PICTURE OF THE DAY

Dave and Liddy

DAILY RAMBLING

A major victory in the slow battle for Lydia's palate: she realized that bread is not merely fun to play with, but also edible. She also decided at about 2 in the morning that she didn't really feel like sleeping any more. We used to bring her into our bed a lot, but haven't for a couple of months now, so were a bit unprepared for the fact that, if she doesn't want to sleep there, either, she can now crawl right over us. The household did eventually settle back to sleep, but not before a certain period had been lost from the middle of a night's rest that had started late to begin with, as I played the "just five/ten/fifteen more minutes" game with the book I was reading.

Terry Pratchett's The Truth isn't up there on my list of his best books, but it's been a long time since I read it, and not remembering what happens at the end lends some compelling aura to a novel. And even a bad Pratchett novel is heaps better than what most people can produce on their best day. It's one of his sort of "cheating" books, though--let's tell the story of X in the setting of the Discworld. I think that Moving Pictures is probably the best of that subset. This one tells the tale of how the printing press came to Ankh-Morpork, and it might be that it has a bit too much going on, what with the almost instantaneous evolution of rival newspapers, a plot to get rid of Vetinari starring two characters who make me think Pratchett was hanging around Neil Gaiman a bit too much when he wrote this, William de Worde's family problems and not-relationship with the only female character, commentary on the nature of people in general and newspaper producers and readers in particular, the city's ethnic politics, and some views of the Watch from an outside perspective, which are probably my favorite part of the book. In the course of the plot(s), almost every minor recurring personality and subtheme in the Ankh-Morpork branch of the series makes an appearance, and by the end it's a bit of a muddle. But I still stayed up late reading it.

This after getting back rather late from the cooking club's monthly meeting--my enchiladas received a certain amount of polite praise, and everyone cleaned their plate, though I felt they didn't turn out very well. Can't all be winners, I suppose, though I can think of several ways I might try improving them should I want to try again. All in all, a fun night.

P.S. Happy birthday, Mom!

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