Discworld: Here is your bimonthly belated reminder …

… that the next group read is upon us and has (umm, theoretically) already started, on August 1, to be precise.

(I swear I was going to post about this earlier this time around, but oh well …)

The book is Wyrd Sisters, the second of the Witches subseries — and the first book in which the full coven appears: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat.  In appropriate pre-Halloween Bingo mood, it also features a ghost.  In fact, it’s a pretty great book all around.

And now all that remains is for me to leave you with one of the best beginnings in the entire Discworld series (so far as I’ve read it, at least):

   “The wind howled.  Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin.   Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.

   The night was as black as the inside of a cat.  It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate.  In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye.  It illuminated three hunched figures.  As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’

   There was a pause.

   Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.'”