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Hogfather

Hogfather

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good - But not the best one
Review: It is a good book, as every book by Terry Pratchett, but I do not think that it is his best! Still, I enjoyed reading it and finished it in two days. I thought it was very confusing at the beginning, as you did not know what was going on. Also I do not understand, why some paragraphs at the end of the book are written in a different style than the rest of the book. The thought of DEATH as the Hogfather is just great and DEATH plays his role perfectly (with the assistance of his fairy Albert). Generally all books by Pratchett are worth reading!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant, Mr. Pratchett!
Review: It's truly an indignity that we Americans have to wait so long for Terry Pratchett's books to be published here--Hogfather, you'll notice, was published in the UK in 1996--because they're all worth reading right away. Like one of the previous Discworld books, Small Gods, this novel muses on the nature of belief and couches it in a truly ridiculous parody. Nowhere else can you find Death's granddaughter, the God of Hangovers, an eyeball-obsessed raven and a skeletal rat off to save their corner of the multiverse from destruction. Look for a great subplot with the wizards of Unseen University and cameos by Nobby as well! Another triumph in the Discworld.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ho. Ho. Ho. Cower brief mortals.
Review: Everytime I read a new Discworld book, I am ready to declare it my favorite. This time, however, I may have found it. Hogfather brings back dear old Death in a stunning red suit stuffed with pillows. He is filling in for the missing Hogfather, while his granddaughter Susan (who never tells children that monsters don't exsist - she KNOWS they do!) searches for the real Hogfather. And of course the zany wizards, Hex the computer, and Nobby Nobs put in an appearance - along with many others. But don't be fooled into thinking that this is pure humor - there is a very thought-provoking element to Hogfather that adds to its appeal. And now I have nothing more to say save "glingleglingleglingle"...read the book and you will soon understand!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You don't believe in the Tooth Fairy ? She's called Violet !
Review: What kinds of strange and curious creatures do you think exist ? Is there really something like a God of Indigestion ? Sure, he is somehow related to the God of Hangovers. Thanks to this book I am now acquainted with all kinds of possible and impossible beings. I have read all the Discworld novels and I can say, that this one is one of the best. I especially liked the idea of DEATH taking over the job of the missing Hogfather - with Nobby sitting on his bony knees waiting for a present. Hard to put down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: great, smart, and funny!!
Review: This is a GREAT book. It's smart, and once you pick it up you can't put it down. Terry Pratchett can just find a way to make you laugh and want to read more. Once again, Death is as funny as... a man who is really funny. the book is smart makes you want to come back for more... you can, there are 22 other books of his you can read from the discworld series...

In short, I REALLY recommend it for anyone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My favourite book! (and for me, that's saying something)
Review: I've read dozens of books this summer, by everyone from everyone from Robert Heinlein to Katherine Kerr, but the one that still stands out for me is Hogfather. I read this three months ago after a trip to Canada, where I got it in paperback. This is certainly one of the best from an outstanding author. It perfectly blends humour, a captivating story, and a touch of philosophy. And I loved seeing Death again. I've enjoyed immensely following Death's development from an impersonal ultimate reality to the person who could almost pass for human evident in this book. A quite likeable one, too. To quote, "Death had picked up...humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely." And that's another thing. What's written in this book I found so appropriate to everyday life that I find myself running to find a quote from it to make my point in a conversation. While this book may not change your life, it does give you a little different look at it, and allows you to laugh at it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: HO HO HO, Death the Jolly Old Elf
Review: Oh the ecstacy of having friends who have friends in Great Britain! oh the agony of having to wait to buy my own copy!

Death has to fill in when Hogfather (who flies around Discworld on Hogswatch Night delivering toys to good girls and boys) disappears. He does his best, with Albert's help, though his HO HO HO's seem a little hollow to be jolly. With Death busy, who else can fill in for him than his granddaughter Susan. Susan has become the kind of governess that Mary Poppins would envy.

Pratchett does it again with parodies of nearly every Christmas story (though Death did NOT approve of the story of the Little Match Girl), Mary Poppins, and A.A. Milne.

And we finally learn what happens to all those teeth!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sausages, black pudding, bacon and conspiracy
Review: As usual Terry Pratchett's musings on humanity thinly disguised as comedic farce have produced another fine work.

The dastardly auditors of reality from reaper Man are back again, this time trying to stamp out another "superfluous" anthropomorphic personality, the Hogfather.

Their conspiracy involves assassins, tooth fairies, Anhk Morpork gangsters, wizards and bogie men. Against them stand Death, his grand-daughter Susan and Albert the pixie who want to make sure the sun will come up tomorrow.

Their journey of salvation visits many lands of the disc but is focused on the forgotten land of childhood and the nature of innocent belief.

A brilliant book easily up to the high standards of the author.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Seems the most heartfelt... Maybe I'm too sentimental
Review: I think this is my favorite of the Discworld novels, although "The Fifth Elephant," "Small Gods," and any other Vimes novel are also high contenders. "Hogfather" gets points for its poignancy, its interesting insights into human belief, and of course the hysterical scenes with Unseen University's bungling high wizards.

I don't want to give anything away, but Pratchett's visions of the mind's eye of childhood and the things that terrify you when you're young are brilliant. The assorted gods, fairies and gnomes that fall into existence when the Hogfather goes missing are wonderful and crazy characters, and of course, any book with Death as a primary character is always a great read.

All in all, I loved this book. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I admit, it had me in tears at the end. BUY THIS NOW. You won't regret it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hogfather - Another Masterpiece from Terry P
Review: It won't take any Pratchett fan very long to realize that our man Terry is trying something subtlely different in "Hogfather". For sure this book is slow to get off the ground. Much space at the beginning gets spent on Susan, along with the Raven and the Death of Rats, sequences that many fans may find lacking in traditional Pratchett humor. Elsewhere Death is filling in for the jolly Hogfather, who has died of a sort, and makes the mistake of giving some youngsters what they want rather than what their parents think they should want. The biggest laughs in the book come when the wizards show up, and join the search for the Hogfather together wtih an ant-powered mechanical computer named "Hex". And when a wayward comment brings in a board-game toting Cheerful Fairy determined to lighten the mood, I guarantee you enough side-splitting laughter to make up for any dull passages at the start.

But beneath all this, there is more. Pratchett has always snuck tinges of philosophy into his books. In "Small Gods" we learned that Gods only wield power so long as people believe in them. In "Pyramids" an unfortunate accident forced an entire kingdom to face its beliefs manifested in physical reality. In "Witches Abroad" we learned that fiction shapes people rather than the other way around. But in "Hogfather" he pushes the envelope further, asserting that all reality is make-believe, and all make-believe is reality, and furthermore that this is a good thing. It's a daring statement and a daring approach to life, one that will make small-minded folks sneer, and imaginative ones, at the very least, stretch their minds to a new place.

Terry Pratchett is brave. Not just a master of wit and a keen observer of human nature, he takes on everybody's most cherished institutions and sees how they were shaped by belief rather than reality. It's a thought that frightens us because it's like realizing that your house is built on quicksand. If the beliefs start to change, then the house can collapse. But the point of "Hogfather", the real point, is that we should be joyful at realizing how powerful our beliefs are, because once we reach that realization we are free from the tyranny of gods and of moral absolutes.


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