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A Slip Of The Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction (2014)

by Terry Pratchett(Favorite Author)

4.24 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0857521225 (ISBN13: 9780857521224)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Doubleday

review 1: The book is split into three sections and halfway section two, I thought "This is really good and I understand exactly how he feels". By the time I got to the end, I had lost interest. Yes, I get why he rants against Alzheimer's. I've felt the same. I also understand why he feels the way he does about assisted death. What I don't understand is why he repeats and repeats these rants. As an author, he should realise that a message repeated ad nauseum simply dilutes its effect. It would seem that the chapters here were simply reprints of previous newspaper columns. There is very little new work here. Sir Terry uses a favourite tactic of some authors; that of using short chapters with half a page of dead space at the end of each. This gives an inflated page count with a... more low word count. Sorry Sir Terry. This is not your best work.
review 2: This book is clearly not for casual Pratchett fans. If you haven't read at least a couple dozen of Sir Terry's other books you should probably pick up something else instead! That said, this collection on nonfiction essays covered a rather broader scope than a casual fan might expect. Certainly there were many essays that touched on various aspects of science fiction/fantasy culture and work. But there are also the essays towards the back of the book where Pratchett addresses topics near to his heart like what we're doing to rain forests and the impact on the orangutan as well as the "assisted suicide" topic, his interest in which is a result of his own alzheimer's. By the time you get to the end of this collection you have much more of a sense of Terry Pratchett the man is than be gathered solely from Discworld novels - not that Terry isn't evident in them as well! This is a very worthwhile read for dedicated Pratchett fans. less

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