Guards Guards, by Terry Pratchett

'Guards Guards'  is Pratchett on top form (much though I love his books, some are much better than others...).

 

It's the first book about Sam Vimes and the Night Watch, and we get to know and love the characters who will make many appearances in later books.

 

It's got a plot that makes sense, and has some good twists in it.

 

It's funny, but it also has characters who feel like real people. Sam Vimes the drunk captain of the Watch has pretty much given up on everything, finds there are some things that even he won't give up on.  

 

The various mystical brotherhoods that meet in Ankh Morepork are hilarious.

 

My favourite character is Lady Sybil Ramkin, breeder of swamp dragons.  The kind of person whose family goes back so far that she is perfectly comfortable spending all her days dressed in old clothes and mucking out dragon pens, and feels no need to attend balls and the like.  

 

This is the story where the Librarian (an orangutan, for those who don't already know) gets enlisted into the Guard, and we discover the mysteries of L-space... 

The Boat of Small Mysteries - Robyn Beecroft

 It's so nice to read a book involving narrowboats by someone who actually knows what they are writing about!

I remember once reading a romance involving a narrowboat and spending more time mentally nitpicking than getting involved in the romance...

 

Beecroft knows how a weed hatch works and what you use it for, and likewise for the rest of the waterways equipment.

 

Does it also work as a novel?  Yes, it's a gentle story, made up of different people whom Emily meets and re-meets along the inland waterways.  I particularly enjoyed the group of student with their floating party, who keep needing Emily's help due to their general ineptness with narrowboats. 

 

Emily has her own, health-related problems, but there are also other boaters happy to assist her when her pain flares up too badly.

 

People help her, and she solves problems for them.

 

There is also romance, but romance with a very Beecroft twist - which happens to work for me :)