The Art of Dribbling

Audio Book Review: Unseen Academicals

 

Going out for lunch yesterday with my aunt and uncle who were visiting, I came across this candle holder.

It led my thoughts back to the Discworld novel Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett, which I recently listened to as audio book. I find it a bit hard to write proper reviews of books I have only audio memories of, i.e. without being able to go back to the text and check details and quotes etc. But I thought I’d write down a few impressions anyway.

The main story in the book – I suppose – is about the Unseen University forming a football team. But, as two quotes from the book say (I found these on the internet):

The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

You're saying that football is not about football?
It's the sharing, she said. It's being part of the crowd. It's chanting together. It's all of it. the whole thing.

And this goes for the book as well. It’s about football but it’s also not about football but about sharing and being part of the crowd.

One new Discworld character in this novel is Mr Nutt, who is a candle dribbler at the Unseen University. Because at a Wizards’ University, you cannot leave an important thing like candle dribbling up to chance and wind. It is a job that takes some skill!

So that’s why Mr Nutt came to mind for me when I saw that candle holder.

Mr Nutt of course also gets involved in the football theme and team. And in the midst of it all, he makes some discoveries about himself and goes through a sort of identity crisis; as do some of the other characters, although in different ways. References to Freudian psychology will probably amuse anyone interested in that sort of thing (at least they amused me). In the book, hypnosis of origin from Überwald is used to bring out hidden secrets.

Überwald in the Discworld effectively comprises two utterly distinct societies; the dwarfs, who exist below in their cavernous cities and tunnels, and everybody else, who live above. By tradition, the laws of the surface people do not apply underground, and vice versa.
(Wikipedia article on Discworld Geography)

Actually, my Quotation of the Week in yesterday’s blog post (about mistaking oneself for somebody else) might be said to fit in quite well with Mr Nutt. Although…

No, I’m not going to reveal the details.
You’d better read the book to find out!

As usual, even though Unseen Academicals is No 37 in the Discworld series (and by now I have read them all), I don’t think this one requires you to have read any of the previous ones to be able to get some enjoyment out of it. All that is required is that you’re prepared for a fantasy world which is like and unlike our own world at the same time.

To finish off with, here’s the definition of:

Dribble (v.tr.)
1. To let flow or fall in drops or an unsteady stream.
2. Sports a. To move (a ball or puck) by repeated light bounces or kicks, as in basketball or soccer.

Bedtime Reading

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/bedside/

What books do you have next to your bed right now?
How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

Next to my bed right now I have Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith. It is the second novel in the 44 Scotland Street series, which were first published as serial novels in the Scottish national newspaper The Scotsman. (Previously, I have read his books about the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency - set in Botswana - and also some from his Scottish Sunday Philosophy Club series.) The 44 Scotland Street series is about the inhabitants of that address in Edinburgh (the street exists in reality, but not No 44). Originally written as a serial novel, I find it a good book for a bit of bedtime reading... The chapters are not too long and each one is sort of a story within the story. It's basically light-hearted and amusing, and not likely to cause nightmares! I have to say the character that fascinates me most is young Bertie, a little boy on an intellectual level far beyond his years - and with a very pushy mother, trying to make the most of that - while Bertie himself, most of the time, is really just longing to be allowed to be a normal kid. I can't say I find the neither him nor his mother very "believable" but I'm still amused. His name brings to mind Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster; and I would say McCall Smith's story has quite a bit of the same kind of spirit as Wodehouse's, even if set in another time and environment.

I also always have an audio book going and right now I'm re-listening to Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett; which is the 14th of his Discworld books, and part of the Witches-series. In it, he plays around with references to Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Stonehenge, Crop Circles and Elves, amongst other things...

Quotation of the Week (51/09)

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Terry Pratchett

A Childhood Favourite: The Borrowers

Rae had a blogpost the other day about Childhood Literary Loves, especially series of children's books. It turns out I share several of Rae's favourites; but one other that came to mind for me, was Mary Norton's The Borrowers. I actually reread those books earlier this year (some time in the spring) and intended to write a blogpost about them back then, but never got round to it. Doing it now instead!

To start with the reason why I reread The Borrowers, that was because last year for Christmas my brother gave me mp3-copies of Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad Trilogy, about a little people called Nomes. Listening to those books, it struck me that hey, he borrowed rather heavily (though amusingly) from The Borrowers...!

Then it struck me that I never actually read The Borrowers in English; only in Swedish. I still have my Swedish copies of the first four books. Checking with my internet bookshop, I found that there was a The Complete Borrowers pocket edition available which also included a fifth book, written twenty years later than the others; which probably explains why I had never even heard of that one. So I ordered the Complete edition, and read the whole story for the first time in English. As so often when reading in the original language something I've only read in translation before, that included some new discoveries. On top of a good story, I noticed she also uses the language beautifully, with lots of details (and quite a few words new to me); and also some puns that don't translate into Swedish at all... Like the Borrowers using the name "human beans" for "human beings"!

Borrowers, in case you don't know, are a little people, more or less on the verge of becoming extinct, so there aren't many of them about any more. They live under the floor or behind the walls in big people's houses, preferably close to the kitchen or dining room, because they live on what the human beans leave lying around. That's why a lot of small items around the house just keep mysteriously disappearing - like needles and safety pins and handkerchiefs and balls of yarn and things like that, which you can never find when you need them. Even the Borrowers' names seem (in our ears) borrowed. When the story begins, there is just one family of Borrowers left in a big old house - 14 year old Arrietty with her parents Pod and Homily; with surname Clock, because the entrance to their home is behind a clock.

The greatest fear of a Borrower is to "be seen" by a human bean. One day, this happens to Arrietty - she is seen by a human boy coming to stay with his old relative. Not only that - she makes friends with the boy; a friendship which for a while has its advantages, but in the end... Well, let's just say it leads on to new adventures for the little family, because the first book (first published in 1952) was followed by three more (published between 1955-1961), entitled The Borrowers Afield, The Borrowers Afloat and The Borrowers Aloft - and much later (in 1982) The Borrowers Avenged.

From the titles alone you can draw the conclusion that the family did not stay forever in the house where we found them in the first book. (Neither do Terry Pratchett's Nomes, and that's where it becomes really obvious that he borrowed from the Borrowers; because his little people also leave their Indoors life to go Afield, and then Aloft; although you might say they go about it in more modern fashion than Mary Norton's characters...)

One of Mary Norton's skills in her story-telling lies in her ability to really imagine what it must be like to be the size of her borrowers - especially when they move outdoors.

Arrietty filled the tin-lid quite easily by tipping a large pointed fox-glove leaf towards it so the rain ran off and down the point. All about her was the steady sound of rain, and the lighted candle within the boot made the dusk seem darker: there was a smell of wildness, of space, of leaves and grasses and as she turned away with the filled tin-lid, another smell - winy, fragrant, spicy. Arrietty took note of it to remember it for the morning - it was the smell of wild strawberries.

(The Borrowers Afield)