"Unseen Academicals" by Terry Pratchett

I have been informed that Discworld is hilarious. As it turns out, Discworld is extremely hilarious. I have also been informed that there's no set order one should read these in (not like 123456etc for most books or 2453617 for Narnia), so I've started somewhere in the middle (on book 37, to be precise).

This one is about the staff of the Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork, when the city's tyrant, Lord Vetinari, declares they have to have a football (soccer) team. Which they haven't for at least several decades. Also Discworld football (look I know in American English it's soccer, but just substitute that for "football" when reading this because that's what it's called throughout the book and writing it the American way just feels silly) anyway what was I saying? Oh yeah, Discworld football is rather absurdly violent and also has some strange rules. And it |has its own god|.

My particular favorite characters are Mr. Nutt (a very erudite goblin(?)) and Trevor "Trev" Likely (his boss, who starts out being kind of a jerk but becomes actually rather nice as the book goes on). I don't think either of them ever show up again outside of this book. My other favorite, Ponder Stibbons, probably does; he's the person doing all the work to keep the Unseen University running except for actually teaching the classes. He is the university's only self-professed entirely sane person (that was going to go in my "favorite lines" section, but I couldn't find where it is and couldn't remember it exactly).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor. I'm not sure how you'd really make this into a videogame; it has like five main characters and switches viewpoints a lot. I guess you could do some of the shorter snippets with cutscenes?

4 stars. For being extremely hilarious. Barely prevented from getting 5 by the crude humor (which is not my thing).

Favorite lines:

 

    "Are you the one who made the sandwich for Nutt?" asked Trev.

    "Yeth. Tuna, thpaghetti and jam, with thprinkleth. My thignature dish."

    Page 125.

 

    The ball shall be called the ball. The ball is the ball that is played as the ball by any three consecutive players, at which point it is the ball.

    Page 311. According to some backstory given later, this rule was added when a severed head rolled onto the football field and the players started using it as the ball, apparently not caring that it was actually a severed head.

(Endnote: Ho! The Megapode!)