Week 31

Here we go again! This time, I’m ahead of the game and scheduling it in advance - the pros of reading novellas and short books, I suppose.

This week: MOVING PICTURES by Terry Pratchett

#47) MOVING PICTURES by Terry Pratchett

What a weird book this is.

To summarize in a somewhat facetious fashion: it’s a cosmic horror-slash-comedy satire of Hollywood/the film industry, but set in the somewhat stereotypical fantasy sendup that is the Discworld, that is somehow a tribute to Old Hollywood AND a deconstruction AND also a weirdly genuinely touching piece about the power of stories?

Basically, “what if movies but in Middle Earth and also it’s an H.P. Lovecraft parody”

Frankly, I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated. This, as far as I recall, isn’t one of the Discworld “most-recommended”, and for the first half or so, I thought it was only okay. And, having said that, I think it’s very probably not for everyone.

However, once the weirdness of the book fully came into my awareness, and once it did so with that really characteristic Pratchett aspect of parody-meeting-sincerity, I found that I was sunk deep in, that I cared about the characters and the themes he was exploring.

This, to me, is a perfect encapsulation of why Pratchett’s stuff works, and why it’s so enduring. There are a lot of people who try to write comedy and satire, who try to be a Terry Pratchett-esque figure, and who fall short because they don’t attend to the more serious parts of the telling.

And for sure, the parts about reality, and about belief, and about stories, I think those are all going to stick with me for a long time. And, also, the King Kong parody, which was *chef’s kiss*

Also, I love and would die for the trolls.