I wanted
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, to blow me away and was disappointed when it didn't. There were, however, many lines, phrases, etc. that did.
1) Description of a sword: "It was very obviously a sword created to slice, chop, cut, preferably kill, but failing that, irreparably maim, a very large number of people. It had an indefinable aura of hatred and menace." (page 113) I do like a sword with an aura.
2)
It used to be thought that the events that shaped the world were things like big bombs, maniacal politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps his wings in the Amazon jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe. (page 136)
I like the idea. Is that the Chaos theory? I've heard the phrase and seen the title but never read the book. My bet is the
Omen's authors are making fun, but I don't think I'm curious enough to read a whole book.
3)
Many people, meeting Aziraphale [an angel] for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong: Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort. But he was intelligent. (page 151)
This sentence, its thought and its form, made me think I should read the book a second time to see what other gems I may have missed. By the end of the book, however, the urge had faded.
4) An agency wins approval "because it was, well, a
Witchfinder Army, and you had to support anyone calling themselves witchfinders in the same way the U.S.A. had to support anyone calling themselves anti-communist." (page 171) Ah. I grok.
5) Sometimes writers simply have fun.
"Sir Joshua Device. You may have heard of him. He invented the little rocking thing that made it possible to build accurate clocks cheaply? They named it after him."
"The Joshua?" Newt said guardedly.
"The device."
…
"The device is named after a real person?" he asked."…You'll be telling me next you've never heard of Sir Humphrey Gadget—"
"Oh, now come on—"
"—who devised a gadget that made it possible to pump out flooded mineshafts. Or Cyrus T. Doodad, America's foremost black inventor. Thomas Edison said the only contemporary practical scientists he admired were Cyrus T. Doodad and Ella Reader Widget. And—"
She looked at Newt's blank expression.
"I did my Ph.D. on them," she said. "The people who invented things so simple that everyone forgot they'd ever actually needed to be invented." (page 195)/
And I enjoy it when they do have fun.
6) "But there were times when you needed trees, and the shame of it, Jaime thought, was that his children were growing up thinking of trees as firewood and his grandchildren would think of trees as history." (page 213) Hint of an ecology lesson. I like subtle.
7) An evangelical preacher writes gospel songs, which, among others, include: "Jesus Is the Repairman on the Switchboard of My Life" and "When I'm Swept Up by the Rapture Grab the Wheel of My Pickup." (pages 252-253) How can you stop your toe from tapping?
8) A character is upset:
Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive. If I was in charge, I'd try makin' people live a lot longer, like ole Methuselah. It'd be a lot more interestin' and they might start thinkin' about the sort of they're doing to the enviroment and ecology, because they'll be around in a hundred years' time. (page 335)
OK. Another ecology lesson, but, along the same line, I'm always amazed when people with kids aren't concerned about ecology the envir
oment.
9) Gaimen on Pritchett's writing: "The biggest problem he faces is the problem of excellence: he makes it look easy. This can be a problem. The public doesn't know where the craft lies. It's wiser to make it look harder than it is, a lesson all jugglers learn." (page 378) If only I could write/practice enough so that someday someone might say that about me.
I'll keep
Good Omens. I don't know if the urge to reread will return, but I want to be ready—just in case it does.
