By: Revanche

The fun we had: Summer 2017

October 11, 2017

What I read

As promised, I treated myself to some Terry Pratchett this summer because I needed guaranteed funny – and no stress – and that’s where I can find it. There’s nothing I can say about my enjoyment of these books that quotes won’t say better so I’m sharing a few of my favorite passages. I know humor is subjective but I think this level of funny is recognizable in other authors, right? If you have favorite solidly funny authors, please recommend them! 

Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett

“It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.”

““You!” she shouted. “You’re dead!” The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backward off his stool.”

“Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off. How could a king go down in history ruling a people like that? You couldn’t oppress them any more than you could oppress a mattress.”

Lords and Ladies, Terry Pratchett

“Besides, Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it’d save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.”

“There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realize you’re going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you’re sober now and so are they but you can both remember.”

P.S. from Paris, Marc Levy

Reminiscent of Notting Hill, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expect but it wasn’t good enough to want to reread it. That happens with about 15% of the books I read, and I’m not sure what it means about the books or me.

The Designer, Marius Gabriel

This was an Amazon Prime – Kindle First book. There seems to be a trend to World War II reading right now and it’s both beguiling and depressing. It was a fast read, and interesting but not a candidate for rereading either.

Children’s Section

We read with JB every night and some books are worth highlighting here.

Nearly 200 pages long, The Adventures of the Princess and Mr Whiffle: The Dark of Deep Below has become a part of JB’s rotation. It’s well paced but still, I wouldn’t have thought an under-3 would be ready for it. I’d like to add The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed to our collection sometime.

Where we went

San Diego, naturally! Thankfully the weather was much more mild this year. We’ll never forget the freezing cold winter suffered a few years ago, or the blistering hot SDCC of last year, and are always grateful when San Diego is the perfectly mild 71 degrees we expect.

A weekend in Monterey Bay – We’ve been paying for an annual subscription to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a few years but usually fail to make it there more than once a year, if that much.

Local parks – We found a fantastic dog friendly park for kids with the newfangled squishy bouncy flooring type stuff and great big climbing domes. Seamus was thrilled with all the grass to sniff and roll in, and all the dogs to meet. JB was over the moon about the additional water feature that would spout fountains of water every five minutes.

:: I’m surprised and grateful we had any fun in this summer of work. What was the highlight of your summer?

2 Responses to “The fun we had: Summer 2017”

  1. Wow, you’re reading a big book to the kid. We are still on picture books, but at least he can read most of them by himself now. Time to head off to the library.
    I read Terry Pratchett when I was young, but haven’t lately.

    • Revanche says:

      Oh it’s still a picture book, with just a few lines per page, that’s why it’s so long. But I’m hoping that ze is going to start catching on to the whole concept of reading for zirself soon.

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