Literacy Wednesdays: Read a G*dd*mn Book *****The Colour of Magic*****

10 points to the House that correctly guesses which color it is!

For anyone who doesn't know us too well, Terry Pratchett is our all-time favorite author. One day, sophomore year of high school, we wandered into the library and we each checked out a book. I don't recall the book I checked out, it obviously wasn't life-changing, but Bry checked out Feet of Clay. She loved it. She wouldn't stop quoting the damn thing at me. We went back to the library and I found another book by the same author and decided to give it a try. I read Men at Arms. Honestly, I don't even remember what it was about (that having been eight years ago and all) but it was good enough to get me hooked as well. From there, Bry and I read every Terry Pratchett book that our tiny high school library had to offer us.

A very incapable wizard indeed.

Eventually, Bry and I managed to work out the simplest of things that was preventing us from fully enjoying the books: the order you read them in is kind of important. Most of the books are completely stand alone but everything makes a bit more sense if you start at Terry Pratchett's first discworld book and read forward. In that order you actually get to follow a few characters as they move up ranks in the guard or their budding relationship with a certain upper class lady. It is for this reason that we are highlighting Pratchett's FIRST discworld book and not our individual favorites. Those are to come later.

And now, a quote:

"There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis."

For those of you who enjoy seeing the movie after the book, and not you people who see the movie first (horrible, horrible people) (Come to think of it, I've been that person more than once...), there is indeed a movie version of the Color of Magic! In fact, it is the Color of Magic and his second book, The Light Fantastic, all rolled into one. I would normally hate this idea but Terry Pratchett had his hand all over the making of the movie and even had a role in the movie! Watch it and see if you can find him.

Also, we're getting wary about lending out our poor, tattered copy of the Color of Magic but if you promise to take care of it we'll let you borrow it.