A Sad Literary Loss

Last week, Sir Terry Pratchett passed away.  I read most of Pratchett's works in my early to mid 20s.  His books found me at exactly the right time, and I have always placed them, as a group, pretty much at the summit of the mountain of books I have read.

Pratchett had been suffering for years with early onset Alzheimers, and had other physical issues, but the news was incredibly sad despite the somewhat expected nature of it.

There is nothing on this earth quite like reading a Terry Pratchett book, so in honor, I chose a book of his to reread.  If you haven't tried any of his works yet, expect incredibly inventive satire, humor that has you laughing out loud regularly, and an insight into the human condition that blows you away.  You get lost in the silliness, and then, bam, you get slapped with a truth so deep and yet so obvious you wonder how you never saw it before.

For my reread, I picked Equal Rites.  I knew I wanted to read one of the Witch books, and this one seemed like it would be just the ticket.

I forgot that this was the third Discworld novel ever written.  This is the debut of Granny Weatherwax, my very favorite character, and we also get a taste of Death and the dwarves, a big dose a wizards, and a heaping platter of Ankh-Morpork.  Pretty much the perfect way to revisit Pratchett's universe.

I also printed out and framed a quote of Sir Terry's I had found years ago, but had never quite gotten around to fixing up.

In case you can't read the text, it says, "A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish, or the woman."  It's hanging in my kitchen now, and I laugh every time I find myself putting away a partially used onion.  Which is pretty much every day.

Final call:

Sir Terry deserves all the stars there are.