I think the football culture bit is what trips up most American readers; I thought it was a great book.
As for the king thing . . . Carrot prefers ruling his people up close and personal, as a Watchman.
We do have quite a sports culture in America, but a row between fans in the stands very rarely escalates above the level of an individual fist-fight or two, and nobody sees any reason why it should. That’s the part we don’t get.
I did, well maybe not fully but I’m an odd American. I loved those parts of the book.
In most of the stadiums I’ve seen in the US, they have separate sections (or even stands) for the home team and the visiting team. When I was in high school, there was some talk the Monday after a game about “We know who won the game… who won in the parking lot?”. And for that matter, I recall seeing what happened to a car with Michigan plates trying to drive down High St the night after the big OSU/UM game.
Yeah, but that involved real sports. Not something like…soccer.
What is this “soccer” of which you speak? UA is about football.
Which is not handegg…
I didn’t like Snuff, but I liked Unseen Academicals. I have yet to read Raising Steam, it’s waiting on my shelf though.
I finished Raising Steam, I had the money in my Amazon account but wasn’t spending it on anything and decided to get the book instead of waiting for birthday or Christmas.
Well, it is different. More like Dodger and the later couple Discworld than earlier DIscworld. I think if you had only read the early books you might not like them but if all you had read was the later Ankh Morpork stuff it would blend right in. It doesn’t have any of the Lancre or Wizard stuff [more or less, they might be sort of implied I guess. It is really about the late Victorian industrialization influence.]
I think you are right, I think Vetinari is grooming Moist as a replacement, though i see him more as combining with Vimes as left and right ox on a hauling team. Vimes is sort of the enforcer and Moist is the expediter sort of.
My problem with UA wasn’t the sports culture. It was the complete lack of that culture everywhere else in the series. I can buy a world where sport is the most important thing to a great many inhabitants of the city. I can buy a world where most people don’t much care about it, to the point that it’s never mentioned. I can’t buy a world where it’s never mentioned at all for dozens of books, and then suddenly it’s the most important thing.
And Raising Steam was just disappointing-- There were too many things that weren’t in there but should be. The Watch is having problems with a heavy dwarf component to them? Let’s send in the highest-ranking dwarvish member of the watch! Except, wait, that’s not Cheery-- That’s Carrot, who’s never so much as mentioned. And where is the Axle Device that the City took possession of at the end of Thud, and which city engineers said (correctly) could be used to do “everything”? One would think that in a story line about the city industrializing, that Device would play a prominent role.
Can’t you? I daresay one could write a fairly complete social history of England and several novels with English working-class characters without mentioning sports. If the same author then wrote a novel about soccer riots, it would not jar.
P.S. In the most recent Sasquan: The 73rd Worldcon - Progress Report (#3, Feb):
Discworld
Fans of Terry Pratchett will receive a warm welcome at Sasquan in 2015. The convention staff have teamed up with Discworld fans around North American and beyond to create a variety of program elements and events that will honor Sir Terry’s work. These will include both YA and adult panels, a Discworld/Steampunk dance, and a Discworld costume parade. Also planned are some of the infamous Seamstress Guild parties, as well as Discworld fan meets hosted by members of various Discworld fan guilds based in North America such as the Discworld Bakers Guild, the Guild of Cunning Artificers, The Librarians Guild, and the Dark Clerks. Pub crawls are being planned, as are Black Ribboner meetings. Several of Sir Terry’s editors will also be in attendance and we hope to offer some Discworld movies, as well. Come one, come all. Oook!
Note to self: Start saving for airfare.
What do people think of the movie adaptations? There are 4 that I’m aware of - Wyrd Sisters (animated), Hogfather, Colour of Magic, and Going Postal.
They vary a lot in quality. But get them all if you can snap one up at a good price. Make sure you get a version that will play on your DVD, tho.
I have had a jolly successful teaching career. Whenever there was doubt, I simply asked myself “What would Susan Sto Helit do?”
(If I had become a cop, I would have asked myself “What would Commander Vimes do?”)
I agree to this. You could do a lot worse than using Pratchett’s rational humanism as a basis for your ethical code. Small Gods in particular is excellent for this.
As Pratchett points out, the important thing about football - at least in an urban English context - is that it isn’t just about football. In UA it isn’t the sport that’s important, it’s the tribalism, the rituals, the belonging. Don’t forget, too, that this is the first time in Pratchett we’ve seen the hoi polloi from their perspective: whenever the inhabitants of the Shades or Dolly Sisters have been described, it’s always been from an outsider’s perscpective - and yes, I am counting Vimes in this. UA is the first time we’ve seen them on their own terms, seen their games and rituals and culture and gangs as they see them, not as the Watch or the Patrician sees them. It’s what UA is about: if you read it just as a funny book about a sports game, you’ve missed the point.
No, I got the point. It still sucked. 
We watched most of Colour of Magic, but neither my son or I really felt like sitting through the whole thing.