It's a shame, but in a weird way I reckon I was already prepared for this. That documentary he did about exploring the prospect of voluntary euthanasia was properly moving.
>>5958 It has been a long time coming. The fact that he's still been churning out books even through Alzheimer's is just outstanding. Teenage me is having a massive cry about this.
His earlier work I found much harder to follow. There aren't many authors who so consistently get better with age. But yeah, we all knew this was coming. At least you can say that he could greet Death as an old friend!
The Colour of Magic was on Radio 4's 'a good read' a few days ago, in retrospect I think a lot of people must have known it was coming and asked that his name was on A Good Read one last time.
This came as a shock, because I thought the Alzheimer's would make him go doolally before he died. Reading into it on Wikipedia he had a rare form that left his cognition intact and just caused vision problems and the like, so apparently he kept writing to the end.
Vimes sat down on the steps, and took a sip of his cocoa. He might as well have dropped his breeches. The groups opened up, became an audience. No man drinking a nonalcoholic chocolate beverage had ever been the centre of so much attention. He’d been right. A closed door is an incitement to bravery. A man drinking from a mug, under a light, and apparently enjoying the cool night air, is an incitement to pause.
‘We’re breaking curfew, you know,’ said a young man, with a quick dart forward, dart back movement.
‘Is that right?’ said Vimes.
‘Are you going to arrest us, then?’
‘Not me,’ said Vimes cheerfully. ‘I’m on my break.’
‘Yeah?’ said the man. He pointed to Colon and Waddy. ‘They on their break too?’
‘They are now.’ Vimes half turned. ‘Brew’s up, lads. Off you go. No, no need to run, there’s enough for everyone. And come back out when you’ve got it …’
When the sound of pounding boots had died away, Vimes turned back and smiled at the group again.
‘So when do you come off your break?’ said the man. Vimes paid him some extra attention. The stance was a giveaway. He was ready to fight, even though he didn’t look like a fighter. If this were a bar room, the bartender would be taking the more expensive bottles off the shelf, because amateurs like that tended to spread the glass around. Ah, yes … and now he could see why the words ‘bar room’ had occurred to him. There was a bottle sticking out of the man’s pocket. He’d been drinking his defiance.
‘Oh, around Thursday, I reckon,’ said Vimes, eyeing the bottle. There was laughter from somewhere in the growing crowd.
‘Why Thursday?’ said the drinker.
‘Got my day off on Thursday.’
oh god those last words just made me ball my eyes out. I only ever read a few of his books. But what a great last statement to leave it all on, the stoic decorum of it.
Went out for a pint tonight and totally forgot all about this for a few hours. Just came home and got whacked around the face with it again.
I'll always have a soft spot for all the Discworld books, and when I was a wee lad I loved the Truckers/Diggers/Wings trilogy and the Johnny ... trilogy. I'll agree with a couple of the other lads here who vaunt Night Watch as being one of his best. I think it was right at the apse of the writing style he began developing around the end of 1989 when the Discworld novels became less hardcore fantasy and more comedic, but before the embuggerance began to take hold. Notable mentions go to Men At Arms, Feet Of Clay, The Truth and Maskerade, however.
