Match it for Pratchett

Some but probably not all of you on my f'list know that Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors and the source of much glee for me and for my kids, announced fairly recently that he has an early onset form of Alzheimer's. He subsequently gave US $1 million to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in the UK. Here's a copy of the speech he gave, which is also a good read. fastfwd proposed on discworld (the Discworld is the major fantasy world he writes in, with over 30 books in this setting) and in this post on his own journal that a half million of Pratchett's fans ("us") give one pound each, that the fans could match PTerry's donation, US $1 million being very roughly half a million pounds.

Another fan, gillo created a banner featuring PTerry from one of his movie cameos for this purpose:


If you have any interest at all, please consider giving a couple of bucks to this cause. I don't have any opinion whether giving to the UK fund that PTerry did is preferable over giving to your local Alzheimer's research fund.

Furthermore, the very first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, has just been made into a movie, which will be premiered in the UK at Easter on Sky One. A replica Luggage from the production, a full set of autographed Discworld books, a 30th anniversary edition of The Colour of Magic, signed by the stars of the movie, Sir David Jason and Sean Astin, and production notes on building the Luggage signed by PTerry, are up for auction on EBay here, currently going for £2,150.00. Proceeds are to go to the cause. If I were rich enough, I would bid on this in a heart beat.

After S and I finish reading The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, I think we might start on Good Omens, which is a PTerry collaboration with Neil Gaiman, and was my gateway to Gaiman's writing. The mainline Discworld novels are some of the best satire I've ever read. The juveniles (Maurice and the Tiffany Aching series) are some of the best kids' fantasy, and PTerry has received awards to corroborate my opinion, such as the Carnegie award Maurice received. If you haven't read PTerry's books, I strongly encourage you to do so. If you have read them, no doubt you are also a fan, so please throw a few bucks in to the pot for Alzheimer's in his honor.

ETA: and here's a newly minted website:http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/
This site includes other efforts, including a T-shirt sale, links to the US Alzheimer's foundation, and other auctions such as the rare and valued Once More* with Footnotes short story collection. There's also an lj fan who's talking about making and selling silk lilac boutinieres, a reference to a particular fictional memorial event in the Discworld.

Multilingual moocher

Recently I posted a bunch of new books to my inventory on BookMooch. I had books in four languages...English, of course, French (an Asterix graphic novel), Spanish (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie in Spanish), and a Japanese paperback novel (which I have no idea what illyaa or I were thinking on that one; I am not even sure which one of us bought it. Our Japanese was never good enough to tackle it). I'm back down to three languages, since someone has mooched the Asterix since I posted it.