Making Money

“A banker? Me?“
“Yes, Mr Lipwig.”
“But I don’t know anything about running a bank!”
“Good. No preconceived ideas.”
“I’ve robbed banks!”
“Capital! Just reverse your thinking,” said Lord Vetinari, beaming. “The money should be on the inside.”

Moist von Lipwig, former masterful thief and swindler Albert Spangler, is soon to become former Postmaster in this Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett. Don’t be deluded by the title, it is not –  and I repeat, NOT — a self-help guide to making you rich. Instead, plenty of philosophical questions about money is hidden beneath the complex and wacky plot of how Lipwig is about to start his goal of making money.

“People who understand banks got it into the position it is in now,” said Vetinari. “And I did not become ruler of Ankh-Morpork by understanding the city. Like banking, the city is depressingly easy to understand. I have remained ruler by getting the city to understand me.”

Lord Vetinari, ruler/tyrant/dictator of Ankh-Morpork is the one who offered Lipwig a new life after a false hanging. Now he’s tightening the noose in an attempt to revamp the banking sector of the city, so as to ensure the government can get their hands on enough cash to carry out plans. Lipwig remains hesitant, however, but is nonetheless thrust into it by inheriting the ownership of the chairman of the bank, who goes wuff and doesn’t chair meetings but licks the legs of chairs . He also has to deal with the Lavish family, who owns the other 49% of the shares, and seem to be more than willing to ensure Chairman Fusspot dies of (un)natural causes as soon as possible. Within the bank, he has to deal with entrenched methods like coin-manufacturing which is inefficient (a farthing costs more than a penny to manufacture yet has less worth?!), the Chief’s Cashier’s undying loyalty to gold and a sexually liberated golem who drives him mad. With the return of his fiancee and the news that she has discovered some hidden golems, the city of Ankh-Morpork and the banking sector is able to face a crisis that only Lipwig can handle. And who heck is that reverend of Om who knows his true name?! Oh and did I mention the Igor who tries to transfer the note-artist’s brain into a turnip, the budding economist Hubert with his machine the Glooper and the 300-year old necro — I mean Professor of Postmortem Communications — Professor Flead who keeps trying to look up Lipwig’s fiancee’s skirt?

“But, you see, once you have made it, a penny keeps on being a penny,” said Mr Bent. “That’s the magic of it.”
“It is?” said Moist. “Look, it’s a copper disc. What do you expect it to become?”
“In the course of a year, just about everything,” said Mr Bent smoothly. “It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour’s occupancy of a theatre seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter, Mr Lipwig. It maight be spent three hundred times and yet — and this is the good part — it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again. It is not an apple, which will go bad. It’s worth is fixed and stable. It is not consumed.” Mr Bent’s eyes gleamed dangerously, and one of them twitched. “And this is because it is ultimately worth a tiny fraction of the everlasting gold!”
“But it’s just a lump of metal. If we used apples instead of coins, you could at least eat the apple,” said Moist.
“Yes, but you can only eat it once. A penny is, as it were, an everlasting apple.
“Which you can’t eat. And you can plant an apple tree.”
“You can use the money to make more money,” said Bent.
“Yes, but how do you make more gold? The alchemists can’t, the dwarfs hang on to what they’ve got, the Agaeteans won’t let us have any. Why not go on the silver standard? They do that in BhangBhangduc.”

Welcome to the Discworld, where reality is so entangled with Pratchett’s fantasy world that you start to see parallels whether you want to or not. One of the key themes that screams out as you read this novel is that of the gold standard and what it truly means. Today, paper money is an accepted form of currency, and we treasure it as if it were real gold. Truly, it represents a promise that the bank will exchange the piece of paper for an equivalent value of gold should you want to. But why? What’s the value of gold that makes it larger than life? At least apples can be eaten, but can gold be? What is the whole point of tying the value of currency to gold? Why not potatoes? Just merely because it’s rare? Then why not diamonds? I don’t guarantee that you’ll get all the answers in the book, but at least it stimulates one to think about them. Very interesting indeed.

“An error, sir, is worse than a sin, the reason being that a sin is often a matter of opinion or viewpoint or even of timing, but an error is a fact and it cries out for correction.”

The Chief Cashier and suspected vampire Mr Bent, holds error to be worse than sin. And Moist von Lipwig’s idea of printing paper, in his opinion, is the worst mistake than could ever be committed! How dare he undermine the true value of the metal that never decays?!

“And we talked to some of the lads from the Post Office last night and they said we could trust Mr Lipwig’s word ‘cos he’s as straight as a corkscrew.”
“A corkscrew?” said Bent, shocked.
“Yeah, we asked about that, too,” said Shady. “And they said he acts curly but that’s okay ‘cos he damn well gets the corks out!”

Unfortunately, or fortunately (depending on your viewpoint), the other bank staff do not share Mr Bent’s opinion. With Lipwig’s previous sparkling records in reviving the Postal system, it is highly unsurprising that people were charmed by him and his ways. Oh, do read Going Postal too, preferably before Making Money (I have, a long time ago); it’ll clear up some plot questions about the man in the Golden Suit.

Making Money is a great novel to read and reread and I definitely suggest you start now. Lord Vetinari’s traps, Moist von Lipwig’s smooth talking, Cosmo Lavish’s pathetic obsession, the gold standard, turnips, golems… this book has them all. Enter the magical world of Discworld, where reality is reflected (maybe distorted) at almost everywhere you look, after all, angles are fractal.

Handle with Care

Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice.There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves breaks, voices breaks. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever.
For the last two months of my pregnancy, I made lists of these things, in the hopes that it would make your birth easier.
Promises break.
Hearts break.
On the night before you were born, I sat up in bed with something to add to my list. I rummaged in my nightstand for a pencil and paper, but Sean put his warm hand on my leg. Charlotte? he asked. Is everything okay?
Before I could answer, he pulled me into his arms, flush against him, and I fell asleep feeling safe, forgetting to write down what I had dreamed.
It wasn’t until weeks later, when you were here, that I remembered what had awakened me that night: fault lines. These are the places where the earth breaks apart. These are the spots where earthquakes originate, where volcanoes are born. Or in other words: the world is crumbling under us; it’s the solid ground beneath our feet that’s an illusion.

Six-year-old Willow was born with Type III Osteogenesis Imperfecta (now, why does that sound so familiar), but a recent disastrous family trip to Disneyland brings about a knowledge so destructive that it will tear the family apart. “Wrongful birth”. Charlotte (the mother) was willing to go that far to sue her best friend, Piper, a gynae, who failed to notice Willow’s transparent skull in her early scans; to claim that Willow’s birth had brought undue financial burden and that it was therefore wrongful; to hurt her husband’s pride by insinuating that his job as a police officer hardly provides enough; and to alienate her elder daughter further by destroying her friendship with Emma, Piper’s daughter.

“But think about it, Amelia. Nobody keeps things that get broken. Sooner or later, they get thrown away.”

Of course, the worst consequence of this lawsuit is that it threatens to break the mother-daughter bond that had dominated Charlotte’s life ever since Willow was born with multiple fractures 6 years back.

I would win this lawsuit, and with the money, I’d take you to see the Paralympics. I’d buy you a sports wheelchair, a service dog. I’d fly you halfway around the world to introduce you to people who, like you, beat the odds to become someone bigger than anyone ever expected. I would prove to you that being different isn’t a death sentence but a call to arms. Yes you would continue to break: not bones but barriers.

Handle with Care makes references to both the fragile nature of Willow’s bones and the complex relationships between the characters. A single lawsuit exposes all these fault lines, foreshadowed by the quoted excerpt.

Sounds familiar? That’s the formula of My Sister’s Keeper. The hesistant father who switches sides, the patient who is pretty much a weak character throughout, the mother who is torn between the love for her daughter and money (not her two daughters or it’d really be a rip-off). Then this entire formula is further dramatised with a bulimic sister, who then moves on to self-mutilation. And to top it off, the lawyer is facing some internal problems of her own too. Too much complication that made it a convoluted read.

While I admire Picoult’s research into the treatment and issues surrounding OI, I cannot help but think this is a poorly written novel, rushed and without a soul, targetted at the commercial market that had cheered at the melodrama of her previous novels. I admit I’m part of that market, but even ignorant fools like me know when the melodrama is no longer a carefully crafted message, but a sloppily assembled product.

Another negative for this novel is the insertion of random recipes. There’s just too little discretion on the part of both author and editor. With the amount of plot that was already confusing readers, throwing in recipes randomly to relate to how Charlotte (who was a accomplished baker before she decided to give it all up) was feeling is just a tad too much.

Basically the issue I have with this novel is the volume of material which doesn’t enrich the reader’s experience, but clouds it and makes it seem like a rushed product to be sold off asap. And the ending, totally expected since I started. Horrible read. Well…maybe not so bad if I hadn’t read My Sister’s Keeper first. Basically, my advice: never read more than one of Jodi Picoult’s books.

Chart Throb

Ninety-five thousand hopefuls. The mad and the sad. The sublime and the ridiculous. The tragic and the gifted. The beautiful and the damned. The good. The bad. And the very,very ugly. And the ruthless Politburo of Pop. Calvin, Beryl and the other bloke, who would after an exhaustive audition process choose twelve finalist to be offered up to the nation.

This is Chart Throb, a idol search reality TV show that beats Pop idol, with its producer Calvin Simms being bigger and richer than Simon Cowell (and meaner too). The cynic Calvin, the motherly Beryl (which is pretty ironic since she’s a transvestite waiting to get her sexual organ fixed) and the unmemorable Rodney (who desperately wants to be bad. Like “You’re as flat as a coffee table” mean). And this season promises to be bigger and more dramatic, from the Prince of Wales who wishes to boost his approval ratings, to the blind boy with his girlfriend and Rodney’s ex. But what really goes behind the scenes?

“That is the point, geeza! They ain’t filming everybody in the queue, is they? They ain’t even picking out one in fifty. How could they, guy? We’d be here till we was dead! But when Calvin an’  Beryl and that other prick choose the people what is goin’ through to the next round they’s always already been seen in the queue, right? They’s got shots of them right from the fucking car park, guy! On day one! Think about it, geeza. How would they know to film them if they ‘adn’t already chosen ‘em? We ‘as bin picked! We is looking good.”

Surprisingly, Quasar, the male stripper who can hardly speak proper English, is much more astute to have done the math. Indeed, the production team had tediously been through all the application forms, selecting the Clingers, Blingers and Mingers before Calvin takes his pick and chooses the top 12 to enter the finals. And this season, Calvin has a personal stake in ensuring that he choice wins the contest, no matter what it takes. It was impossible to audition every single one of the applicants, but how else can they purport to be the people’s show?

It is said that history happens twice, once as tragedy and then again as farce, and in many ways, this was the fate of the numerous rejected Chart Throb contestants. Their failure to progress beyond the first stage of the competition and the cruel dashing of their dreams had at the time been a personal and private tragedy. Now it was being repeated as a public farce.

Indeed, for every successful, tearing, God-thanking applicant who made it to the finals, there were numerous others who were encouraged to be as stridently confident about only to be rejected as reality slapped them in their faces. And this was how the drama, the William Hungs, the Banana-men were created. Through subtle leading-on by the production team and skillful editing, their personal tragedy was transformed into a public farce, and they themselves would become the laughing-stock of people around them.

Of course they all did, everybody, great and small, rich and poor. From Big Brother 12 to Politicians in the Jungle, everybody thought that if they could get in front of a camera they could show people the real them. Had they learned nothing from watching the very shows they aspired to be on? Could they not see that between them and the public whom they wished to influence stood the edit? And the edit would make of them what it pleased. It would not necessarily be brutal, it might as easily create a hero as a villian, but what it  would never ever do was to show anybody as they genuinely were.

Chart Throb painfully exposes the real deal behind reality TV. It’s nothing but yet another scripted TV drama, just that this one relies a great deal on the production team and editing team to make the actors appear what they want them to, and not what the actors want to appear as. Furthermore, who is to say what they genuinely are. Prince of Wales was genuinely happy when the crew portrayed him as a kindly man helping a boy learn how to read, even though he only showed him how to pronounce Quidditch.

I don’t like to think of Millicent not being here with . If I’m honest, I truly believe she’s got the better voice, which makes me feel like a sad, selfish no-talent, like I don’t care about anybody but myself.Sometimes I just hate myself and don’t even want to win. I love Millicent and I always will. She’s always been my friend and respected me and not patronized me or treated me differently because I’m blind.

Yet another instance of how the power of editing can warp one’s words and turn the hot favourite into a fish colder than those frozen ones lying motionless in the freezers of the supermarkets.

“Life isn’t fair, as my mum used to say. The whole world is heaving with rejection and injustice and disappointment and unfairness. It seems to be how we want it. People had a go at equality and fair play, socialism and all that bollocks, and it didn’t work. Nobody was interested. People want the dream, they don’t want equality, they want fairy tales. We like a cruel world. For every kid that’s heard of Marx, a thousand have heard of Paris fucking Hilton, ten thousand in fact. Just think about that. Those two girls in Peroxide are a part of society that wants to be Paris Hilton. There has to be a downside to that and, sadly for them, for a brief moment, they’re it.”

Enough about the discussion of the cons of conniving reality TV shows, and now onto the characters. The main character, Calvin, is a self-centered confident and strident middle-aged man who knows what he wants and how he can do it. A go-getter, he never settles for no as an answer. He knows he’s a bastard, but he manages to convince others that that was what made him so attractive. He’s as slippery as fish as he manouveres around Beryl and Rodney, judges who can’t seem to get along, and runs the ship with a tight-hand. Yet, the only thing that made him go out of control was that thing called love.

“You’re in the wrong job, babes.” Chelsie opined with exaggerated sincerity. “What you’ve got to realize is that whatever we do to these people and however we misrepresent them, they are still getting on the telly and that is always better than not getting on the telly, no matter what.”
Emma was not so sure.

And the subject of his uncontrollable passion was Emma, a newly-promoted senior producer on the team who’s always been accused of a Oediphus complex since her father left her at a young age. Indeed, Emma was ill-suited for the job, as her assistant Chelsie had pointed out. Too much bonded to her morals, Emma could hardly bear to exploit these people just for the sake of a good dramatic element to add to Chart Throb. Yet her choice would be one of the factors that affect the entire outcome of the show.

Chart Throb highlights the naivity and ignorance of the public to the wool (which isn’t very thick if one does the math) the production crew pull over the eyes of both the audience and hopefuls. Ben Elton’s painfully vivid portrayal of each character, from their sexual inclinations to their accents (he spells out weird accents weirdly too), only adds to the punch at the very end. Read on and be enlightened, or force yourself to. Pretty interesting though some may find the ending less palatable, especially if you’re used to fairy god-mother style.

The Penelopiad

A very short read that I have picked up from JRL recently (as with the other 2 books that I have just reviewed). An immensely entertaining read albeit a little lacking in the thick (sometimes impenetrable) layers that is characteristic of some of Atwood’s other works.

A revisionist view on the famous Greek myth of Odysseus, this novella offers Penelope and the maids a chance to give their account of events. While the 12 hanged maids’ recounts are relegated to poems, ballads and even a futile trial, Penelope’s narrative forms the bulk of it, occasionally interspersed by the former. From her family in Sparta to her marriage; from her simmering hatred/resentment of her cousin Helen (of Troy) to the tense relations with the Suitors; from her relationship with her missing husband to her frosty ties with her son, she tells it all. Most importantly, is the truth behind the devious 12 maids who were hanged. She tells it all from present-day Hades, where she meets the haunting 12 maids whose feet are still twitching, Helen who’s still flaunting her beauty, Odysseus who’s always opting for reincarnation and all the Suitors (including the one with an arrow through his throat).

If you were a magician, messing around in the dark arts and risking your soul, would you want to conjure up a plain but smart wife who’d been good at weaving and had never transgressed, instead of a woman who’d driven hundreds of men mad with lust and had caused a great city to go up in flames?
Neither would I.

That pretty much sums up how she feels about Helen. I’m rather guilty to admit that I’ve never heard of Penelope (though I have encountered Odysseus) despite having heard so much about Helen of Troy. Penelope is deeply jealous of Helen all her life and despite being married far from Sparta to Ithaca, she has to deal with the issues wrought by Helen’s infamous beauty. Running off with Paris and sparking off the famed battle of Troy, Helen was seen as the root cause for Odysseus’ constant absence. Later, when Penelope finds out from her son that Helen is still as beautiful as ever, while she herself has undoubtedly aged, she gets even more jealous. Jealousy is what makes us human (and arguably women too), and the constant preoccupation with Helen shows how Penelope is pretty much just a normal woman, not simply a detached saintly epitome of femininity. And all ordinary people have a family.

You’ve probably heard that my father ran after a departing chariot, begging me to stay with him, and that Odysseus asked me if I was going to Ithaca with him of my own free will or did I prefer to remain with my father? It’s said that in answer I pulled down my veil, being too modest to proclaim in words my desire for my husband, and that a statue was later erected of me in tribute to the virtue of Modesty.
There’s some truth to this story. But I pulled down my veil to hide the fact that I was laughing. You have to admit that there was something humorous about a father who’d once tossed his own child into the sea capering down the road after that very child and calling, “Stay with me!”

This is what I mean by revisionist. The Penelopiad draws on small incidents narrated in the Odyssey and expounds upon it, providing a totally refreshing (and often hilarious) perspective. Penelope’s relationship with her father was strained at best, because of an oracle that prophesied that she will cause her father’s death. Her father responded by trying to drown her (which failed since she was the daughter of a half-nymph). Why the chase then? Well, because he wanted to save the downry he had to pay to send his daughter off to Ithaca.

It was nothing if not oblique, but then, all Naiads are oblique.
Here’s what she said:
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always gets where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through a obstacle, go around it. Water does.

As for her mother, Penelope hardly sees much of her. Yet her speech before she was wedded to Odysseus proved to be the one that influenced her life the most. Indeed, Penelope did not fight with the Suitors head-on, especially since she did not have the manpower to do so. But she weaved a shroud, which was to remain uncompleted (so as to postpone her wedding to any of those greedy money-grabbers who were of age to be her son).

The shroud itself became a story almost instantly. “Penelope’s web,” it was called; people used to say that of any task that remained mysteriously unfinished. I did not appreciate the term web. If the shroud was a web, then I was the spider. But I had not been attempting to catch men like flies; on the contrary, I’d merely been trying to avoid entanglement myself.

Apart from offering Penelope’s opinions of things mentioned in the Odysseus, this novella also puts the Greek gods in a rather negative light.

Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don’t? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. “Which prayer shall we answer today?” they ask one another. “Let’s cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we’re at it, let’s destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!” I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they’re bored.

However, despite all her cynicism about the Greek gods and their almost childish behaviour, Penelope still respects and fears them. For instance, she clearly states that all her derisive comments only can be expressed now that she was dead, and that she wouldn’t have dared to do that while she was still alive. She also makes use of them (or rather, people’s respect for them), asserting that the idea of weaving the never-finished shroud was inspired by Pallas Athene. After all, “crediting some god for one’s inspirations was always a good way to avoid accusations of pride should the scheme succeed, as well as the blame if it did not.”

Greek gods are very different from the prevalent monotheistic religions we see today (no prizes for guessing them), because they are not immune to human error and flaws. The things we see on TV today: the rapes (reminds me of yesterday’s article Violation Nation in Life!), the incest, the fall from grace, the sibling rivalry etc, are all the stuff of Greek mythology. So Penelope is articulating a modern view of the ancient Greek gods. How on earth could people have revered them as Gods if they behaved like flawed human beings? Of course, this is very much shaped by our exposure to the flawless Gods of the major world religions today.

Generally, the Penelopiad is quite a enjoyable read. Do give it a shot regardless of whether you have had prior exposure to Greek mythology, or like myself, have only vaguely heard of some prominent names. Thankfully, it does not require an in-depth understanding of Greek mythology, though I think it will make many references self-evident. The interludes by the maids are amusing, though sometimes painful to read (because of the injustice they’ve been through), and as I’ve bored you in this review, Penelope’s insights are immensely precious and thought-provoking. This will not be a disappointing read.

The Last Continent

Finally back to another one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, after a pretty long time since I’ve visited the library (I can’t afford to have the entire collection and I hate to leave things half collected, like the 3 lonely  Neil Gaiman Sandman graphic novels lying almost depressingly on my shelf). This one focuses (separately) on the adventures of Rincewind and the wizards of UU (Unseen University) when they are stranded on the last continent, which sounds amazingly like Australia, what with kangaroos, deserts (and desserts), a building that looks like a tissue box with opera galahs [sic] and plenty of other references that I’m afraid I missed.

It was somehow balanced by the eternal coward. The hero with a thousand retreating backs, perhaps. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day rise again, so perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn’t.

At least that’s how Death (who speaks in Caps) sees Rincewind, the eternal coward. Accidentally banished to the continent of EcksEckEcksEcks (XXXX) by the wizards of UU in a previous discworld novel (which I have yet to read), Rincewind has barely managed to survive by dropping into many waterholes and chased by all the living organisms he has tried to eat. It’s highly unsurprising that Death should have his attention on Rincewind, often popping up to say hi and reassuring the latter that he has his full attention. So much so that Rincewind replies with “When it’s time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!”

“You know, I still think it would help if we thought of all this as a valuable opportunity,” said Ridicully.
“That’s true,” said the Dean, sitting up. “It’s not many times in your life you get the chance to die of hunger on some bleak continent thousand of years before you’re born. We should make the most of it”

Apart from Rincewind and his adventures, the wizards from UU also arrive, but on a slightly different place (and perhaps even time), onto this very odd continent by accident. Perhaps that explains why their washerwomen, Mrs Whitlow arrives too. They share the same level of optimism as Rincewind though.

Here, they meet the god of evolution, who tried very hard to create each and every species, totally oblivious to the possibility of sex as a method of procreation in order to minimise his workload. Herein lies another theme which comes through pretty strong in this entire book — the scientific theory of evolution.

Ponder had poked around among the University’s more or less abandoned Museum of Quite Unusual Things, and noticed something rather odd. Whoever had designed the skeletons of creatures had even less imagination than whoever had done the outsides. At least the outside-designer had tried a few novelties in the spots, wools and stripes department, but the bone-builder had generally just put a skull on a ribcage, shoved a pelvis in further along, stick on some arms and legs and had the rest of the day off. Some ribcages were longer, some legs were shorter, some hands had wings, but they all seemed to be based on one design, one size stretched or shrunk to fit all.

That happened before these bunch of erratic wizards had met the god of evolution who was busy creating plants to satisfy their needs, such as hankerchief plants and cake in a pod. Kinds of make fun at those who still believe in an intelligent designer (or as Prof Meier said, [un]intelligent recycler comes closer considering the similarity in bauplans and some very bad design in terms of vertebrate eyes and human spinal discs). The god of evolution in this novel is anything but intelligent, considering how he tries to make an elephant with wheels for legs and a pumpkin boat to help the wizards. Here’s another amusing quote, this time parodying human efforts at conservation:

Ridicully rolled up his sleeve. “I think a round of fireballs, gentlemen,” he said.
“Hold on,” said Ponder. “This may be an endangered species.”
“So is Mrs Whitlow.”
“But do we have the right to wipe out what—”
“Absolutely,” said Ridicully. “If its creator had meant it to survive, he would have given it a fireproof skin. That’s your evolution for you Stibbons.”

Time-travel also features largely in this novel, especially since the wizards have arrived in the time before humans (and sex) have yet to find its way there. So there you have Ponder warning all the wizards not to kill an ant lest it affects the future, while the Archchancellor Ridicully tries to subvert it by saying that if they kill an ant now, it was already done so thousand of years back, so it makes no difference. Here’s an explanation by the speaking kangaroo which almost drove Rincewind mad (or rather, madder):

“It’s not just that things in the future can affect things in the past,” he said. “Things that didn’t happen but might have happened can…affect things that really happened. Even things that happened and shouldn’t have happened and were removed still have, oh, call ‘em shadows in time, things left over which interfere with what’s going on. Between you and me,” it went on, waggling its ears, “it’s all just held together by spit now. No one’s ever got round to tidying it up. I’m always amazed when tomorrow follows today, and that’s the truth.”
“Me too,” said Rincewind. “Oh, me too.”

I didn’t quite enjoy this Discworld novel as the others, maybe because the book was in such terrible state that I felt quite disgusted to touch it. Apart from that, time-travel is not something I have an interest in, and I didn’t get too many references about the Aussies beyond the usual kangaroos, dropping koala bears and “mates”. Still, Pratchett doesn’t disappoint with his hilarious footnotes, and I shall end with one of them.

The ability to ask queations like “Where am I and who is the “I” that is asking?” is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.*

* Although of course it’s not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguilling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations.