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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Unsure about quaint but Discworld is absolutely pleasant and grows a delightful lore around itself. General advice is skip the first two (Pratchett was just figuring it out) and come back to them when you already love Rincewind.
Second vote for Discworld
Guards! Guards!
Mort
Wyrd Sisters
Are all good places to start.
Small Gods is my goto reccomendation for starting points, it's completely self contained and one of Pratchett's best works
Second Small Gods. It's my favourite discworld book (even though I love the whole series).
That's a good thought on starting points.
Thirded. Discworld is great.
Small Gods and Reaper Man ftw.
Just to add that the BBC has done good audio dramatisations of several of Pratchet's works.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03mz1wb/episodes/guide
Small Gods and Mort for example, are excellent. Currently not available on bbc iplayer / sounds, although they do regularly rebroadcast them and make them available online, but should be floating around on the torrent or archive sites.
BBC sounds/radio is free to listen outside the UK, unlike the tv content.
All solid choices!
I love the first 2 and it's where I started, I don't see anything wrong with them and I will die on that hill.
I agree. The Colour of Magic is what got me into Discworld and I thoroughly enjoyed it as a standalone for a while.
I really don't think they're bad or even worse than the rest. I do feel like they're so different from the other books that whether someone liked them or not doesn't tell them if they'll like the rest, which is the only reason I don't recommend it as a taster before deciding on whether to read the other 30+ tomes.
I read the Discworld series in publication order and loved it. There was an almost continuous improvement in quality over the first few books which was also satisfying.
Fair play! I don't think they're bad per se but I do think that the others are significantly better. I wouldn't use the first two to demonstrate why Pratchett is one of the best things to happen to the English language since punctuation.
I'll join you there - I loved Pratchett's writing already from his Johnny series I read at school and read those first two all in one go during a summer holiday in my early teens. Great fantasy comedies.
But - I can see the argument that they're not representative of the series as a whole as it developed... not that I think Terry was probably setting out to write a massive series at the time he was writing those books. Anyway they'll always have a place in my heart.
However, it's a series that ran for decades ago I compare it to something like Doctor Who on TV where people have favourite eras or favourite stories from different era's, and those books are like the first few William Hartnell stories which are great but still have some moments that jar with what came later...
I tried reading Mort, but it's very... dense. While I do enjoy the occasional book with flowery, descriptive language, I got a quarter of the way through it and no real plot happened.
To each their own!
I find the overall plot is usually secondary to Pratchett using it as a means to talk about whatever. Or cracking absurdly good jokes. And while the plots can be good, Pratchett is really about the journey.
Ah friend, may i interest you in some nice meat pies? Currently two for the price of three. Black crunchy bits included.