Yeah, there really were a greater number of sexual puns in this one. My favorite was “The Tackle”.
“as an eyewitness the average person is as reliable as a Meringue lifejacket”! <<snort>>
“Charisn’tma” works too
If it’s any consolation, so was JRRT. He struggled with fitting them into his subcreation, and felt that a sentient creature could not be unredeemable. But he died before he hammered out a solution.
He has an atypical form of Alzheimers. It’s not affecting his memory as much as other brain functions. “Living with Alzheimers” specified what was affected, but . . um. . I don’t remember the specifics.
Thanks for the information. I got off my lazy butt and googled it, and found out what y’all told me. Its very, very sad.
Is this the first Discworld book in which Death doesn’t have a speaking part? The illustration on the cover certainly made it look like he’d be making an appearance, but I don’t recall seeing one.
I think this book might appeal more to a European (and particularly British) audience, as a lot of the in-jokes probably had to do with soccer and fandom. Certainly, the antagonists (soccer hooligans) were nowhere near as compelling as some past Pratchett villains.
He shows up in the hospital after Nutt is wounded in the street brawl, and speaks to him briefly.
Ah, thanks. Forgot about that bit.
I finished it last night. Really enjoyed it. I had no problems with Glenda or the fashion store, although I still can’t place Bu-Bubble as an aside to a real magazine. Anyone?
The only thing that gave me cause for concern was the last page. It seemed so…final.
I suspect the bit with William de Worde and his transcriber talking about Macarona using all his accomplishments may have been inspired by Monty Python in this sketch
I wasn’t expecting much since I don’t like the wizards-based Discworld books. But they didn’t completely dominate the book. And Rincewind was mercifully a very minor character. OTOH, the new characters Glenda, Nutt, Trev and Juliet were a disappointment. (I liked the new characters like Moist, etc. in "Going Postal. Which he promptly augered into the ground with "Making Money.) Very unsatisfying in many ways.
My Q: (I don’t think this is a spoiler). In a couple of places there are mentions of Vetinari and the Lady drinking … wine. Why the “…”? Is it meant to imply that it isn’t wine or that it is merely wine and not, you know? Understandable when it comes to the Lady. Then why is it used for Vetinari?
‘Never seen that before,’ said a wine waiter beside her.
‘Seen what before?’
‘Seen his lordship drinking. He doesn’t even drink wine.’
Glenda looked at the skinny black figure and said, enunciating carefully, ‘When you say he does not drink wine, do you mean he does not drink wine, or he does not drink…wine?’
‘He doesn’t have a bloody drink. That’s all I’m saying. That’s Lord Vetinari, that is.’
(My emphasis.)
While Vetinari has some vampire-like qualities, the black-on-black crest and all that, people would know if he was. Angua would smell him like she does Sally. (Unless Angua is keeping quiet for some reason.) And Vimes would certainly know. So what is being implied here?
The implication is that there are rumors about Vetinari being a vampire but they’re just rumors and he’s human. Also he rarely does drink in public, certainly not more than would be required for a ceremonial toast.
It’s good to see Rev. Oates is doing well.
Yeah, I hope he got rid of the boil.
The canonical response from Dracula, from Dracula (1931), when offered a liquid refreshment. “I never drink… wine.”
I’m reading (well, listening, really) to it for the second time and the whole soccer plot seems… forced to me. In Jingo, I think it was, Carrot uses an inflatable pig bladder to kind of introduce the game to the Disc, seemingly for the first time. But in this book, not only has the Foot The Ball been around for at least two generations (as evidenced by Lively’s father being the most famous player ever), it seems like everyone in the city has to be involved in the fandom, unless they want to endanger their lives. That the sport had such a tight stranglehold over Ankh-Morpork seemed to come from nowhere and felt incongruous.
So instead of modern practices coming to a Renaissance-ish society through a series of amusingly strange coincidences and weird situations, it’s already been there the whole time. It just needed to be tamed by the wizards, who for no given (or any fanwankable) reason, found they had a soccer requirement in order to continue to receive money. Their taming of it seemed forced too: Just take the street game and make these changes so it becomes modern soccer very few inbetween steps. Very disappointing.
The whole Brenda storyline seemed like it was written by someone else. And using a Romeo and Juliet love story between warring soccer factions seemed like it had such comic potential, but instead went nowhere.
I didn’t like seeing the Patrician drunk. It seemed very out of character for him.
Ridcully, though, was in top form. 
I don’t think you’re remembering Jingo correctly. I re-read it just a month or so ago, and while I believe the book does mark the first reference to football/soccer in the Discworld series, I don’t remember any suggestion that Carrot invented the game. The young boys that he’s mentoring apparently already knew how to play, and seem to be used to the more violent form of the game that appears in Unseen Academicals.
In Unseen Academicals it’s also clear enough that many people in AM have zero interest in football. It’s a lower class sport. Poor and working class people may support their local teams, but upper or even middle class people don’t care. The only previous Discworld book I can think of that dealt much with the concerns of ordinary lower-class AM citizens is Night Watch, which was set decades in the past and during a brief, specific time period when people had bigger things to worry about than sports. And since Jingo did establish that people in AM played football it wasn’t like the game came totally out of nowhere in UA.