Pratchet questionsFollow

One of my professors has reccomended that I pick up some terry Pratchet books. She claims that the books are right up my alley in humor. She isn't the only person that has told me I would like these books. But there is a problem...

Usually when a large amount of people tell me that a book is right up my alley, I wind up despising it.

Any tips on Pratchet books that would be worth reading? I have yet to be able to find the first book in the Discworld series at Half-Price books (I'm a cheap *******), but they do have a bunch of the nonDiscworld books.


Thanks.

The first ten or so are always worth it, afterwards it's often close to good but not exactly the same anymore.

Still, my favourite is 'Sourcery'. Although the first two might be the best to begin with: 'Colour of magic' and 'The light fantastic'.

I've read all the Discworld books (I think like 30 or so?) so, I like to think I'm an expert of sorts :-) I actually didn't read them in order... you really don't need to read the first few books in order... and when I did go back and read the first few, I found them to be a little lacking. Pratchett became a better writer the older he got. Some books are stand alones in the series and can be read as seperate books (such as Pyramids, Small Gods, Moving Pictures, etc.). Other books follow recuring characters and do need to be read in order (such as the Death characters that starts with Mort, and then continues with Soul Music, Reaper Man, etc.). Personally, I stay away from any of the books that have Rincewind as a main character because I find him to be a flat character with little depth. I much prefer the series books dealing with the Witches, Death, or the Guards.
In addition, Pratchett also writes children's books--still set in Discworld--which honestly are just as good as his other Discworld books, they just have younger characters in them. Some of those are The Amazing Maurice, The Wee Free Men, and A Hat Full of Sky.
Stay very very far away from any books that he wrote before Discworld as they are barely tollerable.
His writing style in Discworld is similar to Douglas Adams, but with a much brighter tone to them. He parodies everything eventually in his books, from The Phantom of the Opera, to MacBeth, to Quantum Physics... you name it.
If you're a video gamer, he also has 2 Discworld games for computer and Playstation available. They're a bit old and dated, but the second one does have Eric Idle doing the voice of the main character :-)
Hope this helps! Read him, he's a riot.

Well, it's hard but I think this site got some good info.

List

That link is basically just a list of the Discworld books, not even complete I believe but the first books are pretty vital to start with considering all the different story lines in later books.

Here's another view on the Discworld, one which tells what book best to read first if you are interested in either Wizards or the witches or the Watchmen:

Order

It tells you what book to read first if you wanted to stick to the Watchmen for instance, and in what order the rest should be read then.


If you liked Rincewind, definitely check out 'FAUST - Erik' and ofcourse my favourite 'Sourcery'.


edited to add: both links don't appear to work very well, strangely enough :(. Nevertheless, for the second link, go to the main page and just search for Pratchett, the fifth result is the page you need to see the reading order.

edited again: the first link is corrected and should work properly after using your very handy tip! Thanks for that, I'll try and remember it.

The second link is harder, I'll keep working on it as it is a rather handy site.



Edited, Sat May 14 20:00:46 2005 by Zieveraar

Edited, Sun May 15 05:42:06 2005 by Zieveraar

Edited, Sun May 15 05:44:11 2005 by Zieveraar

That second link is exactly what I was looking for, Thank you soo much!

Pratchett's pretty good, though I've not really got on well with some of his newer novels; still got A Hat Full of Sky unread on a shelf somewhere.

His best ones are: Good Omens, Lords and Ladies, Masquerade, Small Gods, The Truth and Sourcery. Sourcery was the first book I ever laughed out loud over. Dammit, I can still remember it; the line about Rincewind hiding in a tower full of books with an orangutan, a newt (formerly Lord Vetinari) and a small elderly dog with halitosis sucking on his foot.

Met him a couple of times at booksignings, and stood next to him at a urinal in a pub in Suffolk once.

Ack that the same day Neil Gaiman is going to be doing a signing down in Washington DC. Guess I can't be 2 places at same time yet.


Gaiman is going to be Guest of Honor at Balticon 40 in case anyone interested. We going to have great Con next year if our con chair and vice con chair can handle the being one person again. She wanted both jobs so she has no one to blame but herself.

A great way to familiarize yourself with the Discworld series is to take a look at it, as well as the other Pratchet books, on Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld ]. They have a great write up on each book, as well as some thumbs of authorized artist renditions of some of the characters. My personal favorite so far is 'Going Postal'.

While there is a sort of chronological order to certain storylines (Rincewind/Unseen University, the Night's Watch (some involving Carrot and Angua, some involving Vimes), quite a few of the stories are stand-alone. I'd recommend reading them in any order you can.

The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are older books, before Pratchett really hit his stride.


Huge recommendations, in no particular order:

Small Gods - has Death, but it's about religion, so that's a given!

Going Postal - standalone, has the Patrician

Feet of Clay - Nights Watch book

Maskerade - great Phantom of the Opera spoof

Interesting Times - a Rincewind book, the first I read, completely worth it though; got me hooked

Hogfather - How can you not love Death?

Night Watch - for a solid grounding in same

Men At Arms - for more Night Watch development

Reaper Man - Death as a simple farmer :)

The Truth - standalone, good read


Good luck. Pratchett's one of my favs.