(no subject)

[which_chick]

Every time I think I understand how wonderfully funny and appropriate to things Terry Pratchett's satire is, I realize that I do not really understand. I thought I got Thief of Time. I thought I understood about monks and whatnot with the saffron robes and the Lu Tze and all. Then I read that book on Zen from brother-the-younger and suddenly Thief of Time expanded marvelously like Maligree's Wonderful Garden when rendered by Coin... because my own understanding of the thing-being-riffed-upon had improved. And so I'm going along minding my own business on the intarwebs whereupon I discover that (a) there is such a thing as an Eisteddfod that (b) really is about singing and shit and (c) really takes place somewhere with a llot of extra lllls in the front of the words. (It's from Soul Music, all right? The book about Imp y Celyn, whose name is a joke only funny if you speak the llanguage where there are Eisteddfod thingies or can use the wikipedia For Great Justice.)

This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed the books prior to these later add-ons -- I totally have. It's just that picking up random bits of things takes my prior enjoyment and fills it out like a rendering getting from wireframe to 3-d then with textures and light and shadow and stuff. What was there before, yeah, is still there. But now it's more. It's the difference between looking at a cartoon (art definition) and an oil painting. Pratchett is my favorite modern author whose text keeps getting more interesting the more I look at it.