Lull

This PLR thing isn't working as well as I'd wish. Harry Potter was great and all, but Exodus has not sucked me in, I'm sorry to say. And I'm also reading Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett, which I think I might not quite get.

Terry Pratchett is hilarious, right? I'm afraid I'm not really seeing it. There seems to be the core of a pretty good story there, with a certain amount of wit--the simple but honest novice who's been approached by his god in the form of a talking turtle whom no one else can hear; the inquisitor (exquisitor, in this topsy turvy world) who is terrifying but whose henchmen might be working against him. Great. Does it sound funny? Not particularly...I guess, there's something innately funny about a turtle? All the place names are funny, but a map of England is equally silly. And the dry bluntness that is characteristic of Britishness is charming, of course. But I can't say I'm laughing out loud.

The best line I've read so far, which had an actual laugh in it, as well as some nice meat on its bones: "Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."

I think I'm going to have to grant T.P. that "the potatoes of defiance" is a great item, and I will read the rest of the book for that.

But Ha'penny is waiting for me at the library, and I'm not at all convinced that I won't be checking out four or five other books along with it when I go.