Tag: rob wilkins

JANUARY 2024

~ Ricardo ~ Leave a comment

Oh hi hello here’s what I read during the month of January.

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson. I observed the Twelve Days of Christmas by reading one story from this for the past, well, twelve days. It’s my first Winterson book, but it certainly won’t be the last, as I just fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with her writing. In this immaculate, gorgeous collection, Winterson runs through the gamut of the Christmas spectrum: from traditional ghost stories to whimsical fables to mawkish, sickly-sweet declarations of love — she writes it all with a poetic aplomb that I found irresistible. This extends even to her cooking instructions. In fact, a lot of the passages that affected me the most came not from the proper fictional stories themselves, but from the lengthy personal anecdotes that preceded the recipes included here (a notion that’s become something of a cultural meme, but in Winterson’s deft hands, it simply becomes another space in which to write another magical thing). Just a stunning, beautiful piece of work that I can easily see myself revisiting each year as part of my own personal Twelvetide tradition.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. The coziest way to start the new year. Wrote about this here.

Amphigorey / Ascending Peculiarity by Edward Gorey. Gorey was a wonderful weirdo and I love him. Also wrote about this one.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. I love reading about creative peoples’ creative habits and this was a delightful collection.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins. Already wrote about my experiences with this one. I miss Terry.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Wrote about this too. I really, really miss Terry.

My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt. Heart-wrenching story about fathers and writing and obsession. One of the most fascinating memoirs I’ve ever read.

I also read some short stories:

“The Beautiful People” by Robert Bloch I enjoyed mostly because at times it read like a particularly weird episode of Mad Men. An entertaining little shocker of a story, though. Nothing mind-blowing, but Bloch’s writing is effortless, making for the smoothest of reads.

“Selfies” by Lavie Tidhar had a great and creepy concept but was also entirely too short.

And that’s it. This was the best reading month I’ve had since last October. Which is surprising because January is usually a very uneven, slow period for me, characterized by reading slumps and just general exhaustion after the holiday season. But not only did I manage to read quite a bit this time around, I also ended up loving pretty much everything I picked up. It’s a nice change of pace. And a hell of a start to my reading year.

TERRY PRATCHETT: A LIFE WITH FOOTNOTES by Rob Wilkins

~ Ricardo ~ Leave a comment

terry pratchett by rob wilkinsI laughed. I cried. I cried while laughing and I laughed while crying. Reading Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, Rob Wilkins’s biography of his deceased employer slash mentor slash partner was a beautiful emotional journey.

Usually I prefer my biographies to be a bit more impartial towards their subjects. A healthy distance, I find, makes for a clearer, more cohesive profile. Wilkins was literally unable to do that, so instead he delivered a profoundly intimate portrayal of a beloved friend – and the book is all the better for it, which goes to show how much I know.

It is also an exceptionally candid account, which surprised me to no end. These sorts of biographies tend to be written with rose-colored glasses on the author’s face, with the most unpleasant aspects of a person’s life either glossed over or simply not dwelled upon. Wilkins doesn’t shy away from the uncouth, churlish aspects of his relationship with the writer, who could be flighty and temperamental in the best of times, and a cantankerous, capricious bastard at the worst. It’s a refreshingly raw and honest approach, and it makes the more heartfelt, touching moments which abound in this book all the more pointed and impactful.

And it’s a remarkably funny book – as it damn well should be. Terry would be ineffably proud of his personal assistant.

But in the end the best possible thing I could say about this biographical tome is that it made me pick up a Pratchett book immediately after finishing it. Terry’s novels are, after all, small miracles, as Neil Gaiman sagely observed. Rob Wilkins tells us exactly why.