Kritikak eta Iruzkinak

The characters are believable, complex, and likable. The setting has a deep back-story and fascinating elements. The action is relevant and important to the characters. What's not to love about this fantasy book? The closest thing is one action by the main character that I don't feel was sufficiently motivated at the time. All the groundwork was there for the decision, but the spark, or spur for the action was lacking. I did not deduct a star for this, though, since the rest of the book is so good.

This brief book (more of an essay really) was written to respond to the documentary "The Problem with Apu" by comic Hari Kondabolu. As you can guess by the documentary title, Hari has a problem with Apu, in fact several. But Shukla does not feel that all of them are fair criticisms, so he took time from writing his usual fare to respond in this short book. Shukla makes the point that Apu is far from a hateful negative stereotype, he is a hard working immigrant that runs his own business and, as shown in the many episodes that focus on him, he also leads a well rounded life with his own challenges and problems to overcome. I won't go into a complete analysis of Shukla's argument here. The book is only 39 pages, so I encourage you to get his argument in his own voice.

This is the first of Pratchett's Discworld series. I have read and enjoyed others in the setting but had never read this one. In case you are new to it, the discworld is literally a disc-shaped world being carried through space on the backs of four elephants, which are standing on a great tortoise. As you can tell, the rules are all different in this world. If you are looking for deep history and fully formed fantasy languages keep looking. If you want a laugh-out-loud fun romp, open this happy tome.