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9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Jingo': Pa... · 1 reply · +4 points

It actually isn't! Gur Ynfg Ureb is 40k! At leas according to Amazon

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Jingo': Pa... · 7 replies · +16 points

Since I do have all the Discworld e-books with with word counts available in my calibre library and a inordinate fondness for numbers I thought I should provide some statistics! :)

You are right in Jingo being the longest book so far. It is in fact the first book over 100k words at 105k. Guards! Guards! came close with 99k and was the first book over 90k. The previous eight books was in the 85-95k range.

After this book we have 11 other books with a word count over 100k with Hafrra Npnqrzvpnyf and Fahss over 130k. There are some shorter books left, mainly the LN ones, but even those get longer by the end. V funyy jrne zvqavtug is 111k.

Eric is shortest at 35k.

(I don't have the last book, so it's not comletley complete statistics)

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 0 replies · +11 points

Another interesting thing is that most children starts to draw people the same way, big head, legs underneath and arms sticking out to the side of the head. Except children with belly/digestive issues. They draw people with bellies, mostly as big swirly round things. I was one of those belly children :)

I was to young to remember drawing this way but I do remember trying to teach my 2 years younger sister to draw people with bellies. "No, you see, you draw the head and the leg like you used do do, and then you draw a line between the legs and you have a belly, see. And then you draw the arms from the belly and not the head!" Bellies were very important to tiny me. Unfortunately my sister was mostly unaffected by my teachings.

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 3 replies · +28 points

Okay, so, I've always had this thing about the description of the children's painting. I agree with it like... 95% of it, but I always used to draw houses with two windows, not four! One on each side of the door as is proper, none of this second floor nonsense. (Although I did quite often draw the windows divided up into four parts.)

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 0 replies · +12 points

But the calendar has moved around a lot. like, a lot a lot. So the solstice has left behind a scattering of celebrations spread out over different cultures and dates like a forgetful person with multiple pairs of reading glasses. (I know that we have (at least) three separate holidays that all have their root in the solstice. And that's just my culture.)

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 0 replies · +11 points

I would say that throwing yourself in really cold water after a sauna is worse than throwing yourself in the snow! When it's water it's just directly really really cold and a bit of a shock. With snow, it's more of a gradual thing as the snow melts around you so you get more of a nice surface level cooling down than a shock!cold. (I have never done the whole jumping into a hole in the ice thing, that is supposed to really give you a shock. I do sort of apprehensively want to try it, at leas once in my life.)

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 0 replies · +24 points

Here we have another of those neat little "Pratchett was probably working on both books at the same time" connections, since the scene with the pigs in the Hogfather grotto brings back memories of Colons farm animal adventures in Feet of Clay.

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 7 replies · +16 points

I have done the rolling in snow method! It is actually really nice! and fun! But. It is very much preferable to try this with *fresh* snow, and not to throw yourself naked onto what looks soft but is just very hard and scratchy ice, you might end up with some very nasty scrapes that way. I have also done the 'let's just lay down here carefully and slowly roll in this 2 cm layer of fresh snow', which, the cold was nice? and you take what you can get? (hey! now I'm actually looking forward to winter!)

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 0 replies · +6 points

That's interesting! In my ebook version this is rendered as regular text with, annoyingly, the strike-through replaced by an underline. (but if I remember correctly, things from a later book was replaced with pictures in my copy (gur fvtaf va guvrs bs gvzr.))

9 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Hogfather'... · 4 replies · +55 points

So for the longest time I've always thought I should post photos of the different fonts in the books that sadly are not present in the ebooks. So far I've never had, mostly because the books are at home and I'm reading this at work, but this time I actually took a photo in advance!

So. Here is the letter to the hogfather by Virginia Prood:

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