My sister & nephew, both avid readers with good taste, recommended I read The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, so I got it right away.
The wee free men, it turns out, are tiny blue guys with lots of tattoos and a thick Scottish dialect, and they're known as "pictsies" (and they get really angry if you mistake them for "pixies"). The protagonist is a 9-year-old girl named Tiffany who wants to become a witch, but worries that her name might interfere with her success.
The novel is a bright and funny fantasy / adventure story, with great characters and dialogue, and good depictions of girls & women. (So nice to find that!)
I found myself wishing, though, that I'd listened to the book instead of read it. Long ago, I listened to Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, read by Lenny Henry, and it was the best book recording ever. [And I'm including Jim Dale's recording of the Harry Potter books in that calculus!] I attribute my enjoyment of Anansi Boys ~35% to the great writing and ~65% to the amazing performance. Hearing it read—and read so well—decreased my general discomfort with the genre, and increased my attention in the passages I would have skimmed with my eyes.
So though I very much enjoyed Wee Free Men, I still think I might try to track down an audio version of it. I think I would like it better with my ears.
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