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Soul Music

Pratchett, Terry. Book on CD - 2003 None on shelf No requests on this item Community Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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Compact discs.
Unabridged.
Read by Nigel Planer.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

my beloved diskworld submitted by ferdoble on August 11, 2011, 3:56pm To describe Terry Pratchett’s books is a difficult thing to do. The disc world series is in a word fantastic. Terry Pratchett, would seem to use the disk world, to take any theme, or know story and then twist it in his own very humorous way. These are not always laugh out loud funny (sometimes they are), bur rather the sort of funny that just sort of lifts your spirits a little bit.

I will say that in some cases there isn’t always a really strong story, sometimes its just his characters moving through one of those twisted themes. I like them all, you may want to start with the Most Von Lipwig story line (“Going Postal” and then “making money”) as at least the first one has a really great story line.

I love to pepper my reading queue with these books to keep all those books that take themselves seriously fresh and interesting.

I recommend reading them ALL.

OR listening to them. The two main narrators of Terry Pratchett’s books are Stephen Briggs & Nigel Planer and they take Terry Pratchett’s phenomenal writing to a whole new level.

Music with rocks in! submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 17, 2012, 11:08am This story follows a young harper who leaves his homeland (that looks remarkably like Wales) to travel to the big city in hopes of making a living as a musician. He discovers this is far harder than he anticipates, especially when someone breaks his harp, so he gets together with a troll and a dwarf (also musicians). Their fortunes take a turn for the better when they accidentally buy a magic guitar and invent Music with Rocks In (the name of their band and the type of music they play). They become world famous and their story parallels while also mocking the Beatles and the day the music died. Meanwhile, Death's granddaughter must learn to cope with the inevitability of the death of her parents.
For those who appreciate pop music and culture, this is an especially fun book. I recommend reading "Mort" and "Reaper Man" first to get to know some of the characters and their background, and to get a feel for the Discworld and Ankh-Morpork in general. Once you have read "Soul Music" watch the animated movie for further entertainment.
I highly recommend all of Sir Terry Pratchett's novels. British audiences consistently give him high marks as one of their favorite authors, which may be why he has published 39 Discworld novels.

discworld submitted by unknown on August 10, 2013, 11:14pm No one agrees on which is the best Terry Pratchett novel, but a lot of his fans, myself included, would name this as a candidate. In this novel, he takes his manic punning, wordplay and double- and triple-entendre to the highest level.

Soul Music has three narrative threads: Death takes a holiday (which Pratchett fans will remember from _Mort_), Mort's orphan daughter, Susan Sto Helit, and her attempts to cope with the family legacy, and the discovery of rock and roll on the disc. The three stories intertwine and the result, for me, ranged from snickers to guffaws.

The big news is that rock and roll comes to the disk, through the agency of a pawnshop guitar and a skilled harpist, whose name translates as "Bud of Holly" and who looks kind of Elvis[h]. With a dwarvish horn player named Glod and a trollish drummer named Cliff, the band Music with Rocks In takes the Discworld by storm. The Librarian, the monk... orangutan who runs the Wizard's library, sits in on keyboards, and exceeds even the excesses of Jerry Lee Lewis. You cannot imagine a rock music issue that Pterry doesn't reach. Women fans pitch articles of clothing; espresso shops appear; rock promoters - C.M.O.T. Dibbler, of course - arrive; even the sedate wizards wear leather, do their best James Dean and show they, too, are "Born to Rune."

Parts of the book are a pastiche of "Blues Brothers" ("We're on a mission from Glod"), "Spinal Tap," and "Woodstock." Other parts are simply Pratchett's own mad invention. And this book also features Pterry's best pun - "some felonious monk;" possibly the best pun in literature since Niven's and Gerrold's _The Flying Sorcerors_. You can spend a lot of time just working out the puns. And let me note that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" gets the treatment it righteously deserves.

But while Buddy and his band tour with their roadie Asphalt and inescapably head towards Dead Man's Curve, and while Death does his best to learn how to forget with the help of the Klatchian Foreign Legion and alcohol, Susan makes increasingly frantic efforts to keep what passes for reality on the Discworld from coming completely unstuck. With the help of the Death of Rats, Albert and other favorites, the Disc is saved, but not without some uncommon poignancy.

There are scholarly articles on whether Pratchett writes parody or satire. However labelled, this was the high water mark for his experiments with the pure form. Anglo-American literature has never had as brilliant a satirist/parodist as Terry Pratchett. He may have written better Discworld books, but I'm not sure he has written a funnier book. Especially if you know and like rock music.

"Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng"

Wonderful submitted by hduke on July 28, 2018, 2:11pm Soul Music is totally terrific, full of fun, puns, and heart. Definitely recommend!

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SERIES
Discworld series
16.



PUBLISHED
Oxford [England] : ISIS Pub. Ltd, 2003.
Year Published: 2003
Description: 9 sound discs (10 hr., 25 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Language: English
Format: Book on CD

ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780753122167
0753122162

ADDITIONAL CREDITS
Planer, Nigel.

SUBJECTS
Discworld (Imaginary place).
Fantastic fiction.