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pdotb@wyrms.de

Joined 4 years, 1 month ago

Bookish version of pdotb@todon.eu

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pdotb's books

Currently Reading (View all 5)

2025 Reading Goal

61% complete! pdotb has read 32 of 52 books.

Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, Samuel Tanner: The Great Right North (Paperback, 2024, McGill-Queen’s University Press) No rating

In February 2021 the Canadian government published a considerably expanded list of domestic terrorist entities. …

Content warning canpol, racism, violence

Terry Pratchett: Night Watch (EBook, 2009, HarperCollins)

One moment, Sir Sam Vimes is in his old patrolman form, chasing a sweet-talking psychopath …

I think I finally get it.

This is the first of Pratchett's novels that I've read to the end (I've certainly tried at least one before and didn't get anywhere) and I think I understand the attraction. Vimes is a thoroughly decent chap, in a messy world, and Pratchett weaves words of wisdom into a pretty entertaining story. I'm not sure it moved me enough to hoover up the rest of his books, but I at least understand why people like him so much.

Jane Austen, Kathleen James-Cavan: Sense and Sensibility (EBook, 2001, Broadview Press)

Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental …

I don't think I'd appreciated before now just how funny Austen could be. Among some highlights:

Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it. (p44).

His manners to them, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him. (p240)

Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, …