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David McK (3600 KP) rated Hogfather in Books

Dec 27, 2022  
Hogfather
Hogfather
Terry Pratchett | 2006 | Fiction & Poetry
7
9.2 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
The 20th (of 41) Discworld book, this is Terry Pratchett's seasonal tale, with his character of Death (HO. HO. HO) temporarily having to take over from the Hogfather: Discworld's version of Santa Claus while his grandaughter Susan attempts to find out what has happened to the real thing.

This also a subplot concerning the wizards of Unseen University, and is the novel to come up with such delights as the Sock Monster (remember all those missing socks you have? Exactly.) and the Oh God of hangovers, alongside the Verruca Gnome and the Jolly Fairy - all of which have been created by the 'spare belief' sloshing around when people stop believing in the Hogfather. It's also good to see an, essentially, extended cameo by Nobby Nobbs, while some of the footnotes scattered throughout did have me laughing out loud.
  
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ClareR (5950 KP) rated The Final Strife in Books

Sep 13, 2025 - 6:16 PM  
The Final Strife
The Final Strife
Saara El-Arifi | 2022 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Final Strife was a High Fantasy novel that I couldn’t put down!

The main character, a Chosen One, misses out on her calling because of a drug addiction. There’s also great deprivation because of the social hierarchy in this world. It’s a caste system based on the colour of a persons blood.

There are themes of oppression, class, division, poverty and addiction. There’s a Trans main character (and others besides), and this isn’t a society that is prejudiced against LGBTQ+ people, in fact there’s support for those who want to transition. Women hold positions of great power in government and on the battlefield - and they’re just as able as their male counterparts. Often better.

This is a chunky book and a fast read regardless of that. I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
  
Script of the Bridge by The Chameleons UK
Script of the Bridge by The Chameleons UK
1983 | Rock
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I’m going to take us from otherworldly right back into the world itself, to my teenage years. I guess you could say this about nearly all of these songs, but this one in particular got me for the same reason that The Catcher in the Rye gets people, the idea of ‘us versus them’, the real, sincere people pitted against the phonies of the world. “As a teenager I could have written The Catcher in the Rye, nearly any teenager could. At some point you feel yourself isolated against this outside world and The Chameleons were a band, lyrically and musically, that kept ringing this same set of isolated chimes of the individual pitted against this hostile world. Heading into my teenage years I was like everyone, looking for someone that can say something better than you can until you can say it better than they can, and for a while The Chameleons could say it better in song than I could speak it myself. “With ‘Second Skin’ they had the lexicon and the guitars that I loved. It was a sort of musical version of The Catcher in the Rye, of someone trying to make sense of a very perplexing, and at times hostile world that I think all teenagers find themselves in and I was no exception. For some people it was punk rock and for others it was other elements of entertainment, but for me it had a lot to do with music and in The Chameleons I found a direct way of saying it and not in the blunt, abject anger that punk rock sometimes wielded. I didn’t feel it like that, mine was much more of a pointed knife than a blunt nightstick. “It’s even something that people say to us, that they grew up listening to Mercury Rev or Deserter’s Songs. When you’re writing, it’s coming out of you but sometimes you forget that for people who are listening to it when they’re thirteen or fourteen, it’s their lexicon, it’s a newly learned vocabulary. That’s where sometimes as an artist you forget the importance of what you do, because music is what carried you to the point of doing it later in life. “Everyone has one song or a band that seem to take the words out of your young, teenage mouth before you could form them and for The Chameleons were one of those bands."

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Laetitia Sadier recommended Australasie by Astrobal in Music (curated)

 
Australasie by Astrobal
Australasie by Astrobal
2016 | Electronic
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This is Emmanuel Mario, who I met in Toulouse thanks to Julien Gasc. Julien also does his own great records and is part of Aquaserge. I could have put Aquaserge in the list, because they would totally fall into this category of people who've been working very hard for many years and who eventually make a masterpiece. But they're all part of a group of people in Toulouse who I finally met. I say finally, because I left France absolutely appalled that I couldn't meet anyone that could mirror my taste and my desire to make music. So I immigrated to this country, for the music, and of course I had met Tim, so it made a lot of sense. In France it was impossible. But anyway in 2003 or 4 I came across this group of people who were all incredibly talented and sexy and good-looking and had no big egos, and with no shame about what they were doing, exposing their vision. There were a lot of complexes in the French music scene which got better later on, but to me these people were like, wow, I've found my brothers and sisters, it was absolutely wonderful. So Emmanuel became a long-time collaborator and he's very good at working with other people, but there was also a desire to do his own stuff. He was kind of doing it before he started working on this project, but then I guess he found his focus and made this incredible piece of work. From one track to another you're transported to very different countries, but it's also very familiar to Emmanuel, and I find that to be a real strength: to have such a variety of different styles, but still be familiar and to have some similarity. He reaches really far out to find certain tracks and to bring them back to a whole. I think it's a brilliant album musically and also for its variety. It also tells a story, about the Kerguelen Islands, which were discovered by this French captain. He was sent to go and find new islands and new places to conquer, and I think he was trying to conquer these islands but they're not conquerable. There's too much wind and it's too hostile. But he said that they were worth conquering; he lied about those islands and was treated like a hero, but eventually the truth came out."

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WS
When She Woke
Hillary Jordan | 2011 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.4 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
Let the Color fit the Crime. Imagine a world where the people among you wear their crimes all over their bodies. People whose skin has been changed a different color to fit the crimes that they have committed.
Hannah Payne was one of those Chromes. Her whole body was now Red. Her crime? She had an abortion and had refused to name the father of her baby as well as the person responsible for its death. She has been shunned by her own mother and is a disgrace to her entire family. It's hard enough for Chromes to walk around everyday let alone get a job.
Hannah's father decides to help the best way that he can by putting her in a "christian" home so that she can repent her sins and begin on the path to righteousness. But this place is anything but that, there has to be a better way.
She finds a way to get out of the home, but the consequences of her actions, make it for a difficult road to get to a place of freedom.
Will she ever name the father of her baby, or the abortionist? Will there be a way for her to live as a chrome and have a slightly normal life? Will the people she meets along the way help her or hurt her?

When She Woke is an interesting novel that makes you think about what you would do if you new the person riding on the subway next to you was a murderer, or a theif, or a child molester. Just by the color of their skin.