Faster than a Speeding Blog

I finished The Light Fantastic, and I'm now half-way into Equal Rites. I am reading faster than the speed of blog.

I don't have much to say about The Light Fantastic. It was good, it was funny, it made me want to start the next book in the Discworld series, and so I did.

I think I will have a bit to say about Equal Rites, especially regarding how it reminds me of Good Omens, the book that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman co-wrote. Perhaps also regarding feminism, which has been on my mind a lot lately.

Specifically, Neil Gaiman was quoted, perhaps incorrectly, by the New Yorker as saying that he was "nobody's bitch". This resulted in him being accused of using a misogynist slur and of being a part of the "rape culture", which led to lots of emails sent to Gaiman explaining that "having used that phrase undid all the good I'd ever done by writing positive women, supporting RAINN etc, because it showed that I was minimising the horror of rape and revealing my underlying misogyny."

In the world of the Internet, it's a dead issue. It was talked about over a week ago, and in Internet time that's about 6 months. I bring it up now not in the hopes of you all rushing over to the apparent source of this mess to add your own comments, but because it's an intro to my own essay, titled What the Hell has Happened to Feminism?

Actually, "what the hell has happened to feminism?" is the title, the introductory statement, the full argument, and the closing statement of my essay.

I've used the "not your bitch" phrase a few times in my life, and I've never been accused of perpetuating the misogynist culture. I'd be really offended if I was accused of that. I don't think you can rightly accuse one person's words of determining another person's actions.

Mostly, I keep wondering if we feminists don't have better things to do. This seems like a classic example of a group being so busy arguing amongst themselves that they never accomplish anything. Here in America, women still don't always get equal pay for equal work. Prison sentences for rape are still ridiculously short. I think the important issues are the ones where you can actually change the way things are. I am also not into the whole "changing the dialogue" method of feminism, because that's just a touchy-feely way of saying "changing the way people talk," which is just a friendly way of saying "speech and thought control." Change laws, and hopefully a few people will stop to ponder why it was important that they be changed. Tell people what to think and say, and they will only get pissed off at you.

Not to mention, if feminism wants me to choose between them and free speech, they are going to lose me.

Discworld: The Color of Magic finished, The Light Fantastic begun.

There's one big problem with me taking on this reading list; I am a slow reader. I always have been. I sometimes wonder how long it will take me to finish this list.

For that reason, and because of the holidays, it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to finish The Color of Magic, which is the first in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Over a month.

Having said that, I checked The Light Fantastic (book 2 in the same series) out at the library one week ago, and I'm already half way through it. This is the equivalent of a normal reader getting half-way through a book in one day.

I really like these books. I tried reading The Color of Magic once before, and it didn't stick with me so I gave up. I think the main thing is I was distracted and reading it at the same time as a whole bunch of comic books. But I also think I expected the Discworld series to be the fantasy version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and it is not. I'm actually very pleased that it is not, because there's no need for imitation here, and you might wonder why it took Terry Pratchett 37 novels (soon to be 38) to accomplish what Douglas Adams managed in 5.

Discworld is a comical adventure of unlikely heroes. In fact, "unlikely heroes" doesn't really cover it. Unheroic heroes? People who aren't really trying but keep ending up being heroes? People who have no desire to be heroes but keep having heroic opportunities thrust upon them, no matter what they do to avoid it? It is frequently a parody of fantasy as a genre, and the genre is ripe for both the satire and the silliness that Terry Pratchett delivers. And that's just at the halfway mark of book 2.

The Color of Magic read like a very good starting point for things to come. I read the first book thinking I might just read Discworld novels between other novels, as a little break. I finished the first novel wanting more, so I started book 2. It's nice to read a series where I am hungry for the next book, instead of just trudging through in an effort to get it all over with (Chronicles of Narnia, I am looking at you).

So more updates as I progress. Maybe I'll actually make time to update the blog before getting half-way into book 3.

Side note: Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's Disease. So does my grandmother. It's a bad disease. If you agree and feel like doing something about it, there are charities and funds out there that you can donate money to. You are intelligent people and you are on the internet right now, so I'm sure you can figure out the rest.