Unseen Academicals

I finished the book a few days ago. I liked everything about it, accept the two main characters.


On further review, Glenda isn't a new take on Granny. She's just a retread of earlier Pratchett female protagonists. She's OK by herself, but her arc stinks. By the end of the novel, she learns to be an asshole. Great. As for the other main character, Mr. Nutt starts off as a humble, sympathetic character, but by the end it occurred to me that he was just a Gary Stu. Yes, book, we do remember all those other novels where other monsters integrated into Anhk-Morpork. That doesn't mean you get to get away with rehashing stuff from the far superior Men at Arms, as well as Thud!

I always felt that the fifth and weakest Discworld novel, Sourcery, could have used an extra fifty pages. If I recall correctly, Pratchett added a new threat late (midway?) in the book, but then ignored it. Unseen Academicals could have lost fifty pages. I rolled my eyes when it turned out that the orcs weren't really bad guys during some long forgotten evil empire. The whole section where the main characters confronted Nutt after he ran away, plus the stuff about crabs, should have been cut. I don't care if it ruins the themes of the book, either. I nearly gave up three fourths way though the book. Luckily the book ended with the soccer match that it had promised since the beginning, and that was great stuff.


So Unseen Academicals was the weakest Discworld book since Monstrous Regiment. Pratchett, I know you have a couple more novels in you and I can't wait to read them. Please don't make another one about Glenda.

This Week In Entertainment (9/30/08)

Today's Pick of the Week is a book. Yes, a book. You know how some guys have GIRLFRIENDS? Well I READ BOOKS. Occasionally. This is the paperback edition of Making Money, the latest Discworld book by Terry Pratchett. It stars Moist Von Lipwig who is now printing money for the government.


Also out this week on DVD is The Deadly Bees. This was made in the sixties before the killer bee scare, I think. It's a british movie about a pop singer who is sent to an island on vacation and is faced with...the dogs' meat! Also bees. This was shown on a great episode of MST3k.

I missed Iron Man in theaters, so now I get to watch it on DVD. Hope it's good, because it was one of the more popular blockbusters this summer.

For what it's worth, here's a couple of DVDs about the Olympics. I hope one of the future DVDs show the highlights of that match where the one kickboxer kicked the referee.

Phase IV was a movie about ants shown on MST3k during it's KTMA era. There's a clip from it on the MST3k Scrapbook video.

I hope one of the steps is to not panic. If Resident Evil has taught me anything it's that you have to eventually fight vaginal dentata monsters during zombie holocausts.


In theaters is the film Beverly Hill Chihuahua. Whoever is in charge of Disney? Shame on you.


You know what the world needs? Another Sonic game. This one is an rpg for the DS.

Here's the latest Harvest Moon game for the Wii. I've completely lost track of how many of these games there are.

This Week In Entertainment (8/26/08)

My Pick of the Week is the third volume of Three Stooges shorts. This set takes us into the forties. Trivia: The Three Stooges were the first to mock Hitler in a time where the Hayes Codes forced movies to be politically neutral.


In theaters this week we have Disaster Movie, the latest in the line of "____ Movie" movies. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are in jail somewhere, right? Right?


On DVD is the latest Little Mermaid movie, which looks to be a prequel. Remember, if your series starts to suck, go backwards!

I'm not sure if this movie is any good, but it's a modern puppet version of Dante's Inferno.

Here is both animated Discworld movies in one set. I think Wyrd Sisters is the better movie, even if I can't understand what Granny says.


In books (Yes, I read books. Once in a while) we have a collection of essays about the Discworld. May be a fun read before the paperback version of Making Money comes out.

On the Wii we have Mario Sluggers, a sequel to the GameCube baseball game. I don't know if this allows you to swing a bat like Wii Sports, but it darn well should.


For the DS we have PictoImage, where you have to guess what a picture is while it's being drawn. Reminds me of Anticipation.

Finally, also on the DS is the latest Harvest Moon game. This time you farm on an island.

The Twenty-Fourth Day of Christmas...

I was looking forward to this day. When I started this thing I thought that if I ever got into trouble, I could list gifts that I've gotten most recently. Of course, it was best to save those towards the end of the month. Now here we are! Today's gift is a book that Lita sent me in 2002 after I got her a tshirt that 8-Bit Theater once sold. She sent me this book and its sequel because she recommended the series to me but I was having problems finding the first entry.

The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are the first two entries in the Discworld series. This is a creation by author Terry Pratchett and he's written over thirty books. The Discworld is a flat world that lays on top of four elephants who all stand on top of a giant turtle that drifts through space. The first couple books were more spoofs of the fantasy genre that (I think) had become really popular in the eighties. Over several novels the Discworld changed into more of a satire of more modern setting, although still in a vaguely medieval setting.

The first two books are about a wizzard named Rincewind. The spelling of wizzard is intentional because he's lousy at everything except languages and running away. In the first book he's hired by the leader of the largest country on the Discworld to lead a tourist around. The tourist, Twoflower, is so rich that immediately a new industry is born and we follow the two through four seperate adventures. Twoflower also has a magic Luggage box which acts as a deus ex machina whenever needed.

I'd go into detail but I should really save that for another day. I intended to do the Discworld series for my Tork's Book Club feature which I rarely do. Hopefully one day I will.

Anyway, this is a great series and it's interesting to see the early books before fourth novel, where the series really took off. Also, I just read that there will be a mini-series next year that will combine the first two books. Neat! Can't wait until it reaches here on DVD.

My memory is so bad.

When I prepare my This Week In Entertainment thing, I usually stick to the same sources to figure out what's being released during the week. I use amazon for DVD releases because they have a large selection. Sometimes too large, for I've seen weeks where they have over 400 entries and half of them are useless. (Anything that doesn't have a box cover is useless, as is anything without a description or a release date.) I use rottentomatoes.com to figure out what movies are coming to theaters, and I use gamefaqs.com for video games. (Amazon and rottentomatoes both suck for video game releases.)

That leaves music and books. As you may have guessed if you've seen my blog during July, I don't bother finding out what's coming out on cd. The only thing left is books. I do try to use amazon for that because it has a "New and Notable" section, but I don't check it often. Part of the reason is because the "New" section seems to have the same books for at least a month. Another reason is because I read so few books. I mostly read novels, and I don't care for stuff like self-help books or the latest political demagoguery. I rarely see stuff I could use like computer programming books. So I tend to skip this section.


Well, guess what? I should have kept an eye on it last month, because it may have reminded me that Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel was being released. "Making Money" is the follow up to "Going Postal", which was about how the leader of the Discworld's biggest city (think a city like London) forces a con man to run the post office. The plot is about how the city's elite are so corrupt that this con man is able to make the friggen post office more efficient then the new Clack Towers (the Discworld's equivalent to the Internet.) "Making Money" is suppose to star the same con man now running the mint. I love the Discworld series and Going Postal was great, so this should be a good one too. This should have been Pick of the Week during whichever week it was released.

I prefer to get paperback novels, so I probably won't get it for a while. What I'll be getting is Wintersmith, the third in a series of young adult Discworld novels about a young witch. The Tiffany Achting novels include appearances by Granny Weatherwax, my favorite Discworld character.

When I say I love the Discworld novels, I mean it. If you go back to my first non-intro post, you'll see that I had something in mind concerning the Discworld series. Sadly, I haven't given any reviews or thoughts about any of the books because I'm still not the greatest reader in the world and I have memory problems (not to mention that I try to write these entries as quickly as possible.) So I've put off talking about any of the novels. Hopefully one of the days I'll have the time to sit down and talk about "The Color of Magic" which is the first Discworld novel and the first one I read.