office. Vetinari [pause for a moment here to drool over Vetinari's oh-so-twisted brain] hires a con artist fresh from the gallows to revive the post office. There's romance and equal rights and ethics and character growth and so much humor he's got you thinking before you even realize it. It's still a little disconcerting to have chapters in a Discworld book, but he has fun with them: I caught the progression of chapters 7, 7a, 9, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. These are books you've got to read more than once.
A couple of people suggested this was a difficult challenge to meet. It must say something about different reading tastes, because I've read several books this month that would meet the challenge. They were already at the top of the stack, though, so I took advantage of the challenge to read one I've been dying to read. Plus, I'd just finished reading Crusie & Mayer's Don't Look Down, and I wanted to read another excellent book afterwards so as not to lose the good-book-high.
The other books I've read this month that qualify:
- Ex and the Single Girl by Lani Diane Rich
- Hot Ice by Nora Roberts
- Sweet Myth-Tery of Life by Robert Asprin
- novellas from Dead and Loving It by MaryJanice Davidson:
- "Santa Claws"
- "Monster Love"
- "A Fiend in Need"
- In the Thrill of the Night by Candice Hern
- Cruel and Unusual Puns by Don Hauptman
- Don't Look Down by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. This one's a pun on a few levels. The most amusing is the story about how they got the title: Jenny always calls the first draft of a book, the one in which you just write, and don't worry about rules or character arcs or beats or symbolism or anything the "don't look down draft." When they first started the book, Jenny sent Bob the file with her first scene in it, with the title on the file "don't look down draft," which became "the draft of Don't Look Down." The things you learn by being a Cherry.
Categories: TBRChallenge
Labels: books, tbr challenge
