January Book Group: "Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett
Monstrous Regiment is our January book club pick. You may be a hardcore Pratchett fan, in which case perhaps you'll enjoy re-reading this one and contributing to the discussion. Or you may be a total or relative Pratchett neophyte, like I am -- this is the third of his novels I've read, but the first one I thoroughly enjoyed. If you're unfamiliar with the book, you can read a summary here, and copies should be relatively easy to obtain. I really enjoyed the audiobook -- there are actually a few different audio versions, but I liked the one narrated by Katherine Parkinson with the footnotes read by Bill Nighy. It's a fun fantasy read with some serious reflections on war, nationalism, gender, and religion.
Who's in for this one? I'll post discussion questions around the 20th of the month.
Who's in for this one? I'll post discussion questions around the 20th of the month.
Comments
Pass it my side of the bed when you are done, please. To not do so would be an abomination unto Nuggan.
Ah, did that one turn up recently? Obviously my copy has been out of Borogravia too long.
I enjoyed Monstrous Regiment first time around - maybe I'll give it another whirl.
FWIW, the egregious Father F**kwit used the title as a pejorative, being afraid of Wimmin generally...unless (as he once told me) they kept their pinafores on, and stayed in the kitchen...
I presume shipmates caught the Knox reference.
@Bishops Finger, I hope I never meet Father F**kwit, I don't think I could answer to the consequences.
I certainly caught it. I read this book along with my daughter and her university friends who were reading it for their book club, and then we did a podcast together discussing it, and not one of those educated young people recognized the reference -- but I guess their education was in the wrong area!
Looking forward to joining the conversation this month. I lost a family friend in childbirth and an old school friend was killed by a car while crossing the road in December and I didn't feel like reading Christmas poetry after those tragedies 🕯
Same here! I’ve read all his books at least three times, but this one - just the once. His last three had also, sadly, lost a lot of his spark.
I think his first three were the best. If you haven’t read TP before, give them a go! Mort is short and an excellent example of his work.
The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort.
RIP Terry, amazing man and author. 🙏
(I think there are really five phases of Pratchett:
Colour of Magic to Sourcery where he's learning his craft;
Wyrd Sisters to maybe Soul Music, where he's telling fun stories with jokes and wisdom;
Maskerade to Thief of Time, where he's getting more philosophical;
and then Night Watch to Unseen Academicals, which are a bit darker and have more social commentary;
and then Snuff onwards where I'm afraid his illness was beginning to show.)
I agree with you that his spark was missing in the last books. "Making Money" just wasn't much fun to read, and the later books has their moments of brilliance, but weren't as consistently good as his norm.
The first few books have a much more madcap, rather surreal humor, and are more like a sketch show in written form than a novel. Mort is a great example of his humor, but if you wanted to start with one book to see if you might enjoy the whole series, I might pick Wyrd Sisters. Or perhaps Small Gods, which isn't so closely tied to the rest of his "storyline".
Actually I've always felt that Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic were not that good, Pterry was still working out how he wanted to develop it. But he hit it with Equal Rites and never looked back!
My vote for the two best would be Guards! Guards! and Night Watch.
I also have a soft spot for Jingo - largely due to Leonard of Quirm.
https://flic.kr/p/r1ZGWC
Though, TBH, there are very few* I wouldn't read. The Tiffany Aching stories are wonderful evocations of a countryside that never quite existed, but is so believable (it helps that we are not that far from the White Horse), and I deeply envy his talent for the truly dreadful pun. I also found The Light Fantastic in a bookcase at work, and had a good snort as I'd utterly forgotten the gag about Twoflower's ears being kept warm.
Anyone else desperate for Miriam Margolyes to play Nanny Ogg before she falls off her perch?
*OK, none
Enjoy!
FWIW, I've enjoyed pretty well all Pratchett's books, but two favourites are Guards! Guards! and Going Postal (which IMHO translated well into a TV fillum).
O! for the security and sensibleness of a Lord Vetinari government!
She'd be great, but so far, the TV adaptations of the discworld stories have fallen rather flat. So many of Pratchett's jokes are fundamentally written, and don't translate to the screen at all.
I had a similar disappointment with Good Omens - although I enjoyed the TV adaptation quite a lot, I couldn't help missing all the humour that wasn't there.
Yes this is not one of my favourites. Like how he uses the trope of a female running away disguised as a male, (a subject of several folk songs female lover disguised as a cabin boy or cornet to be near her lover; and lets not forget real life cross dressing pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, but for some reason don't engaged with the story. It seems rather remote and detached from the disc world saga despite involving Commander Sam Vines, a main character from this series.
The animated Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music were pretty good, I thought, but I wasn't particularly taken with the live action Hogfather and couldn't bear to watch the travesty of Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal.
Like a BBC adaptation of Dickens.
I think this might be one of the reasons why I enjoyed it, actually. I had made two previous attempts to "get into" reading Pratchett (Hogfather and The Colour of Magic), but wasn't particularly grabbed by either of them. Not having much previous knowledge or any real preconceptions of the world it's set in, I was able to enjoy Monstrous Regiment as a stand-alone.
But I see I've chosen a novel that's at best polarizing among the Pratchett fans here, so I expect the discussion will be lively!
I prefer the books where Death is a running joke rather than one of the main characters. The only exception is The Hogfather, but he came up with an interesting variation on the 'Death takes a holiday' plot there. I like most of the books about the Ankh-Morpork city guard. Didn't like the later witches books, where Granny Weatherwax turns into an unstoppable force who is Never Wrong... but I do like Witches Abroad. And Maskerade (which should be compulsory reading for all opera lovers).
‘The Colour of Magic’ felt very much like him getting into stride and is one of the weaker books in the series.
One of the various reading guides might help you pick a book you like, eg:
https://d4804za1f1gw.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/07/24165448/Discworld-Reading-Order.jpg
I think I feel the same way as Jane R about the Death takes a holiday books - I think I under appreciated Hogfather when I first read it for that reason. Thief of Time is good as well.
Granny Weatherwax is one of the great characters in English comic fiction, unstoppable force and never wrong or not.
I quite like it - some of the casting is good (particularly Christopher Lee as Death) but it doesn't quite work overall. Interestingly, June Whitfield, playing Nanny Ogg, had the audacity to change the words of the Hedgehog Song, on the grounds that it's a cartoon and children would be watching. I think it would have been better to just cut the scene before the potentially offending word, and leave it as a in-joke for those who knew it.
Soul Music is a better animation, I think.
I never said she wasn't. I just preferred the books when she needs Nanny Ogg to wave the bag of sweets occasionally. And Shepherd's Crown was just depressing.
And in The Shepherd's Crown I'm afraid it's clear that his illness was getting the better of him.
Then we had #Blacklivesmatter, and the rise (and rise) of the alt right, and the penny dropped. Yes, of course we do. With sledgehammers, too. I doubt it got the point across to the people who most need to hear it, but I understand why he wanted to write it.