What really sunk it for me was that it presented football as the Biggest Thing Ever and Always Had Been in Ankh-Morpork, but we’d never really seen any hint of it at all, before that book.
Except for in Jingo.
Isn’t the story of effectively the formal game being invented? Rather than a violent street version? I guess it doesn’t work as well if you’re not from a soccer country, and indeed, the UK did have a blow up of teams formed in the late 1880s when the leagues were setup. But I suppose Fever Pitch got Pratchett inspired to do something on the misery and tribalism that the UK football scene is. And that doesn’t work half as well in the US. I enjoyed Unseen Academicals, personally, but I can’t remember a Pratchett book I didn’t.
Or football culture in general, I liked the book (specially because there’s a thinly veiled Maradona-based character).
At the start of the book, there was already an organized league with a team for each* of the guilds.
*Well, mostly. I’m pretty sure the Seamstresses didn’t field a team, and I’m not sure about Beggars, Assassins, or Thieves.
Unseen Academicals is the one Discworld book I hate. Mainly because I hate soccer (football) with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. But hey, if others love the book, then it’s all good.
Since people are talking about specifics of the books, I have a question. How do you pronounce the word “crivens*”? With a soft i (like in “crib”) or a hard i (like in “giant”)? And I know a somewhat Scottish accent is required, but it’s not required for this question.
*= A general purpose , exclamation, possibly vulgar or profane, appears mostly in conversations with the Nac Mac Feegle.**
**= Also known as the Wee Free Men–who are mostly seen (when they are seen at all) in the Tiffany Aching stories.
Thank you, Miller.
(The link has it pronounced with a long i.)
Although I feel obligated to point out that one of the 7 responses on that YouTube page is “That’s not how you say it at all.”
I think it’s a minced oath, so it’s pronounced like “Christ”.
It’s not a word Pratchett made up, it’s Scots dialect, specifically Dundonian, though a little out of fashion. It’s often used in the comic ‘Oor Wullie’, where it’s part of his catchphrase standard exclamation of surprise.
It’s spelled ‘crivvens’ in the ‘Oor Wullie’ comic, but both spellings are used more or less interchangably. Although it is supposedly a minced oath, it’s not said with the ‘i’ in Christ, but the one in ‘Christmas’, or in ‘crib’, if you prefer.
cite (youtube video, a few seconds before said catchphrase).
Yeah, @filbert has it right. Further cite below but also, that’s how all the Scots I’ve ever known say it, say it.
The normal phrase often being “Jings, Crivens, Help ma Boab”, shock, surprise and help me.
I have both the characters Jings and Crivens on World of Warcraft for the last 20 odd years.