Review: SMALL GODS (+Friday56 LinkUp)

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was: "Hey, you!"

Title: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Book Beginnings quote:

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.

Friday56 quote (from somewhere in the book):

Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.

Summary: Small Gods, the 13th Discworld novel, satirizes religion and philosophy through the story of Om, a small god trapped in the very limited body of a tortoise, and Brutha, his only believer.

Review: I consumed Small Gods in two huge gulps, listening to all 12 hours of the audiobook in just two days. I am so sick of what is happening in our country with a president and his followers doing unthinkable and despicable things in the name of Christianity, it felt good to laugh at a book which makes fun of religion and its followers. Sometimes the only thing that will break through the malise is laughter. Small Gods served up a healthy offering of humor to feast upon. 

Though the summary says Small Gods is the 13th book in the Discworld series, which is Terry Pratchett's magnum opus, it is really a standalone book. One doesn't need to read any other books in the series to appreciate this one. Fortunately just about everything in this book made me laugh. But just to help me make my point, here are a few more quotes:

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.

I've felt that way listening to some know-it-all of some topic of which I know little. I recognize the words but don't understand what they have to do with each other.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

I concur. Once, while walking the dog, I tripped and went sprawling onto the sidewalk. I wondered, as I laid bleeding on the ground, how I got there so fast.

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

We all need help sometimes and it is nice to know that that there is a G[g]od that hears us when we call out in prayer. But what happens if you are a small god? Where do you turn for help?

Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha’s mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface.

I'll let you think about that.

I don't recall who recommended this book to me, but whoever you are, thank you. I needed it.

My rating: 5 stars.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Banned Books Week is coming October 5-11. Are you ready?

Banned Books Week is just a few days away. 

This year's theme is a good one: 

CENSORSHIP IS SO 1984! READ FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

Have you marked your calendars? 

Have you determined what banned book you hope to read during the event? 

What action you plan to take in support of reading and against censorship?

List: Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2024

Stats:

72% of challenges come from outside pressure groups and government entities. Only 16% of challenges are made by concerned parents, and 12% are other. It is a very small minority of people who are bringing the vast majority of book challenges. "Eleven people were responsible for 60% of challenges to books in 2021 nationwide. ELEVEN!" (Source: NPR)

Frequently challenged books

Book Banning attempts have risen sharply over the past ten years.

Resources:

American Library Association (ALA): Library Bill of Rights

From the Unite Against Book Bans Toolkit
One parent in Wisconsin was responsible to 444 temporary or permanent book bannings in a school district. ONE! (NPR) Why should one parent say what books other kids should not read?

My Plan

1. Highlight a book I think everyone should read:

Banned Together: Our Fight For Readers' Rights edited by Ashley Perez
A collection of essays, illustrations, stories, memoirs, graphic novels about how book banning has impacted these YA authors. I read it a few weeks ago and found it to be tremendously impactful. Check to make sure your high school and public libraries have a copy of it. If not, ask them to buy it/offer to buy it for them. (Click on title to read more.)

2. Read a frequently challenged/banned book:

Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe
This book is one of the top challenged books of 2024. It is a graphic memoir (illustrated.)

3. Create a post (this post!) about Banned Books week and make a plan, which includes checking out the resources. 

If you would like to do the same thing but also want to save time, you can copy the top half of this post and paste it to your blog. Let's get the word out.

4. Place a few banned books on hold at my library. This will help the library administration know to keep buying these types of books due to their increased circulation.

5. Work this puzzle of Banned Books

-Anne

Audiobooks with Don review: ISOLA

Isola by Allegra Goodman is based on a true story. Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval was a 16th-century French noblewoman who was abandoned on a remote island in the Bay of St. Lawrence off of what is now Canada . Her guardian took Marguerite and her maid along on a voyage to colonize the land for the French crown but when he discovered her secret love affair, he marooned the three, (Marguerite. the maid, and the lover) on the Isle of Demons in 1542. Marguerite was the sole survivor, eventually being rescued by Basque fishermen two years later. The author, Allegra Goodman was able to find two separate 16th century accounts of her tale of resilience, betrayal, and survival, one written by the king's sister, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, and published, along with 72 other stories, in a book titled The Heptaméron.

The story begins at the beginning of Marguerite's life with the death of her mother. Later her father dies in battle, fighting for the crown. Marguerite is assigned a guardian until she can marry and then her estate will become hers. Unfortunately for Marguerite women of the day have very few rights and her guardian sells off her assets to finance his sea explorations. Eventually she has nowhere to live, as her home is sold and now she is totally at the mercy of her guardian's will. She begged to stay in France but he decides to take her with him when he travels to the east coast of North America (New France)  to help him make a name for himself by establishing a colony there.  The author didn't have many details to fill out the story so she took creative licence with it, imagining what life was like for women of the day and what survival required on a remote island with few resources. Selected for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, Isola is a timeless tale of survival against all odds.

Two years ago I read Maggie O'Farrell's book, The Marriage Portrait. It is also about a real 16th century woman (girl, really), Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici. Less is known about this woman than of Marguerite, but it is thought she was poisoned by an unloving, older husband. As I read both books, I seethed with 21st-century indignation that women were treated so poorly by men in that time period and wondered at how noblewomen could stand to put up with the constraints placed on them by society. My thoughts doubled back to the Marriage Portrait as I read Isola. Obviously things have improved for women since that time but even today some men want women to just shut up and go back to what they do best -- having babies -- and leave all the important stuff for men to handle without them. Ugh.

Don and I listened to the audiobook, read by Fiona Hardingham. Both of us were tremendously fascinated by the fictional version of a true-tale. How could someone be so awful as to maroon a woman on a tiny island off the coast of Canada in 1542 with few provisions and no mercy, we both thought? But we became pretty impatient with the story that led up to those events -- Marguerite's life up to that point as a noblewoman living in a corner of her family's castle, under the guardianship of such a tyrant -- and it seemed to drag on and on. Even though we bumped up the listening speed to 1.25, we were still impatient with the story to get on with it. At the point where Don was just about ready to give up on the book, the marooning occured and then the story became fairly interesting as a survival story. Don confessed he liked the book better going forward, ultimately rating it with 3.5 stars. My rating wasn't much better -- 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4 stars. I don't think either of us were upset having listened to the book and it did give us some interesting things to talk about --- Don mentioned religion, customs, and exploration; I was fixated on the poor treatment of women. And now, almost a month after finishing Isola, I realize that the story has stuck with me. I think of it all the time, especially the details of what it was like to be marooned on an island in the middle of big, cold bay. I know, if it had been me, I wouldn't have survived. I guess the women of the 16th-century had that going for them.

-Anne