BOOKS: Monstrous Regiment, The Wee Free Men

Have you ever been reading a book, and enjoying it a great deal, but then, when you set it down one night, you feel absolutely no desire to pick it up again the next day?

That's happened to me with Lolita, which thankfully I eventually forced myself to pick up again and finish, and Infinite Jest, which maybe someday before I die I might get back into. But I never thought it would happen to me with Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the most entertaining series of books I've ever read. Especially not two books back-to-back.

The first was Monstrous Regiment, what you might call a proper entry in the series, about a woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army, and discovers that she's not the only one to do so. It was very funny, with even more than the usual complement of colorful characters (a troll, a vampire, a zombie, a werewolf, an Igor), and a bevy of satisfying confrontations and resolutions, and it featured Commander Vimes, perhaps my favorite recurring character in the Discworld universe. And yet, somehow, I set the book down and didn't pick it up again for months.

The second was The Wee Free Men, which I bought the week it came out, in April 2003, and just finished tonight. The delay in finishing is all the more embarrassing when you consider this is the second of Pratchett's Discworld books for children. It took me fifteen months to finish a children's book.

Not that I spent fifteen months reading it. It took about a week, with a fifteen-month pause in the middle. I can't explain why, but again, I just set it down and couldn't pick it back up. It's a fun book, about a young girl, Tiffany, a witch-in-the-making whose brother is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies. She must rescue him with the help of the Wee Free Men -- the pixies, here called the "pictsies", tiny blue belligerent creatures who accept Tiffany as their leader. The pictsies are the most entertaining part of the book, with names like Rob Anybody and Daft Wullie and (my favorite) Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, and their thieving, drinking, fighting ways accented by their deep and sometimes unintelligible Scottish burr.

I love Terry Pratchett, and I love Discworld. I can't understand why I'm having such troubles finishing his books of late. Maybe it's because I've slowed down on all my reading; the internet's probably at least partly to blame for that. After spending an hour or two online (which I do most every day), I'm more inclined to want to rest my eyes than pick up a book. Also, I blame TiVo. Sweet, wonderful TiVo. You should see a list of the books I've started and not yet finished, or, worse, bought and never even opened.

There's a new Pratchett book out right now, A Hat Full of Sky, which is apparently the sequel to The Wee Free Men. I'll pick it up soon -- I have to; as slow a reader as I may be these days, and as many books as I have stockpiled, Pratchett is still a must-buy. I just hope I finish it sometime this year.