Murder by Death

I've been in a funk the past few days.  One of my contract jobs came to an abrupt end this week. It's one of those things that happen that have nothing to do with the job or the person doing it (thank god).  A board somewhere off in the distance made an accounting decision.  

So for the foreseeable future I work two fewer days a week.  I'm VERY lucky that this isn't a crisis; MT is barely fazed by it.  But it's put me in a spin because to me, those two days represent my ability to BUY ALL THE BOOKS. Not really, of course, but they did give me the mental freedom of being able to ask "do I really want this book?" rather than "can I afford this book?".  This angst then makes me feel guilty because so many people have much bigger, legitimate problems.  So, a funk.

Enter The Unadulterated Cat - a book I didn't even know existed before Tannat read and reviewed it, and I had it sitting on my coffee table freshly arrived in the post.  Deep in my funk, firmly planted on my couch with a cat almost permanently attached to my lap, it was the book I could reach without upsetting anyone's status quo.

I'm awfully glad I did; it starts off slow, and I thought I'd gotten a clunker, even if it was written by Pratchett, a Grand Master of British dry wit.  But then I got to the section on Illnesses and I laughed so hard Easter-cat (she who was trying to be one with the lap) turned around and chastised me.  Of course, when Pratchett is describing the joys of pilling a cat, he was describing Easter-cat, so she might have been feeling a tad self-conscious.  

From that point on, it was a giggle-fest, with me bookmarking several sections to make my husband read when he got home.  The book not only made me forget my petty worries for a bit, but made me laugh to the point of tears.  (Some of those footnotes...)  That's what books are for, right?  And this one did its job admirably. So, thank you to Tannat for bringing this book to me at the right time, even if you had no idea you were doing it.  ;-)

On a sadder note, as I started to write this review, I realised as I glanced at my Bingo card that this fits the square for A book by a dead author.