formative books that I would most dearly love to read again

I gave a book talk on this in high school with no thought anyone would pick it and every urge to live through two minutes. To my surprise a small group of listeners did choose to read it, and I overheard their discussion a few weeks later. They unanimously hated it and hurt my eavesdropper with things like "Who recommended this?? Do you remember? What a moron." In spite of my misfortune, I stand by this account of the power Arthur and Merlin might have had in an age of clashes between Christian and pagan, Briton and Saxon. The prose has a workable beauty and the deflations of myth are somehow very compelling--an Arthur only standing in for a babe king, a coward Lancelot, a charlatan Merlin with real power because he is believed by both sides on a battlefied... The story is narrated by a classic observer figure (Derfel) from a monastery years in the future. I have not yet made it to the sequels and look forward to some good rereading.

It's so hard to review something like this. The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic were my introduction to Terry Pratchett, and I loved them; I was probably 13. If you're 13, or you can enjoy fantasy the way a 13 year old can (and it probably helps if you're a boy but what do I know), and you are imaginative and you like to laugh, this stuff is the bee's knees, all six of the bee's knobbliest knockers. It also helps if you grew up on British humor. Americans will often shake their heads sadly, as is immediately obvious in the covers stateside: Josh Kirby's profoundly original, wacky, fantastical covers, some now housed in art museums, completely impeded all sales in the US until they were swapped with characterless, flat, (relatively) monochromatic affairs looking *almost serious* and nothing like what's inside. One thing I will say, from my own limited perspective, is that the humor doesn't rely so much on bad puns. At its best, it's more in line with Douglas Adams and that brand of scintillatingly playful thinking.