@xsecur@bookstodon For lit lovers, Wyrd Sisters is a hilarious Shakespeare sendup. Other recommended starting points: Mort, Small Gods, and Going Postal. My first was The Truth. Good luck!
Small Gods is a masterful fantasy comic satire on religious institutions, religious fundamentalism, philosophy, and the weaponisation of religious fanaticism for political power, set in the Discworld. It explores how religious beliefs and faith shift and change over time, from being centred on the deity to being centred on the religious institution itself. Rereading this was an absolute joy! @bookstodon#SmallGods#terrypratchett#bookreview#reading#books#discworld https://bookwyrm.social/user/Narayoni/review/2879341
Religion with its somewhat random rules 😂 🤣
"‘I nearly committed a terrible sin,’ said Brutha. ‘I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day.’
‘That’s a terrible thing, a terrible thing,’ said Om. ‘Now cut the melon.’
‘But it is forbidden!’ said Brutha.
‘No it’s not,’ said Om. ‘Cut the melon.’But it was the eating of fruit that caused passion to invade the world,’ said Brutha.
‘All it caused was flatulence,’ said Om. ‘Cut the melon!’" @bookstodon#SmallGods#terrypratchett#reading#books#discworld
These lines made me wonder: how many people actually believe in God, and not the Institution, out of fear or just because it's what everyone does.
"… it can’t be just him who believes in me.
Really in me. Not in a pair of golden horns. Not in a great big building. Not in the dread of hot iron and knives. Not in paying your temple dues because everyone else does. Just in the fact that the Great God Om really exists." @bookstodon#SmallGods#terrypratchett#reading#discworld#bookquotes
@DavidBruchmann@bookstodon I think you made a very interesting point. Anyways, thanks for sharing your beliefs, I liked reading about it. Maybe you can consider writing about it if you are into writing. Maybe it may do some good to whoever reads it. I am not a writer, (so maybe wrong) but I think writing, just by itself, can also make the writer feel good.
Now that's exactly what I have always believed... My moral code in a nutshell, simple and to the point,with religion having nothing to do with it:
"What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right." #SmallGods by #terrypratchett#discworld#discworldquotes@bookstodon#reading#religion#morality
An astute judge of human nature ain't he?
"And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people." #SmallGods#terrypratchett#theturtlemoves#discworldquotes@bookstodon#GNUPterry#reading#books#quotes
Starting this legendary series of books again! I didn’t actually read the very last one, because after Terry died I didn’t really want it to be over. Now it’s been a few years, and I originally started reading the series about 30 years ago (!) so it’s about time to reacquaint myself 📖
Pic: The Colour of Magic, the very first #Discworld novel, with a charming @hellogeri lucky cat sticker as a bookmark.
@LDJ@hellogeri@bookstodon It's warming my heart reading this, I feel less alone. I wonder how it will be for tou to be back to the Discworld of old, without clacks and the other technological marvels of the Industrial Revolution, and getting to know all the familiar faces once again. One day I will probably start it again too
📖 According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the world will end on a Saturday. A Saturday quite soon, in fact.
The whole of our six-part adapation of @neilhimself and Terry Pratchett's wonderful 1990 fantasy Good Omens is on BBC Sounds now - and you can listen from anywhere in the world. Tell your friends, good or evil.
A lovely metaphor from Om about the nothingness after life
"‘About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there’s just a moment of warmth and light?’
‘There are windows open?’ said Brutha.
‘Can’t you imagine what it’s like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterwards there’ll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?’" @bookstodon#SmallGods#terrypratchett#bookquotes
I totally agree with you Urn, sometimes laughing at something is the only thing that can keep you sane, what with going on in the world.
"He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they’d left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability. You had to laugh. Otherwise you’d go mad." #SmallGods by #terrypratchett @bookstodon#discworld#GNUPterry#books#reading#discworldquotes
"He fumbled under his robe and produced something that looked, to Fergmen’s eye, very much like a torture instrument. This must have communicated itself to Urn, who said very slowly and kindly: ‘This is an ad-just-ab-ble span-ner.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s for twisting nuts off.’
Fergmen nodded miserably."