Saturday, November 3, 2007

Making Money In Ankh-Morpork


Welcome to Disc World! A complete flat world that is held up by four elephants, all of whom are standing on a turtle that is swimming through space. Disc world is the brain child of Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett is to the comedy genre what Stephen King is to the horror genre. Both authors start with ordinary things done by ordinary people in ordinary towns. Ordinary people under Stephen King’s imagination are heralds of horrifying experiences. Terry Pratchett on the other hand, starts with an imaginary world of vampires, Igors, witches, guilds (thieves, assassins, etc), wizards with their Unseen University, imps, golems, trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, and humans, living in a city named Ankh-Morpork and managed to make them seem like any ordinary city on earth. It is their ordinariness of the various denizens of Ankh-Morpork which makes them so captivating and funny. Pratchett has made Disc World a mirror of ours and make our darkest ambitions look funny when exposed to the light of his imaginary world.

Making Money (2007) is the latest in a series of Disc world books. My favourites are The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, The Last Continent, and Reaper Man. In Making Money, con-man Moist von Lipwig was offered the job of being Master of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint and be in charge of the Bank of Ankh-Morpork. The chairman of the bank is a dog! This is any con-man’s dream. It is being given the key to the bank vault legally. However there a few complications. Throw into the mix, the bank’s conniving family, the invention of paper money, the discovery of ‘golden golem’ and the manipulation of the master con-man of them all, you have a story worthy of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen (the movies). A good 4 star read.

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7 comments:

  1. How would you regard this book in terms of G, PG13, PG18 etc?
    And readability?

    I am asking because my son loves comedy and it is not easy to find books for him to read. Remember Dav Pilkey? He reads real fast too.

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  2. Hi pearlie,

    I guess I will put it at PG13. However, most of his books are aimed at an adult readers so some of the references (and really funny ones) will be missed.

    For your son, I will recommend his Discworld for younger readers books;The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Winstersmith. I am sure he will enjoy them. Anyway it kept me happy :)

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  3. Thanks! I will try to look out for it in the bookstore.

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  4. maurice is an amazing book (so swears my 2 children).

    so is 'the unadulterated cat' by pratchett and his wife jolie (who did the wonderful illustrations), especially for cat lovers.

    the other sci-fi series by pratchett may be too adult-orientated for younge kids.

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  5. hi anthony,

    welcome. I agree with you that maurice is wonderful for the kids.

    I have not read 'the inadulterated cat'. Must get hold of a copy.

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  6. I started reading Discworld at 13, long before there were kids' books. I missed a lot of the gags, but I got enough of them to keep me entertained.

    Anthony, just a minor point, but Pratchett's wife is named Lynn (the copyright on the Discworld books are in both names), Gray Joliffe is a male cartoonist, who isn't related to him in any way. I agree the Unadulterated Cat is wonderful, though.

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  7. hi Daibhid,

    welcome. Thanks for your comments on Discworld. That's what I like about the series. There are so many gags that sometimes it is worth reading to catch more of them.

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