Equal Rites: A Discworld Novel: 3

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In Equal Rites, the wizards of Unseen University (and also the conservative Granny Weatherwax) firmly believe in this ontological difference between the sexes, which is apparent in the way they find it natural that there be gender-specific forms of magic, forms more in tune with what they see as each sex’s defining attributes (the earthy, nurturing and psychological power of witchcraft for women; the logical, calculative, energy-based power of magic for men). The first of these children's books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. Unfortunately the faculty’s ideas on equal rights are pretty ancient, but thankfully Granny Weatherwax, the Discworld’s most powerful witch, has plenty of experience ignoring the status quo. Here she is as cantankerous and stubborn and wonderful and ridiculous as ever, and showing power that she rarely shows in other books.

As someone who works in a field that is far too lacking in women the idea that certain disciplines are more suited for men or women is still a stigma we seem to be fighting today. In one of Canadian author Eric Nicol's short stories, The White Knight, he plays with the concept of the pure good knight becoming embroiled in battle after battle until he loses his goodness and becomes the villain (black knight) progressing through stages of greyness along the way.Since the Discworld society expects boys to seek fortune and girls to seek boys with fortune, she wonders that perhaps girls don’t have fortunes to seek. Try to analyze how her character changes over the novels, one of the few greater evolutions of a main character in the Pratchettiverse. Douglas Adams uses a variation on this idea with his improbability drive in The Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In its day, in 1948, this was the height of desirability -- so much so that for its first few years it was only available for export. He was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any .

The Dedication: "Thanks to Neil Gaiman, who loaned us the last surviving copy of the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, [.