Hogfather

"An unqualified recommendation" according to J. Edgar Mihelic, MBA. The last few weeks, my reading has been monopolized by the mind of Terry Pratchett. I have been sucked into the Discworld, and I am just fine with that. I sought out experts on which order to read the books, since there is no one straight linear way to read the books.I read the entire sequence centered on Death (and his extended family) first, since my introduction to the world of the Disc was the movie version of _Hogfather_.I bought the first one, _Mort_, just to see if I would like it. I liked it well enough; I bought the next two books in the series on the Death story-arc. A quarter of the way through the second book, I bought t. Tonje Østby said The essential Yule-reading for Terry Pratchett fans. This is a Death series book, and it would be helpful to have read some of the earlier ones, such as Mort, in order to understand what is going on in this one. This is not the best Discworld book to start with, but for fans, it's a big sack of Christmas presents with familiar characters, good observations, and jokes. Just what you need at Solstice! And of course the plot is like any Christmas movie: Save Christmas before it's too late.I'm saying Christmas, because that's the holiday that I'm used to around Solstice, but there are no references to Christianity, only discworld gods and Father Christmas.. "Hogfather is a perfect example of the multiple layers in a Pratchett novel" according to E. Walton. It's so hard to describe Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels to non-fans. On the surface they're parodic fantasy novels, with clever wordplay and skewering of beloved tropes by an author who clearly loves the genre he's satirizing. But there's so much more going on beneath the surface: literary references, cultural criticism, quantum physics, philosophy, and wry observations about human nature. Hogfather is a perfect example of the multiple layers in a Pratchett novel: it's a fantasy story about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and a young woman with superpowers who just wants the be normal; it's a comedy about a traditionally grim ch

There may be consequences, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning.      There are those who believe and those who don't. The twentieth bestseller for the UK's fastest selling author. You might even want more standing between you and oblivion than a mere slip of a girl -- even if she has looked Death in the face on numerous occasions.. Through the ages, superstition has had its uses. Anything that undermines superstition has to be viewed with some caution. Nowhere more so than in the Discworld where it's helped to maintain the status quo. When those consequences turn out to be the end of th

This year the Auditors, who want people to stop believing in things that aren't real, have hired an assassin to eliminate the Hogfather. But as fans of other Pratchett stories about Death (Mort, Reaper Man, and Soul Music) know, he takes things literally. Fans will welcome back Susan, Death of Rats (the Grim Squeaker), Albert, and the wizardly faculty of Unseen University, and revel in new personalities like Bilious, the "oh god of Hangovers." But you needn't have read Pratchett before to laugh uproariously and think seriously about the meanings of Christmas. He even comes down chimneys. --Nona Vero. (You know him: red robe, white beard, say