Terry Pratchett’s Jingo

Readers risk life and listeners

Reading Terry Pratchett is a dangerous business. And I’m not referring to the humbling effect he has on anyone who’s ever tried to write humorous fantasy. Or the financial hardship of satisfying a hardcore Pratchett habit, now that his books number in the dozens

No, I’m talking about the very real dangers of reading aloud.

You open a new Pratchett. You smile. You chuckle. You guffaw. And then, lemming-like, you start hunting about for someone to read a few of the good bits to.

It’s insidious. You start by reading a short quip. You move on to a well-wrought comic turn of phrase. Then you have to read a longer passage for your listener to understand the next bit.

The good bits start appearing closer and closer together, and before you know it, you’re reading the whole darn thing, and your listener is ready to choke you. Because, of course, however much fun it is to listen to someone read the good bits of a Pratchett book, it’s a lot more fun to read them aloud yourself and acquire, however temporarily, a spurious air of wit and erudition. And as long as some fool is standing there reading the good bits to you, your chances of filching the book and sneaking off to find an audience of your own are pretty slim.

In Jingo, Pratchett’s newest book (or at least the newest we’re able get our hands on in the United States), the good bits start about a quarter of the way down page one and continue more or less without interruption until halfway down page 323, which happens to be the last page in the book. Thank goodness, since both my voice and my listener’s patience began giving out around page 300.

Technically, at this point in the review I should buckle down to do some real work. For example, I could give you a capsule summary of the plot of the book and say a few learned things about its literary merit. But wouldn’t you know it: I’m getting near the absolute maximum number of words my editor will let me write about any book, no matter how much I love it.

There’s barely time to say that if you’ve already read Pratchett, you know what a treat is in store for you. If you’ve never read him, for heaven’s sake don’t admit it — slink down to the nearest bookstore and remedy the situation.

That’s all I have to say. Unless you’d like to stick around and let me read you a few of the good bits? Just one or two? Oh, all right. It was only a suggestion.

Donna Andrews

Donna Andrews is the author of Murder with Peacocks, which won the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Award in May 1998. Her second book in the Meg and Michael series, Murder with Puffins, will be released this spring.