{"id":245,"date":"2007-10-10T15:06:56","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T22:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/10\/10\/small-gods\/"},"modified":"2007-10-10T15:29:51","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T22:29:51","slug":"small-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/10\/small-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terry<\/a> Pratch\u00adett\u2019s<\/a> Small Gods<\/a> is a good place to start in the pan\u00adtheon of the Dis\u00adcworld books. That\u2019s the reas\u00adon we chose it, rather than one of the many oth\u00aders, to read in book club. There are a couple of places where hav\u00ading read some of the oth\u00ader books would give some addi\u00adtion\u00adal depth (the lib\u00adrar\u00adi\u00adan, or Death), but it\u2019s not neces\u00adsary for the enjoy\u00adment of the story. There are a lot<\/strong> of Dis\u00adcworld books. To get some\u00adthing of a pic\u00adture of how they\u2019re all related, try the Read\u00ading Order Guide<\/a> (link from Boing\u00adBo\u00ading<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I remem\u00adber read\u00ading Dis\u00adcworld books when I was study\u00ading phys\u00adics, but then some\u00adhow got out of the habit (prob\u00adably because they wer\u00aden\u2019t read\u00adily avail\u00adable in Ger\u00admany where I was liv\u00ading at the time). So I was glad to be reminded of just how good a read they can be. Small Gods<\/cite> is a par\u00adody of reli\u00adgions, gods, and inquis\u00adi\u00adtions. It tells the story of a small god (the defin\u00adi\u00adtion being one that does\u00adn\u2019t have many fol\u00adlow\u00aders and there\u00adfore does\u00adn\u2019t have much power) and his sym\u00adbi\u00ados\u00adis with the one true believ\u00ader. Along the way, Pratch\u00adett neatly pokes fun at organ\u00adized reli\u00adgion, the Inquis\u00adi\u00adtion, philo\u00adsoph\u00aders, and lots of oth\u00ader things. It\u2019s the sort of book you read for the snide asides as much as the storyline. It can be read at lots of levels; you can just read and enjoy the story or think about the deep\u00ader implic\u00ada\u00adtions for com\u00adpar\u00adat\u00adive reli\u00adgions. We had fun dis\u00adcuss\u00ading the rela\u00adtion\u00adship between Om and Brutha in terms of who needed whom the most. Both Om and Brutha change and learn dur\u00ading the book\u2019s events; Om becom\u00ading less venge\u00adful (although while he\u2019s in tor\u00adtoise form there\u2019s not much he can do to carry out any venge\u00adful actions) and more thought\u00adful through being mal\u00adtreated (run\u00adning gag: \u201cthere\u2019s good eat\u00ading on a tor\u00adtoise\u201d with\u00adin earshot of him) and through Brutha\u2019s bar\u00adgain\u00ading power (he is, after all, the reas\u00adon that Om is sen\u00adtient although it takes him a while to fig\u00adure that out).<\/p>\n

All in all, worth try\u00ading if you haven\u2019t already, even if you don\u2019t usu\u00adally read fantasy or sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion. Just don\u2019t blame me if you get hooked on the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Pratch\u00adett\u2019s Small Gods is a good place to start in the pan\u00adtheon of the Dis\u00adcworld books. That\u2019s the reas\u00adon we chose it, rather than one of the many oth\u00aders, to read in book club. There are a couple of places where hav\u00ading read some of the oth\u00ader books would give some addi\u00adtion\u00adal depth (the \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cSmall Gods\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}