Terry Pratchett will be online on Wednesday to chat on the Post's website from 11:00 to noon. Michael Dirda mentioned reviewing Nation when I talked with him on Saturday, but I didn't expect the review to run the very next day. Now it seems even more certain that the man himself was at the signing, managing the neat trick of going undercover by not wearing one.
To fill the time before I get my mitts on The Graveyard Book and Nation, I've picked back up with Who Murdered Chaucer, a tasty popular history that underlines the idea that the Monty Python guys were smarter than the average sketch comics. As someone whose knowledge of medieval political affairs is drawn largely from Shakespeare's Richard II and the inimitable Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog (currently being guest-hosted by H. Bolingbroke: "O, stop yower bullmerde about Chaucer and Kyng Richard. Kyng Richard will retourne whan it is good for the realm. I and the othir lords appellant are loial to the Crown of Engelonde and the Kyng who beareth yt. I haue no intencioun to evir taak the crown from Richard. I haue too much CRUSADING to do first."), I'm finding it a gripping tale of revenge, betrayal, and clerical skullduggery. The book ys, indeed, rad, a term rarely applied to discussions of the Lollard heresy. And its size makes it convenient for smacking elevator doors open with an authoritative whump, so it's got that going for it too.
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2 comments:
Envy and pleasure at reading about your lucky sighting. I feel awash in alternate universes these days from the latest _Fables_ that promised to be the next Big Bad, to Jay Lake's ticky tocky 'verse, to Card's _Pastwatch_, to Scalzi's _Zoe's Tale_, to Earth late 2008. I may be a partisan, but I'll bet money that right now what the world needs is a _Nation_ with a few good leaders.
To my sorrow, the crowds did not permit me to track down the suspected Mr. Pratchett for a quick fannish eeking (or possibly ooking). But I bet he'd agree with you about the desire for a competent Patrician-analog in the next decade of the Century of the Dissipated Herring.
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