#turtle recall

Turtle Recall 2026 | Journey Through Discworld | Reading Challenge

Sybil is a toweringly big lady, with a mass of chestnut hair (a wig--no one who has much to do with dragons keeps their own hair for long).  The Ramkins have never bred for beauty, they've bred for healthy solidity and big bones, and Lady Sybil is the shining result.  Her ballgowns are usually light blue--to combine the maximum of quiet style with the minimum of visibility.  She is large and kind, and she can't lie--she goes red when she tries.  However, she can refrain from telling the truth with clear-eyed honesty that can fool experts.

It would be more correct to say that there are ALWAYS sixty-four signs in the Discworld zodiac BUT also that these are subject to change without notice.  Stars immediately ahead of the Turtle's line of flight change their position only very gradually, as do the ones aft.  The ones at right angles, however, may easily alter their relative positions in the lifetime of the average person, so there is a constant need for an updating of the zodiac.  This is done for the Sto Plains by Unseen University, but communications with distant continents (who in any case have their own interpretations of the apparent shapes in the sky) are so slow that by the time any constellation is known Disc-wide it has already gone past.  This does at least mean that astrology on the Disc is a dynamic thing and not a repository for some rather unimaginative mythology, but it does rather reduce the science to something on the lines of 'Look!  There!  No, THERE!  Where I'm pointing!  THERE!  Doesn't that look like a crab to you?  Oh, too late, you've missed it.'

'Take your non-Guild burglar, for example.  What does he know about skilled lock picking?  Or casing the joint?  About being quiet?  Nothing.  He smashes a window, turns out all the drawers, rummages around where he shouldn't . . .  And that's only the start of your problems. How often have you heard people say, "I wouldn't have minded, they didn't take much, but the mess!"  That's not the work of a Guild burglar!  Usually people will not find out they've been robbed until the lady next looks for her necklace and finds only our receipt in the box.  A Guild burglar takes pride in his work.  In fact, some of our clients have been so kind as to inform us that the only reason they suspected a break-in was when they saw that the dressing table had been dusted and the cat had been fed.'

HIS GRACE SIR SAMUEL, COMMANDER VIMES.  Duke of Ankh and head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.  Badge No. 177.  An upright and honest man whose appointment as head of the despised Night Watch--regarded by all sensible people as a completely useless appendage to the running of the city-may have been the cause of his drinking problem.  But it has also been suggested that he is in fact naturally more sober than other people. ... By his own account he was a skinny, balding, unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol, although these days he is better shaved and doesn't drink.  Partly as a result of this latter fact, he is morose, cynical and ridiculously--and to his own embarrassment--soft-hearted in certain circumstances.  He is almost certainly one of Nature's policemen; it has been said of him that his soul burns to arrest the Creator of the universe for getting it wrong.

Once in UU, a wizard need never leave.  Tenure is automatic.  There is always a spare study somewhere, always room in the Great Hall.  It is, in short, academic heaven--and a perfect way to ensure that the most potentially dangerous men on the Disc spend their time squabbling among themselves and, of course, eating big dinners.

What some of the young readers like is that the Discworld is a place to which they can escape but, at the same time, find familiar characters to whom they can relate--even if, superficially, that character is a witch, a seven-foot skeleton or an orangutan.  They like the way that everyday things, everyday situations and every attitudes are transposed onto the Discworld and given that special spin. Terry's popularity is spread, as it often is with the older fans, by peer-group word of mouth.  A mutual knowledge of the Discworld is something which young people can share; it's a world to which they belong and which belongs to them.

[Lord Vetinari's] genius lies in the realization that everyone craves stability even more than they hunger after justice or truth.  Even revolutionary anarchists want stability, so that they have breathing space to fight their real enemies, i.e., those higher than themselves in the revolutionary anarchist council, and those heretics whose definition of revolutionary anarchy differs from their own by about half a sentence in paragraph 97 of the charter.