“Terry Pratchett 2005”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Ever have one of those weeks where you’re just ‘blah’. A friend of mine explained it as ‘when your spirit is disconnected from your body and your physical being bumps into walls and stuff’. This is a pretty apt description if you think about it – if your spirit is in residence of course. Another apt expression is ‘blowing bubbles’.
This was my week last week and this week too, so I’ve put on my Pollyanna pants and divided the weeks up as per the title.
The Sad was that I read that Terry Pratchett, genius, had died. If you’re not sure who Terry Pratchett was (perhaps you were lost on The Outer Rim) take a peek at 50 of his best quotes.
The Bad News, for greedy bookworms like me, is that despite an incredibly prolific career, with Sir Pratchett writing more than 70 novels, there won’t be any more from this prolific author.
The Good News – (isn’t it grand that there’s always a spot of good news?) – is that I can read each and every single one of those 70 novels again and again and again – in fact – I already have, numerous times over the years since I was first introduced to them.
You may have noticed that I called him Sir Terry Pratchett. That’s because Pratchett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children.
If you haven’t yet discovered any of his work, I heartily recommend that you do. You’ll find his bibliography here.
If you want me in the next few weeks, you’ll find me at the water cooler, clutching my *signed copy of ‘Mort’ (fitting, that); making the water bubble in the bottle and reading sections aloud.
Thank you, dear Sir, you will be missed.
*The signed copy, interestingly, was thanks to afore-mentioned friend, who, as a birthday surprise, took me to a fabulous fantasy book store to have my book signed by Terry Pratchett.
