by “Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you”
May 2024
Terry Pratchett was an author of fantasy books which have a deeply comic and also philosophical take on the genre whereby, to my eye, comedy and philosophy are two sides of the same lense. And the discworld series does both in wallops. My new job does necessitate quite a lot of travel so I decided to get started on a few audiobooks and where better to start than a handfull of TP’s discworld novels. So far, I have finished „The colour of magic“, „Nightwatch“, „Guards, Guards“ and the „Thief of time“ and a couple of others. I must admit that I have been genuinely looking forward to the trips to and fro and have had great fun listening. Here great respect to the speakers of audiobooks who do a terrific job of bringing the story to life and bring in their own elements with accents and voices – respect!!
I did a little bit of background rooting about about Terry Pratchett and enjoyed listening to his various interviews of which there are many in and about the internets… he appears to be a truly genuine and decent person with great wisdom and humour and this comes out in his numerous discworld books, each of which deals with a certain story within the disc. Various characters crop up in different books, some merely passing by others taking centra stage for a while.
The whole discworld series is far too large and detailed to attempt to do it justice here and, at the end of the day, this is what TP has done so well in his books that I can only recommend trying one and to take it from there. I have tried to collect some media here that could be of some interest and have gathered in one of my favourite parts from the „Thief of time“ which are the wisdoms of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite as collected by Lu-Tze in his book „The Way of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite“.
There is an enormous amount of Fandom stuff out there dealing with all things discworldian so here’s a few links to some of those. Do enjoy the videos 😊
The Science of Discworld:
List of book titles:
A favourite list from “The way of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite” as collected by Lu-Tze:
Source: https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Thief_of_Time :
Some of the sayings of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite are:
“I have only one pair of hands”.
“It never rains but it pours.”
“Hard work never did anyone any harm”
“It does you good to get out in the fresh air.”
“It won’t get better if you pick at it”.
“Eat it up , it’ll make your hair curly.”
“Everything comes to he who waits.”
“You can’t tell a book by its cover.”
“You could knock me down with a feather.”
“I’m not as green as I’m cabbage looking.”
“Every second counts”
“We live and learn”
“A washed pot never boils”
“If you want a thing done properly, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
“Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you”
“When you have got to go, you have got to go”
“You should always wear clean underwear because you never know if you will be knocked down by a cart”.
“If you have another one, you won’t have an appetite for your dinner”
