This book was like The Hunger Games meets The Handmaids Tale in a corporate office scenario. It was morbidly twisted and solidifies my hatred for anything that looks like a cubicle corporate job. I could almost feel my creative juices being crushed while I read. Herman Louse is a live-in caretaker/nurse for a squeamish germ-a-phobic old billionaire who he calls Poppy. Poppy lives in the top penthouse of his large casino somewhere in the middle of a desert and is waited upon by a staff of what seems […]
Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend
I didn’t think this book would be so emotionally difficult to get through. As readers of someone else’s fiction, it’s difficult to remember that there’s a real, down-to-earth, eats-and-breathes human behind the characters and fake world we so fall in love with. Terry Pratchett is himself, and even though Discworld was born from his head like Athena from Zeus, he’s not Discworld or any of the characters in it. In fact, to read his nonfiction is to sit in a very earthly room beside him […]
He’s Not A Hero, But He’s the Best Man for the Job
I would totally read Terry Pratchett’s ink blotter or scribbled napkin, so my opinion on anything Pratchett is probably a little biased. However, “Going Postal” is my all-time favorite Discworld novel, and its one of his best. This is my third read of this book, and since I’m using it for a guest lecture on building an ‘invented’ world, I really paid attention to how Pratchett made the story. It’s just short of brilliant, and I wish I could have seen this man storyboard because […]
What the Victorians Didn’t Want You to Know
Many thanks to faintingviolet for passing off Unmentionable to me. It was an excellent compliment to Bound to Please, and reading the two together helped create a uniquely full picture for what life was like for the middle-class Victorian woman. It was bad. Plain and simple. While it can be argued that pestilence, disease, a lack of flush toilets, and leeches being the closest thing to an antibiotic made life tough for everyone, these books shed an undoubted truth that however difficult it was for the males in society, […]