Discworld
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The books parody or take inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare, as well as mythology and fairy tales using them for satirical parallels with cultural and scientific issues. Forty-one Discworld novels have been published; the original British editions of the first 26 novels, up to Thief of Time, had cover art by Josh Kirby. The American editions, published by Harper Collins, used their own cover art. Since Kirby's death in 2001, the covers have been designed by Paul Kidby. Companion publications include eleven short stories, four popular science books, a number of supplementary books and reference guides; the series has been adapted for graphic novels, theatre and board games, television. Newly released Discworld books topped The Sunday Times best-sellers list, making Pratchett the UK's best-selling author in the 1990s.
Discworld novels have won awards such as the Prometheus Award and the Carnegie Medal. In the BBC's Big Read, four Discworld novels were in the top 100, a total of fourteen in the top 200. More than 80 million Discworld books have been sold in 37 languages. Few of the Discworld novels have chapter divisions. Instead they feature interweaving storylines. Pratchett was quoted as saying that he "just never got into the habit of chapters" adding that "I have to shove them in the putative YA books because my editor screams until I do". However, the first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic was divided into "books". Additionally, Going Postal and Making Money both have chapters, a prologue, an epilogue, brief teasers of what is to come in each chapter, in the style of A. A. Milne, Jules Verne, Jerome K. Jerome; the Discworld novels contain common motifs that run through the series. Fantasy clichés are parodied in many of the novels, as are various subgenres of fantasy, such as fairy tales and vampire stories and so on.
Analogies of real-world issues, such as religion and inner city tension and politics, racial prejudice and exploitation are recurring themes, as are aspects of culture and entertainment, such as opera, rock music and football. Parodies of non-Discworld fiction occur including Shakespeare, Beatrix Potter, several movies. Major historical events battles, are sometimes used as the basis for both trivial and key events in Discworld stories, as are trends in science, pop culture and modern art. There are humanist themes in many of the Discworld novels, a focus on critical thinking skills in the Witches and Tiffany Aching series; the Discworld novels and stories are, in principle, stand-alone works. However, a number of novels and stories form novel sequences with distinct story arcs: Rincewind was the first protagonist of Discworld, he is the archetypal coward but is thrust into dangerous adventures. In The Last Hero, he flatly states that he does not wish to join an expedition to explore over the edge of the Disc—but, being geared for the expedition at the time, clarifies by saying that any amount of protesting on his part is futile, as something will occur that will bring him into the expedition anyway.
As such, he not only succeeds in staying alive, but saves Discworld on several occasions, has an instrumental role in the emergence of life on Roundworld. Other characters in the Rincewind story arc include: Cohen the Barbarian, an aging hero of the old fantasy tradition, out of touch with the modern world and still fighting despite his advanced age. Rincewind appeared in eight Discworld novels as well as the four Science of Discworld supplementary books. Death appears in every novel except The Wee Free Men and Snuff, although sometimes with only a few lines; as dictated by tradition, he is a seven-foot-tall skeleton in a black robe who sits astride a pale horse. His dialogue is always depicted in small caps, without quotation marks, as several characters state that Death's voice seems to arrive in their heads without passing through their ears as sound; as the anthropomorphic personification of death, Death has the job of guiding souls onward from this world into the next. Over millennia in the role, he has developed a fascination with humanity going so far as to create a house for himself in his personal dimension.
Characters that appear with Death include his butler Albert. Death or Susan appear as the main characters in five Discworld novels, he appears in the short stories Death and What Comes Next, Theatre o
Wintersmith (Steeleye Span album)
Wintersmith is the twenty-second studio album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span. It was released in October 2013, it features the line-up of Maddy Prior, Peter Knight, Rick Kemp, Julian Littman, Pete Zorn and Liam Genockey. Guest musicians are Terry Pratchett, Kathryn Tickell, Bob Johnson, John Spiers; the songs on the album were inspired principally by Wintersmith and other Discworld books featuring Tiffany Aching. There is a spoken contribution by Terry Pratchett. A double CD Deluxe Edition was released in October 2014: the second disc featured a mixture of new tracks, live performances and demos. Maddy Prior – vocals Peter Knight – violin, vocals Rick Kemp – bass, vocals Julian Littman – guitar, vocals Pete Zorn – acoustic guitar, vocals Liam Genockey – drums, percussion "Overture" "The Dark Morris Song" "Wintersmith" "You" "The Good Witch" – featuring Terry Pratchett "Band of Teachers" "The Wee Free Men" "Hiver" "Fire & Ice" "The Making of a Man" "Crown of Ice" "First Dance" "The Dark Morris Tune" "The Summer Lady" "Ancient Eyes" "We Shall Wear Midnight" Tracks - Deluxe Edition Disc 2: "To Be Human" "Be Careful What You Wish for" "Granny Aching" "Just One Heart" "You" "Ancient Eyes" "The Dark Morris Tune" "The Dark Morris Song" "The Making of a Man" "Crown of Ice" "Summer Lady" "We Shall Wear Midnight" "Ancient Eyes" "The Wee Free Men" Wintersmith debuted at No. 77 on the UK Albums Chart.
The album has received positive reviews, has been described as "a marriage between the written word and music, devastatingly superb."Folk Radio UK hailed the release as "a concept album it has that feel of being made for a stage production"
Young adult fiction
Young adult fiction is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is targeted to teenagers half of YA readers are adults; the subject matter and genres of YA correlate with the experience of the protagonist. The genres available in YA include most of those found in adult fiction. Common themes related to YA include: friendship, first love and identity. Stories that focus on the specific challenges of youth are sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming-of-age novels. Young adult fiction was developed to soften the transition between children's novels and adult literature; the history of young adult literature is tied to the history of how childhood and young adulthood has been perceived. One early writer to recognize young adults as a distinct group was Sarah Trimmer, who, in 1802, described "young adulthood" as lasting from ages 14 to 21. In her children's literature periodical, The Guardian of Education, Trimmer introduced the terms "Books for Children" and "Books for Young Persons", establishing terms of reference for young adult literature that still remains in use.
Nineteenth century literature presents several early works, that appealed to young readers, though not written for them, including The Swiss Family Robinson, Walter Scott's Waverley, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Dickens' Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner. In the 1950s, two influential adult novels, The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies, which were not marketed to adolescents, still attracted the attention of the adolescent demographic; the modern classification of young-adult fiction originated during the 1950s and 1960s after the publication of S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders; the novel features a truer, darker side of adolescent life, not represented in works of fiction of the time, was the first novel published marketed for young adults as Hinton was one when she wrote it.
Written during high-school and published when Hinton was only 17, The Outsiders lacked the nostalgic tone common in books about adolescents written by adults. The Outsiders remains one of the best-selling young adult novels of all time; the 1960s became the era "when the'under 30' generation became a subject of popular concern, research on adolescence began to emerge. It was the decade when literature for adolescents could be said to have come into its own"; this increased the new idea of adolescent authors. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, what has come to be known as the "fab five" were published: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an autobiography of the early years of American poet Maya Angelou; the works of Angelou and Plath were not written for young readers. As publishers began to focus on the emerging adolescent market and libraries began creating young adult sections distinct from children's literature and novels written for adults; the 1970s to the mid-1980s have been described as the golden age of young-adult fiction, when challenging novels began speaking directly to the interests of the identified adolescent market.
In the 1980s, young adult literature began pushing the envelope in terms of the subject matter, considered appropriate for their audience: Books dealing with topics such as rape, parental death, murder, deemed taboo, saw significant critical and commercial success. A flip-side of this trend was a strong revived interest in the romance novel, including young adult romance. With an increase in number of teenagers the genre "matured and came into its own, with the better written, more serious, more varied young adult books published during the last two decades"; the first novel in J. K. Rowling's seven-book Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997; the series was praised for its complexity and maturity, attracted a wide adult audience. While not technically YA, its success led many to see Harry Potter and its author, J. K. Rowling, as responsible for a resurgence of young adult literature, re-established the pre-eminent role of speculative fiction in the field, a trend further solidified by The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
The end of the decade saw a number of awards appear such as the Michael L. Printz Award and Alex Awards, designed to recognize excellence in writing for young adult audiences; the category of young adult fiction continues to expand into other media and genres: graphic novels/manga, light novels, mystery fiction, romance novels, subcategories such as cyberpunk, techno-thrillers, contemporary Christian fiction. Many young adult novels feature coming-of-age stories; these feature adolescents beginning to transform into adults, working through personal problems, learning to take responsibility for their actions. YA serves many literary purposes, it provides a pleasurable reading experience for young people, emphasizing real life experiences and
Witches Abroad
Witches Abroad is the twelfth Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett published in 1991. Following the death of the witch Desiderata Hollow, Magrat Garlick is sent her magic wand, for Desiderata was not only a witch, but a fairy godmother. Having given the wand to Magrat, she makes Magrat the new fairy godmother to a young woman called Emberella, who lives across the Disc in Genua. Sadly, Desiderata does not give Magrat any instruction on the use of the wand, so pretty much anything that Magrat points it at becomes a pumpkin; this leaves several animals around Magrat's cottage now as pumpkins, one of which still thinks it is a stoat. Desiderata had promised Emberella that she will not marry the Duke, who's a prince/frog, now it is up to Magrat and her companions to ensure that Emberella does not marry the Duke, despite the desires of another Witch in Genua called Lily, Desiderata's counterpart, she used the power of her own reflection to capture Genua. The journey to Genua takes some time and involves numerous mis-adventures, such as an encounter with a village terrorised by a Vampire—Greebo catches it in bat form and eats it—an incident where they encounter a Running of the Bulls-like event, a house falling on Nanny's head which she survives thanks to her hat with the willow reinforcement.
Upon arrival in Genua, Magrat goes to meet Emberella, whilst the two older witches meet Erzulie Gogol, a voodoo witch and her zombie servant, Baron Saturday. It is at this time that Magrat finds out that Emberella has two fairy godmothers and Lilith, it was Lilith who had manipulated many of the various stories that the Witches had traveled through and, now manipulating Genua itself, wrapping the city around her version of the Cinderella story. Lilith has had people arrested for crimes against stories, including the arrest of a toymaker for not being jolly, not whistling and not telling the children stories. At this point it is revealed that Lilith is Lily, Granny Weatherwax's older sister. Using hypnosis, Granny convinces Magrat to attend a Masked Ball in place of Emberella. Greebo is transformed into human form to aid the witches. Emberella's dress fits. After enjoying themselves for a while at the ball, the witches are discovered and are cast into a dungeon. At that point, Mrs. Gogol and Baron Saturday arrive at the Ball, having broken the witches out of their prison.
A high concentration of Magic causes the Duke to revert to his frog form, he is trampled by Baron Saturday causing Lilith to flee. Granny starts to follow, but Mrs. Gogol tries to stop her using a voodoo doll, wanting to kill Lilith. Granny uses Mrs Gogol's own belief in the power of the voodoo doll to make the voodoo doll burst into flames when Granny thrusts her own arm into a flaming torch. Granny Weatherwax pursues Lilith. Emberella is informed, her first command is to end the Ball and attend the Mardi Gras parade, a form of binge drinking carnival. Granny manages to defeat Lilith by trapping her in a mirror, the three Witches return home. Granny shows Magrat that it takes more than wishing. Magrat throws the wand into a river; the Witches go home, the long way, see the elephant. Fairy tales Fairy godmothers Cinderella New Orleans Carnival / Mardi Gras Swamps Voodoo The Frog Princess Witches Abroad title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Annotations for Witches Abroad Quotes from Witches Abroad Synopsis for Witches Abroad
Reaper Man
Reaper Man is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett. Published in 1991, it is the second to focus on Death; the title is a reference to Alex Cox's movie Repo Man. The Auditors of Reality are beings; as Death starts developing a personality the Auditors feel that he does not perform his Duty in the right way. They send him to live like everyone else. Assuming the name "Bill Door", he works as a farm hand for the elderly Miss Flitworth. While every other species creates a new Death for themselves, humans need more time for their Death to be completed; as a result, the life force of dead humans starts to build up. Most notable is the return of the deceased wizard Windle Poons, looking forward to reincarnation. After several misadventures, including being accosted by his oldest friends, he finds himself attending the Fresh Start club, an undead-rights group led by Reg Shoe; the Fresh Start club and the wizards of Unseen University discover that the city of Ankh-Morpork is being invaded by a parasitic lifeform that feeds on cities and hatches from eggs that resemble snow globes.
Tracking its middle form, shopping carts, the Fresh Start club and the wizards invade and destroy the third form, a shopping mall. When humankind thinks of a New Death, one with a crown and without any humanity or human face, it goes to take Bill Door. Death/Door, having planned for this moment for some time and destroys it. Having defeated the New Death, Death absorbs the other Deaths back into him, with the exception of the Death of Rats. Death confronts Azrael, the Death of the Universe, states that the Deaths have to care or they do not exist and there is nothing but Oblivion, which must end some time. Death receives some time, he offers her unlimited dreams. She asks to go to the local Harvest Dance, they join the townspeople for a full night of dancing. As the sun is coming up, Miss Flitworth realizes she had died hours before the dance started. Death escorts her through history to her old fiancé. Returning to the city of Ankh Morpork he meets up with Windle Poons taking him to his just reward, whatever it is.
At the end there is a discussion between Death and the Death of Rats over what the Death of Rats should "ride", Death suggests a dog while the Death of Rats suggests a cat. A fragment of this book was adapted in 1996 into a short animated movie entitled Welcome to the Discworld, featuring Christopher Lee as Death. Reaper Man title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database YouTube - Welcome To The Discworld Annotations for Reaper Man Quotes from Reaper Man
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association with more than 57,000 members. Founded by Justin Winsor, Charles Ammi Cutter, Samuel S. Green, James L. Whitney, Melvil Dewey, Fred B. Perkins, Charles Evans, Thomas W. Bicknell on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts, its head office is now in Chicago. During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, responded to a call for a "Convention of Librarians" to be held October 4–6 at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the end of the meeting, according to Ed Holley in his essay "ALA at 100," "the register was passed around for all to sign who wished to become charter members," making October 6, 1876, to be ALA's birthday. In attendance were 90 men and 13 women, among them Justin Winsor, William Frederick Poole, Charles Ammi Cutter, Melvil Dewey, Richard Rogers Bowker.
Attendees came from as far west from England. The aim of the association, in that resolution, was "to enable librarians to do their present work more and at less expense." The association has worked throughout its history to define, extend and advocate for equity of access to information. Library activists in the 1930s pressured the American Library Association to be more responsive to issues put forth by young members involved with issues such as peace, library unions and intellectual freedom. In 1931, the Junior Members Round Table was formed to provide a voice for the younger members of the ALA, but much of what they had to say resurfaced in the social responsibility movement to come years later. During this period, the first Library Bill of Rights was drafted by Forrest Spaulding to set a standard against censorship and was adopted by the ALA in 1939; this has been recognized as the moment defining modern librarianship as a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the right to read over government dictates.
The ALA formed the Staff Organization's Round Table in 1936 and the Library Unions Round Table in 1940. The ALA appointed a committee to study censorship and recommend policy after the banning of The Grapes of Wrath and the implementation of the LBR; the committee reported in 1940 that intellectual freedom and professionalism were linked and recommended a permanent committee – Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The ALA made revisions to strengthen the LBR in June 1948, approved the Statement on Labeling in 1951 to discourage labeling material as subversive, adopted the Freedom to Read Statement and the Overseas Library Statement in 1953. In 1961, the ALA took a stand regarding service to African Americans and others, advocating for equal library service for all. An amendment was passed to the LBR in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, national origin, or political views; some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate.
In 1963, the ALA commissioned a study, Access to Public Libraries, which found direct and indirect discrimination in American libraries. In 1967, some librarians protested against a pro-Vietnam War speech given by General Maxwell D. Taylor at the annual ALA conference in San Francisco; this group called themselves the Organizing Committee for the ALA Round Table on Social Responsibilities of Libraries. This group drew in many other under-represented groups in the ALA who lacked power, including the Congress for Change in 1969; this formation of the committee was approved in 1969 and would change its name to the Social Responsibilities Round Table in 1971). After its inception, the Round Table of Social Responsibilities began to press ALA leadership to address issues such as library unions, working conditions and intellectual freedom; the Freedom to Read Foundation was created by ALA's Executive Board in 1969. The Black Caucus of the ALA and the Office for Literacy and Outreach were set up in 1970.
In June 1990, the ALA approved "Policy on Library Services to the Poor" and in 1996 the Task Force on Hunger Homelessness, Poverty was formed to resurrect and promote the ALA guidelines on library services to the poor. In 2014, Courtney Young, the president of the association, commented on the background and implications of a racist joke author Daniel Handler made as African-American writer Jacqueline Woodson received a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. "His comments were inappropriate and fell far short of the association's commitment to diversity," said Young. "Handler's remarks come at a time. Works from authors and illustrators of color make up less than 8 percent of children's titles produced in 2013; the ALA hopes this regrettable incident will be used to open a dialogue on the need for diversity in the publishing industry in regards to books for young people."The ALA Archives, including historical documents, non-current records, digital records, are held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archives.
ALA membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most members live and
Nanny Ogg
Gytha Ogg is a character from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. She is a member of the Lancre coven; the character of Nanny Ogg is based on the Mother stereotype of the Triple Goddess myth. Nanny Ogg has been married three times, with fifteen children who survived their early childhood, has many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What makes her the Mother, however, is her mentality. People go to Granny Weatherwax for help when they have no choice, but they go to Nanny for advice all the time. Granny is respected, but Nanny is liked. Nanny Ogg has a talent for getting along with people and fitting in; as described in Maskerade, after knowing her for fifteen minutes, feel as if they have known her all of their lives. Granny Weatherwax knows about this ability, recognizes its use, wonders sometimes if it would have been worth acquiring it. Nanny Ogg is wiser than Esme Weatherwax in some ways, wise enough not to show it. Nanny Ogg is seen as "one of the people" in a way. While Granny sees no point in competing if you aren't going to win, Nanny believes the sympathy you get for being a good runner-up is much better.
Granny comes across as judgmental. She appears to be kinder than Granny, but is prepared to make tough decisions if necessary; the difference has been summarised like this: Granny Weatherwax's legendary reputation around the Ramtops can ensure cooperation. If Granny should be away from where she's known, her commanding presence is enough to get people to do what she says, but people don't mind doing things. Contrary to Granny Weatherwax, indeed the stereotype of witches in general, Nanny Ogg does not live in an isolated, crumbly rural cottage but in an expansive and well-looked after town house in the capital of Lancre, called Tir Nani Ogg. People tend to "give her things" and her home is filled with knick-knacks such as pink skulls and rude garden gnomes that serve no useful purpose except to highlight her eccentricities, her family brings back souvenirs for her. Since she doesn't care whether they're cheap or not, she has several things with legends such as "To The World's Greatest Mum" on them.
She shares this home with Greebo, a tomcat of evil aroma and astonishing viciousness, whom she can see only as the fuzzy harmless kitten he arguably must once have been. In The Art of Discworld, Pratchett says, "I've always suspected that Nanny is, deep down, the most powerful of the witches and part of her charm lies in the way she prevents people from finding this out." Indeed, incurring Nanny's wrath is suggested to be much more dangerous because of her reflexively kind personality. In Pratchett's short story "The Sea and Little Fishes" Nanny Ogg identifies herself, the Ogg family as a whole, as having immense natural magical talent, but as less willing to work it as hard as Weatherwaxes do. Within the Discworld universe, Nanny has written several books: The Joye of Snacks, Mother Ogg's Tales For Tiny Folk and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook; the first two were withdrawn after the publisher discovers what the dishes described in the recipes did. Nanny enjoys drink despite only having one remaining tooth.
When she is drunk, she has a tendency to sing "special" songs, the most popular being "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All" or "The Hedgehog Song". A close runner up for the most popular Nanny Ogg song is "A Wizard's Staff has a Knob on the End", a version of, written by Heather Wood, with music by Dave Greenslade, it is notable that Nanny Ogg once gave Agnes Nitt lessons on how to sing, including how sing in harmony with herself. Nanny Ogg's bath night, as described in the novel Lords and Ladies, is an event feared by the entire population of Lancre, chiefly because she sings any and all of the above songs, accompanied by banjo, whilst bathing, the tin bath amplifies her overpowering vocal presence such that the audience is not so much "captive" as "hunted down". Residents of Lancre tend to hide their livestock at this time as well, as the trauma causes the sheep and goats to "give yogurt for weeks" afterwards; this event occurs once a year, so everyone has plenty of time to prepare.
Nanny Ogg embarrasses Tiffany Aching, witch of the'Chalk Steading', by talking about Roland, heir to the Baron of the Chalkland, other romantic prospects. Nanny Ogg is funny and has a tremendous laugh, she has been credited with a grin "that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency". As the "matriarch" of her vast extended family, Nanny Ogg indicates the relative standing of her various descendants by positioning their portraits around her house, the "highest" being the most visible and the "lowest" of all lining Greebo's basket. However, the only people who appear to suffer are her daughters-in-law, of whom she has many and rules over with a tyrannical authority. Nanny never remembers their names, either; these are her only negative points. Nanny Ogg claims, in Lords and Ladies, that her ancestors invented the an
