Wanted: A Discworld book for a book report

Guards Guards?
I'm gonna need to do a book report 3 minute talk soon on thief of time, which will be hell as I'm already the biggest nerd in the class, except perhaps...IAA or HOG or Scarusto?

MERRY HEXMAS TO YOU ALL!!!
enjoy it while it lasts!

good book, but what's the message? :-S

Oh, I would just make up a load of waffle about suppressed citizens what drives a rebeliion, what makes a good political leader and damsel in distress stereotypes, or summat

sounds good. *takes notes* shall wait if someone else has a better idea, but if not i might just take that

well, theres Pyramids, with the obvious moral of "Dont-Build -Overlarge-Pointy-Stone-Buildings-Or-Youll-End-Up-With -Multiple-Personalities-And-Then-Go-Back-In-Time-And-Do -It-All-Over-Again". or Small Gods ("Dont-Put-Tortoises-On -Their-Backs-They-Might-Smite-You-Some-Day"). or Interesting Times ("Pissing-Off-Evil-Chinese-Warlords-Is-Way-Overrated"). and, of course, theres always the more simple option of Going Postal ("Semaphore-Sucks").

thank you, bill. rofl. i would appreciate a message that even non-discworld readers and especially my english teacher can understand and consider a message....
(no, i'm not picky at all )

I Also think Guards Guards would be a good one as it covers several areas

You have the redemption of a drunk Capt Vimes.

Also it shows how easily the majority can fall into going along with bad things if they are not the ones immediately affected.

It plays with stereotypes and gives insight into political realities by contrasting a black and white believing character Carrot with the Patrician who knows his shades of grey and Vimes who knows he is decidedly grubby but has to decide when to make the black and white stand.

for my money i say small gods. its isolated and enough of a social parody to not warent long charcetr explanations

i would have to say guard guards too

to start with it has dragons with will interest the class, also i love the part "if you had to have crime, it might as well be organised and pay taxes" you can rase lots of points with this book of how sociaty works and if we accepted the evels and made them part of life they wouldn't be so scarry and everyone would have a job.

but the best thing is to pick a book with carators you love so you can talk about them

and don't forget when you start talking your going to tell them that the discworld travels on the backs of 4 elephants which stand on the back of a giant space turtal anyone who doesn't instantly become hooked on what your saying isn't worth bothering about

good luck with it hunny i know you'll do well

how could i not? it is the most important fact about the discworld books after all.
thanks everybody. it'll be guards! guards! then. gonna go order the english version today, it seems we only own the german one, which is not much use for an english presentation...

The most obvious book with a message (wich your teacher would understand and accept) would be Thud! if you ask me:

- multicultural society (historical "problems" between differnt parts of this society)
- religious fanatism
- the role of faked history in such conflicts

And you don't have to explain too much about the characters.

i agree about the first bit. it has, together with jingo maybe, the most obvious and best message. but i think that it would take quite a lot of explaining the characters and backgrounds. if you haven't read at least one other watch book that is not guards guards thud probably wouldn't make much sense. thud, while being my absolute favourite dw book, was one of the first books that was crossed out on my list.

i dont think its really that hard to explain: dwarfs are basically your tolkeinian little-persons mining for stuff, trolls just dislike getting a pickaxe in their heads like the next pile of rocks, they fought each other in some random valley a long time ago, tend to do it again every anniversary they can, and now its that time of year again, some dwarfs walk around yelling about destroying trolls once and for good, and some trolls walk around and grunt. from there just go on with the social issues. altho any guads book should suffice i think, since they are mainly the ones that discuss isuess that are not very hard to explain to the non-reader.

but if she's already set on doing the other one why cry over milk yet to be spilled?

which is guards guards? was it the dragon or the gonne?

dragon. gonne is men at arms.

What message exactly does Jingo convey? Surely not one as strong as in Thud!...

btw, is it just me or did something red enter BD's picture? Was that always there?

I would say that Jingo is pTerrys anti war novel. Its strange with the number of people that seem to think wars are a bad idea we as a species still spend a lot of time a resources financing them.

Where are we going and why am i in this handbasket?...
...Oh! always try to look on the bright side...
... Um anybody got any marshmellows.?

ja, see thud is about two ethnic groups fighitng about something that may have happened once but noone really knows why but they hate each other so they fight cos that's the done thing,like the crusaids, no one was alive to have given offence or be offended but still christians, jews and muslims fought cos....um....god told them to or something....well you tell me why.

Jingo on the other hand is about two countries who both want something and so go to war over it. It also discussed the politics of creating a casus belli (the assassination atemp...sound familiar? 1914...) basically why nations go to war and the politics of war both between countries and within an administration

and before someone raises the point:
Small gods discusses how religions are all about politics internally, and how they are used to create and fight wars so similar to jingo but more focus on the internal side

and mostrous regiment is about the horrors of war from the front line perspective...and equal rights

gee, you'd think he's got some problem with war or something

I wouldn't say that...It's completely not centered on that topic, and the fact that there's a war almost going on is at the back most of the book...

i have escaped doing the thief of time talk... so far, by doing a poem called springs trumpet. I was first in the class and made a fool of myself, i'm sure of it.
good luck ratty!!!

ill be doing an english lecture soon too. i was thinking about lecturing about Thud (the game, although the book might also be a good idea).

i ended up changing my mind and doing thud now. i just love that book way too much 40 pages to go...

i hope youre not talking about the book report

what else would i be talking about? :-S

i think bill meant 40 pages of book report still to be written.
but you meant 40 pages of thud to be read.

yes, thank you. finished this morning and i already have the first some sentences of my report

well, i'm almost done now, hoping to finish today. is anybody willing to read through it? i'd like to know if language and content are ok and if it makes sense or if it's just c***. please? should be about 2 pages, so not too much.

if u still need someone to do it I'd be happy to

sooo, some hours ago i presented the report and yay, even though i was nervous like hell i managed well, very well. i got 14 out of 15 points for it and the reason why i didn't get that one point (which is pissing me off a bit) is that i forgot to make a list of unknown vocabulary... but all in all it was perfect and i just wanted to say thanks a lot to everybody for helping me in some way or the other

takes a bow and credit for the work..hahahaha I win again

bravo
I think I've escaped the thief of time talk.
I'm just waiting for Scarusto to "forget" to do it!
:~)

dont rely on ppl, make sure he forgets