The Colour of Magic: Oh, The Misfortune

I first became aware of the work of Terry Pratchett when I was in the seventh grade and happened to find a copy of Mort in a local library. Until that time, I wasn’t very much of a reader, but that book changed my view of literature.

I was always a little bit of a geek even as a child, so the idea of a fun fantasy series had me hooked.

But it wasn’t until a few years later that I was able to find a copy of the first book in the Discworld series, The Colour of Magic. At the time, Pratchett wasn’t the worldwide phenomenon that he is now, and there wasn’t an Amazon.com to order books from, so I basically had to wait until it was actually available in my area.

The book tells the tale of Rincewind, the worst wizard in the Discworld, who is given the unenviable task of protecting a lovably naive tourist from harm as he travels the world. The book was a picaresque travel tale through a fantasy world that was not as yet fully developed, and at the time, it was more a parody of other series (like Lord of the Rings and Anne McCaffery) than its own entity. But it was a wonderful start to a series.

But this book has a strange cachet attached to it in my mind as well. You see, every time I read it, something bad happens to me.

The first time I read it, I got into a fist fight, and if you know me, the concept of me being in a fist fight is absurd on so many levels. Granted it was a silly fight too, one with a lot of comedic overtones, but still it was a fight.

And every time I read it, I suffer some form of similar misfortune, and it is never the same kind of thing that befell me the last time. But it does usually end up involving humiliation… that is a constant.

From losing money in a stupid way to finding myself in a seemingly compromising position (it really wasn’t what it looked like) in front of a girl I fancied, and a few other choice incidents which don’t bear repeating at the moment, something always ends up getting me in the end when I read The Colour of Magic.

And yet, even knowing that something bad is about to happen to me, I still feel compelled to read it. The fact that it is a book is about the adventures of a hapless and cowardly wizard who tries to avoid trouble, but somehow always becomes comically entwined with whatever events surround him is likely just a coincidence. I mean, I couldn’t just subconsciously trying to get into trouble just because of the book I was reading, could I? Nah!

I guess I am just a masochist in the end. It is a pleasure which is too great to give up, despite the perils.