A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

In the tradition of Neal Stephenson's Some Remarks and William Gibson's Distrust That Particular Flavor, the title is a collection of Pratchett's nonfiction essays, articles, and other short pieces. The book begins as a fairly amusing journey through Pratchett's career, interspersed with peeks into his writing process and the exciting world of signing tours. Die-hard fans of the author's "Discworld" books will likely find these chapters absorbing, but for the neutral reviewer they are mostly just mildly charming. That all changes, however, when the book's chronology reaches Pratchett's Alzheimer's diagnosis. These pieces are universally poignant and occasionally challenging. Even readers who have no history at all with the author could benefit from his musings on assisted suicide and end-of-life issues in general, not to mention first-person reporting from inside the process of dementia. Neil Gaiman's introduction does a wonderful job of letting the reader know what to expect as well as foreshadowing the arc of the narrative, ensuring that almost anyone who picks this up will read it all the way through.