Sir Terry Pratchett has died

I think we gained something incredible over a short time.

Nobody lives forever. What Terry Pratchett has given to us will live longer than any person. I'm not sad that he has died. Everyone who is born dies, and there's an infinite number of potential people who are never born. What is important is that we live, and while we live some of us do extraordinary things.

I'm reading Guards! Guards! to my 2-year old right now, a section each night. She gets me to turn to the inside cover to look at the picture of the "man". I tell her that that's Mr. Pratchett. She calls him "Mister Patchett" because she has trouble with that R. She likes to pretend she's a dragon. She will say "dragon needs her socks on". She talks about the "little tiny dragon Errol". Every night she comes and gets me before bed and asks me to read a story.

Tonight I'll read this to her again. I'm not going to tell her that he has died. She won't understand, and it's not important to her. She will still get excited to read the story. She will still look at the picture of the man. I'll still tell her it's Mr. Pratchett. She'll still be excited to pretend to be a dragon. She'll still want me to read another book when it's done, we're very near the end. She'll still learn a lot from him.

While there won't be any new books written by him, the ones in our collection won't go away. He will continue to help her get excited to read, to give her funny stories, to make her think about the world in a different way. For her, today will be no different than yesterday or the day before.

By the time she's finished reading through our collection and wants to know why there's no new books, if from nowhere else, she will have learned from him about death. She will have learned in a funny and non-threatening way. But she will heave learned nonetheless. We can talk about him at that point, but I'd rather not lament what we've lost, because claiming we've lost something is claiming ownership, like saying we deserved him, or that it was our right to have books written by him. We've lost nothing, because we didn't have him to start with. But we have gained a lot that he has decided to give the world.

So I don't want to lament his passing. I want to thank him for the things he has given us. I'm not sad there will be no more, I'm happy that he gave us these gifts to begin with.

My favorites are all Moist_von_Lipwig books. I recommend starting with Going Postal. Its comes much later in chronological order, but is the first Moist_von_Lipwig book and is enjoyable standalone.

Be aware that if you start at the beginning with The Colour of Magic the very early books are a quite different style to once he'd got into his stride, so unless you're absolutely determined to read them all I wouldn't start there.

Edit: Btw, Guards! Guards! is early enough in the series that it's still recognisably 'early' Pratchett, so if you're interested in seeing his style develop it's a great place to start for that reason too.

  curl   http://www.pjsmprints.com/                                                                                                
  
  
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