"Now be careful out there."

My inner pedant won't let me not say, it's "Let's be careful out there."

But Pendulum makes fun of conspiracy theories - and not affectionately (which I love). It has the greatest satire on "Old Dead White Bill not the real author" trope I've ever encountered. That alone would make it worthwhile, but it is a very minor part of the book. (It makes a real argument for the conspiracy theory view being not just wrong, but evil. Er - but it has a great plot and characterization. A lot of fun as well. I just have a quirky way of reading; I always remember the arguments.)

But Pendulum makes fun of conspiracy theories

And you think Illumantus! doesn't? Illumantus! makes fun of everything.

My inner pedant won't let me not say, it's "Let's be careful out there."

Not inner enough! That's okay, I've been MisQuotey O'WrongPhrase all year.

Not inner enough!

Well, my outer pedant just points and laughs.

Carrot bothers me. We never see inside his head, he's always portrayed as he appears to others.

I think that's they only reason he works as well as he does as a character. If you could see what he was thinking, it would break the mystique, I think. I love the possibility that underneath that simple facade, his mind might be as twisty as Vetinari's.

I like Elmore Leonard, but I like him better when he stretches himself. His short story in the McSweeney's Thrilling Tales, e.g., was more interesting to me because it did not take place in Detroit, LA or Miami. Also, it was about cowboys.

I find his novels can be kind of retreads, taken as a bunch; or anyway at certain points in his career he has churned out Good Enough while at other points he was reaching for Damn Good.

I just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. It took me a while to wrap my brain around the narrative conceit, and longer for me to get past the twee, but ultimately it was a pretty good book. (The fact I did get past the twee, that it became invisible after a while, is a good sign overall.) You could write a good English paper on the book, and at the same time, it held my interest on both plot and emotional bases.

I like Elmore Leonard, but I like him better when he stretches himself. His short story in the McSweeney's Thrilling Tales, e.g., was more interesting to me because it did not take place in Detroit, LA or Miami. Also, it was about cowboys.

Not that big a stretch - he started out writing westerns. I think his first 10 novels (give or take) are all westerns of one sort or another.

(The fact I did get past the twee, that it became invisible after a while, is a good sign overall.)

It took me a good three days to get through the first half of the book, but only three hours to finish it, so ITA on getting used to it.

For something completely different, has anyone else read "Focault's Pendulum"?

Yes, brilliant work. Unfortunately I read Angels and Demons and then Da Vinci Code right afterwards and now a lot of it is a jumble in my head.

Favorite Discworld characters: Vetinari, Death, Angua, Vimes, Leonard of Quirm, Cohen the Barbarian, Death, the newspaper guy, the new post office guy, and I have to say Dibbler and his entire extended family.