Snuff

Snuff is the 39th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and you've got to take your hat off to a man who responds to the impending loss of faculty to Alzheimer's by setting out to write a murder mystery. Admittedly, it's not the twistiest of mysteries, but nevertheless it's a pretty tight plot.

We're back with Sam Vimes for this one, as Ankh-Morpork's hard-bitten watchman brings big city law to the countryside in a narrative which owes a lot to In the Heat of the Night, but with the inevitable Discworld slant. It continues the process of modernisation, with factories, plantations and ox-powered paddle boats added to the already established telegraph network and movable type printing to drag Ankh-Morpork kicking and screaming out of the Century of the Fruitbat, and almost unrecognisably far from the high fantasy pastiche of The Light Fantastic.

As with many of Pratchett's more recent works (by which, I feel old to recount, I pretty much mean the last fifteen to twenty years) the humour of the novel is tied up with a darker side and an exploration of the human condition. In common with the Sam Vimes back-catalogue (post-Guards, Guards at least), this means an examination of the importance of law in separating right from wrong, and in particular the adherence to law as the last fire by which savage humanity can warm themselves and keep from falling back into the blackness. There is also a pretty solid - if not unproblematic; the story is still about the white folks - look at racism; ground that Pratchett has covered before, but rarely so bleakly, as the goblins also embody an extreme of class-based oppression.

Snuff is a solid adventure with a good conspiracy/murder mystery at its core, and a lot of thought behind it. It was also at least one soul-destroying child death short of what I had feared, so that's good.

On reading - Choices

Reading involves choices; has done since long before we passed the point that a single human being could hope to read everything ever written, even in their own language. So, what are the choices that I make when selecting my reading material, and what informs them?

These days, I confess that I shy away from ongoing series, although that used to be a shoe-in for me. Of course, I used to ask essentially one question: Is it on the SF/Fantasy shelf at the Fleet Library. That was how I ended up reading Battlefield Earth, the Atlan saga (featuring a female protagonist whose sole contribution to anything seemed to be to bounce haplessly around the landscape like a rogue billiard ball, putting out for anyone who seized her roughly and then pining about them when they got killed/bored/forgotten by the plot) and just about everything the Davids Eddings and Gemmell ever wrote.

Why have I changed my modus operandi? Well, aside from the evidence above, Robert Jordan has a lot to answer for in that respect; not because he died before he finished The Wheel of Time, but because it was notably the first series in which boredom overtook the completist demands of my egg-hoarding lizard brain and I decided that I just could not be arsed. And yet, I still kinda want to know how it ends; thus my new policy. If I stick to self-contained novels, then if it's shit I can find out what happens without having to slog through three more volumes.

If I do see a promising series, I will usually look for a standalone by the same author to test the waters.

I still focus a lot on SF and Fantasy, because that's my jam, but crime fiction is in the ascendant with me. On the plus side, since most mass market paperbacks go for £5.99, £6.99 or £7.99, regardless of size, fantasy gives you a lot of paper for the price. SF and crime tend towards more modest volumes.

I read a lot of children's and YA fiction, having got into it very much as a teacher. Honestly, I enjoy the absence of the tawdry, pointless sex scenes which seem to be de rigueur in books for grown ups these days (and that's another shift in my tastes since I was a teenager).

Moreover, there is just so much stuff out there that I go more by recommendations than I used to, although I have to be careful with that. My mother recommended Angela's Ashes, and I don't think I've ever completely forgiven her.

I am also a full-on convert to the Kindle, for the simple reason that it's much easier to read on a bus, and with my smartphone my books and music are in the same place. The mobile telecommunications aspect is kind of a fringe benefit.

So, Kindle books, ideally non-series, in the SF, fantasy and crime genres; with some exceptions, naturally.

I also don't read as much as I maybe should, which makes me sad. Perhaps when I am commuting by train I will get more into the rhythm of the thing.