Category: Bookish Owl

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The Bookish Owl – Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

In case you have somehow missed all the pop songs now featuring jingle bells and the excessive advertising for shit you don’t need – it’s Chriiiiistmas and that means it’s time to (re)read Hogfather by Terry Pratchett!

I’m by no means a Christmassy person – I can’t keep up cheer for an entire month and I have a burning hatred for elves that I can’t quite explain – but I’m all for Christmas stories (or, in this case, Hogswatch stories!) if they’re about Santa Claus (or the Hogfather) disappearing and Death having to do his job with absolutely no experience.

What are you doing for Hogswatch this year?

Hogfather
by Terry Pratchett

Susan had never hung up a stocking . She’d never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up. It wasn’t that her parents didn’t believe in such things. They didn’t need to believe in them. They know they existed. They just wished they didn’t.

There are those who believe and those who don’t. Through the ages, superstition has had its uses. Nowhere more so than in the Discworld where it’s helped to maintain the status quo. Anything that undermines superstition has to be viewed with some caution. There may be consequences, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning. When those consequences turn out to be the end of the world, you need to be prepared. You might even want more standing between you and oblivion than a mere slip of a girl – even if she has looked Death in the face on numerous occasions…

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

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The Bookish Owl – Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski

Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski

I’m currently reading Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Why am I currently reading Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski, you ask?

Because the entire first season of the new The Witcher show will be released on Netflix on Friday! That’s more important than Christmas, you guys, and I need to get into the spirit of things. Season of Storms is the last in the book series the show will be based on, so it’s helping to build up the hype for me.

(Not that I needed any help with that. I’m basically vibrating.)

So, who else is watching the show? And if you are, and you’re already familiar with The Witcher, then what are you looking forward to seeing the most?

Season of Storms
by Andrzej Sapkowski

Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, one of the few capable of hunting the monsters that prey on humanity. A mutant who is tasked with killing unnatural beings. He uses magical signs, potions, and the pride of every Witcher – two swords, steel and silver.

But a contract has gone wrong, and Geralt finds himself without his signature weapons. Now he needs them back, because sorcerers are scheming, and across the world clouds are gathering.

The season of storms is coming…

Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski

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The Bookish Owl – Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Toot, toot! Time for Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.

This is the last Discworld book about Moist von Lipwig, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he’ll con everyone this time around.

I’m also looking forward to seeing how Lord Vetinari will – very subtly – threaten to have him killed if he doesn’t use those conman skills for the good of Ankh-Morpork.

…

Also, the above is total hogwash, because I already finished the book. But I wrote the draft of this post before I started and I’m not going to change it just because the sun has been hiding for a week, so I haven’t had the lighting a photo of a Discworld book deserves.

On to the owl photo. Hoot, hoot!

Raising Steam
by Terry Pratchett

To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork – a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it’s soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.

Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work – as master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital… but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and don’t always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse…

Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi’ t’flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he’s going to stop it all going off the rails…

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

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The Bookish Owl – The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

I’m behind on these posts, but here you have The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman!

I’ve already finished this book, but I have been too sick to do the owl-wrangling required for pictures, so you’re getting the post retroactively.

Hopefully ‘retroactively’ is a proper word and not just my tired brain messing with me…

“The Burning Page” is book three in the Invisible Library series. It was not quite as good as the first book, but better than the second, and I really enjoyed the parts with Alberich. He’s a great villain, so I hope he has something more up his sleeve for the next books. We could do with some more Vale scenes, however.

The Burning Page
by Genevieve Cogman

Never judge a book by its cover…

Due to her involvement in an unfortunate set of mishaps between the dragons and the Fae, Librarian spy Irene is stuck on probation, doing what should be simple fetch-and-retrieve projects for the mysterious Library. But trouble has a tendency to find both Irene and her apprentice, Kai—a dragon prince—and, before they know it, they are entangled in more danger than they can handle…

Irene’s longtime nemesis, Alberich, has once again been making waves across multiple worlds, and, this time, his goals are much larger than obtaining a single book or wreaking vengeance upon a single Librarian. He aims to destroy the entire Library—and make sure Irene goes down with it.

With so much at stake, Irene will need every tool at her disposal to stay alive. But even as she draws her allies close around her, the greatest danger might be lurking from somewhere close—someone she never expected to betray her…

The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

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The Bookish Owl – Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Snuff by Terry Pratchett Discworld

I will finally be reading Snuff by Terry Pratchett!

I have waited soooo long to read the last few Discworld books, because I wanted them in the new Collector’s Edition, and now they’re finally here! And they’re pretty, and shiny – and now I need to come up with an excuse to cancel all my plans in the near future.

No, I’m not excited or anything.

And I’m not getting an existential crisis at the thought that this will be the last time I read a City Watch book for the first time. Don’t be ridiculous.

…

That “The Watch” BBC series better be as good as the Good Omens adaption, or all of you will have to deal with my Vimes withdrawals.

Snuff
by Terry Pratchett

According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.

And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.

He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.

They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.

But not quite all…

Snuff by Terry Pratchett Discworld