It's Still Magic Even if You Know How It's Done Typography

When I was younger, maybe eight or ix, I loved anything on Telly that involved Tony Robinson – obviously Blackadder, Maid Marion and her Merry Men and Time Team but he also did a fantastic evidence based on Bible stories called 'Claret and Honey'.  I would go every week to the library and borrow the cassette of 'Odysseus the greatest hero of them all' that was written past Robinson and Richard Curtis, read by Robinson.  I'thousand not sure if anyone else got to infringe it much because I always had it.  I'm not sure how it survived and so many listens.  I loved the style Robinson read information technology, doing all the voices and putting in all the drama, merely like he did on the telly.

Mum and Dad must have been sick of listening to information technology over and over, because for Christmas that year they got me two new story tapes – The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites.  Of course, they were read by Tony Robinson, and and so in a round almost way I was introduced to the vivid globe of Terry Pratchett.  I'thou not sure that my parents knew what they'd introduced me to.

I'm not going to pretend that I understood much of what was going on with The Light Fantastic, since it carried on with a book I'd not heard (they got it for me later on) but I loved it.  Partly because of the storyteller, but mainly because I loved the idea of a baggage box like the one nosotros kept videos in that had thousands of trivial legs, would seize with teeth at people and did pretty much what it wanted.  In that location was Rincewind the wizzard who was completely useless but things seemed to piece of work out for.  Twoflower, the discworld'due south first tourist, Cohen the Barbarian who hated soup because it was all he was e'er given as he had no teeth….

Equal Rites introduced me to Eskarina and Granny Weatherwax. Esk is the 8th 'son' of an 8th son and is destined to be a wizard, the only trouble beingness that she is born a girl and not a boy equally idea past a dying wizard looking to laissez passer on his power.  Esk grows up with powers and tries to become into the male dominated Unseen University, just tin can just do so under the guise of a servant.  Perhaps she was my commencement feminist icon…

In more recent years I've read the 4 books of Tiffany Agonized, a immature witch who we follow from ix to 16 as she grows in her powers and cognition. They are among my favourite children's books and I've read them to my classes before.  The mixtures of fairy tale, folk tales and a daughter who knows her name isn't quite right mixed with a agglomeration of tiny blue men with the voices of Billy Connelly are magical and pure genius.

I went on to read nearly all of the Discworld novels, I've read all the Long Earth Series that he wrote with Stephen Baxter, I read Strata, which I unwillingly pinched for a brusque story in yr eight.  The school librarian once told me that she'd never known a educatee borrow more books from the aforementioned author other than the Point Horror Stories (that was probably me again).  Terry Pratchett's novels helped me win the prize at school for most books read in a year (120, I was a fast reader, simply so his books were easy and pleasurable to read).

I met him once, I retrieve I was about 11. Mum took me to Ottakar's in Banbury and looked on anxiously every bit I picked out books to by for him to sign for me.  She'd put Wyrd Sisters by to get signed in case we couldn't become abroad from school in fourth dimension.  I waited in line so when I got to the front I asked if he got the idea for the globe beingness on the back of the turtle from Polynesian mythology and he said that it was constitute in lots of dissimilar cultures.  I went abroad perfectly happy, but Mum was annoyed and idea he'd been a scrap rude and could accept acknowledged that probably not that many 10 year olds in the Banbury expanse would have whatsoever thought about Polynesian mythology… Then I took this as a slight and couldn't read his books for well-nigh 2 years.  But thankfully I got over that and picked up the books again, re-reading the ones on my shelves and trawling through the library for ones I'd missed or the inevitable new release.

I was the only Terry Pratchett fan in my immediate family (that I know of) and for years I didn't know that whatsoever of my friends were.  Perhaps information technology was because information technology was fantasy and that'due south not really absurd, I don't know, but eventually in 6th grade and at academy I discovered more and more people I could talk nearly his books with.

I observe myself coming back to them once more and once more, finding familiar friends amid the pages, new jokes and insights with each re-read, my developing understanding of the world helping me understand more of the subtleties of these incredibly well written books.

I didn't hear of Terry Pratchett'due south death until 10pm tonight, as I still have the type of mobile that wouldn't be out of place on the Discworld – information technology probably has an imp in it, stubbornly refusing to take anything to do with the internet – but when I did I was incredibly sad for him, his family, but besides for the globe, because beyond the publication of The Long Utopia after this year, we will take no more stories from him.  No more Sam Vines, Moist von Lipwig, Tiffany Agonized, Lord Vetanari.  Only I've not read every book of his withal, so there's still new stories for me to observe and when I'm done, I'll get back and re-read the one-time books and see what I missed earlier.

My facebook feed is full of people sharing their sadness at the loss of a stranger who touched their lives.  Many are sharing quotes and I don't remember I've seen the same one twice yet.  In that location are pictures of volume cases filled to bursting with spines showing his name.  I saw the last tweets from his account and they made me cry a little. I have no doubt that his words have helped shape my views on life.

Neil Gaiman is obviously i of the all-time people to leave this with:

"Equally Terry walks into the darkness much also soon, I discover myself raging as well: at the injustice that deprives us of – what? Some other 20 or thirty books? Another shelf-full of ideas and glorious phrases and old friends and new, of stories in which people practise what they actually do best, which is use their heads to get themselves out of the trouble they got into by not thinking?…

"I rage at the imminent loss of my friend, and I retrieve, 'What would Terry do with this anger?' Then I option upward my pen, and I kickoff to write."

May we all strive to be potatoes of defiance.

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Source: https://overhillsandfaraway.com/2015/03/13/its-still-magic-even-if-you-know-how-its-done/

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