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Anyway I've read all the Pratchett books what do I read now?
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Jul 27, 2016 21:59
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Did you read Good Omens? If not, read Good Omens.
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Jul 27, 2016 22:00
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Kajeesus posted:Did you read Good Omens? If not, read Good Omens. I did actually it was OK. I am probably going to read it again soonish.
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Jul 27, 2016 22:02
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VagueRant posted:I guess this makes me a terrible Pratchett fan, but I could never get through the Witches series. As a guy who's just done the Death/Watch and a couple of other books, does Shepard's Crown work as a standalone? If you don't already care about the Witches or Tiffany Aching, I think you'll have a hard time with The Shepherd's Crown.
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Jul 27, 2016 22:08
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VagueRant posted:I guess this makes me a terrible Pratchett fan, but I could never get through the Witches series. As a guy who's just done the Death/Watch and a couple of other books, does Shepard's Crown work as a standalone? Are you starting with Equal Rites? If you are struggling with that one, consider skipping that and going straight to Wyrd Sisters.
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Jul 27, 2016 22:29
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Jerry Cotton posted:Anyway I've read all the Pratchett books what do I read now? They're not nearly as good, but Robert Asprin's "Myth" books are remembered fondly by 13-year-old me. I read the first ten or so (before he took a 10+ year break or whatever) between reading Douglas Adams and discovering Pratchett, and they fit nicely in that slot.
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Jul 28, 2016 00:16
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Reading Asprin's Myth Adventures books after reading Discworld is like eating a stale, re-heated Big Mac after eating a delicately-seasoned, perfectly-cooked steak. I have a soft spot for Myth Adventures because it was my dad's favorite book series -- the man's bookshelves were filled with off-beat sci-fi and fantasy novels, including the Stainless Steel Rat Choose-Your-Own Adventure paperback -- but they're objectively awful, especially the later novels. Still love Aahz, though. I still read his dialogue in my dad's voice. 
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Jul 28, 2016 04:03
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Jerry Cotton posted:Anyway I've read all the Pratchett books what do I read now? All of them? Even the Mappes? Even the limited edition Mappes?
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Jul 28, 2016 06:54
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Tunicate posted:like I thought he was gonna go with something about hte orc hivemind vs being part of a sports group and that just fizzled The Orc plot was, I believe, intended to tie in to whatever he was doing with Uberwald, probably for the next Moist book that will never be written. dordreff posted:Even the Brain Problems books like Snuff and Raising Steam are worth reading, they're just not up to the normal exceedingly high Discworld standard. Read them all. That's the killer, and Rob goes into it in the Afterword to Shepard's Crown. Pterry's whole writing process was about iterative revision. He'd write whatever parts of a story stood out to him at the time, then go back at it over months or years and tweak, add to, polish, and connect the bits until a publisher hit him with a brick and stole the manuscript for publication. It's heartbreakingly obvious where in his writing he hit the point of no longer being able to keep a dozen stories in his mind at a time, and realized he just plain was running out. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 09:05
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Screaming Idiot posted:Reading Asprin's Myth Adventures books after reading Discworld is like eating a stale, re-heated Big Mac after eating a delicately-seasoned, perfectly-cooked steak. I have a soft spot for Myth Adventures because it was my dad's favorite book series -- the man's bookshelves were filled with off-beat sci-fi and fantasy novels, including the Stainless Steel Rat Choose-Your-Own Adventure paperback -- but they're objectively awful, especially the later novels. I read them when I was around 12-14 or so and I enjoyed the first one, so I kept reading. Somewhere around book eight I realized that the only reason I was still reading them was inertia, and that they had declined in quality so rapidly that I'm pretty sure the last couple I read are the absolute worst novels I have ever read to completion. I was disgusted with myself for having read as far as I did. Since then I've mostly blocked them out of my memory.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:23
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chiasaur11 posted:All of them? What about the intros in the instruction manuals for the games?
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Jul 28, 2016 15:54
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Screaming Idiot posted:Reading Asprin's Myth Adventures books after reading Discworld is like eating a stale, re-heated Big Mac after eating a delicately-seasoned, perfectly-cooked steak. I have a soft spot for Myth Adventures because it was my dad's favorite book series -- the man's bookshelves were filled with off-beat sci-fi and fantasy novels, including the Stainless Steel Rat Choose-Your-Own Adventure paperback -- but they're objectively awful, especially the later novels Maybe so, it's been a very long time since I revisited them. I did recently revisit some of the Stainless Steel Rat books though, and I think they hold up pretty well. Definitely fun, breezy adventure.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:58
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A bunch of the U.S. editions of his earlier stuff had Piers Anthony quotes on the front about how good they were, so that Piers Anthony fans would give this unknown author a try.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:16
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"His" being Pratchett, not Aspirin.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:17
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Although you might need some Aspirin after reading a bunch of Piers Anthony books!!!!
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Jul 29, 2016 00:18
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Piers Anthony was even worse than George R. R. Martin, good gravy I regret reading any of his books so much.
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Jul 29, 2016 01:38
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I was buying a present for my nephew for his birthday and I guess everyone in Finland who reads Pratchett reads it in English because there were basically no Finnish translations in the book stores. loving nerds 
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Jul 29, 2016 01:42
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precision posted:Piers Anthony was even worse than George R. R. Martin, good gravy I regret reading any of his books so much. Somehow this is true. I don't even mean regarding prose or plot or whatever, just creepy content. At least GRRM seems to recognize that it is creepy and disgusting.
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Jul 29, 2016 02:09
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Harry Harrison's work has been described by Pratchett as the funniest SF he'd ever read, and I stand by that. The Stainless Steel Rat books are hilarious and the first Bill, the Galactic Hero is wonderful, although the later books are unreadable incoherent pun-afflicted dreck. Terry Pratchett has risen to become my favorite author because of how detailed his world is. He's one of those rare writers who made his world-building count for something, who can make what begins as a one-note gag into a compelling plot point in later books, who can give his readers a real sense of progress. He wrote better books under the influence of Alzheimer's than most famous writers did in their prime. He could write serious, horrible scenes without relying on gratuitous violence and rape -- remember the basements of the Cable Street watchhouse in Night Watch? Pratchett was such a good author he made Death a lovable character. That's an achievement I've yet to see replicated.
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Jul 29, 2016 04:22
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Jerry Cotton posted:I was buying a present for my nephew for his birthday and I guess everyone in Finland who reads Pratchett reads it in English because there were basically no Finnish translations in the book stores. loving nerds I'd say it's pretty reasonable, assuming you can read English. A lot of jokes revolve around how Pratchett played with the language. You'd need a top-notch localizer to get similar quality out of a translation, and for all I know, the Finnish translation is well below par.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:16
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Jerry Cotton posted:I was buying a present for my nephew for his birthday and I guess everyone in Finland who reads Pratchett reads it in English because there were basically no Finnish translations in the book stores. loving nerds Come to think of it my first Pratchett book was Pyramids, bought in Helsinki. One of the best books to start the series on, as luck would have it.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:32
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chiasaur11 posted:for all I know, the Finnish translation is well below par. Does this mean you haven't read any of the Finnish translations or that you haven't read any of the originals? The only translation I've read is Viikatemies back when I was in school and aside from a few of the names being "translated" (which is always a bad thing) I don't think there was anything wrong with it.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:41
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I remember reading Soul Music in swedish and being kinda confused over the names of some of the characters, partly because the pun-based names didn't translate very well, and partly because I was too young to know who Buddy Holly was.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:48
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Syncopated posted:I remember reading Soul Music in swedish and being kinda confused over the names of some of the characters, partly because the pun-based names didn't translate very well, and partly because I was too young to know who Buddy Holly was. Buddy Holly was Gary Busey.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:48
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Jerry Cotton posted:Buddy Holly was Gary Busey. Little things that you say and do make me want to beat the crap out of you...
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Jul 29, 2016 10:05
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chiasaur11 posted:I'd say it's pretty reasonable, assuming you can read English. A lot of jokes revolve around how Pratchett played with the language. You'd need a top-notch localizer to get similar quality out of a translation, and for all I know, the Finnish translation is well below par. Any language with viperless milk can manage.
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Jul 29, 2016 11:11
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Tunicate posted:Any language with viperless milk can manage. "Puns are hard to translate" is a very common idea among sweaty nerds, especially sweaty anime nerds who hold the "ooh the intricacies of Nihonese* plays on words are too subtle for our lovely Western tongues to represent" fallacy so dear. Of course, as you'll learn in any basic translation class, the question is moot since you just replace them with other, better puns in the target language. *) Translator's note: Nihonese means Nipponese in Nihonese.
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Jul 29, 2016 11:56
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That being said I want to learn French just so I can see how well they did The Benny Hill Show.
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Jul 29, 2016 11:59
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Screaming Idiot posted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(DC_Comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Like_Me
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Jul 29, 2016 11:59
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VagueRant posted:does Shepard's Crown work as a standalone? No, it really doesn't. SeanBeansShako posted:What about the intros in the instruction manuals for the games?
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Jul 29, 2016 12:03
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I hope they did. Terry half taking the piss and half saying sorry for some of the puzzles in Discworld 1 to me is such a fond memory. Some of those puzzles were just downright insane trying to find a solution for them. My 13 year old self just went to the local library and printed out a guide for that game in the end.Arbite posted:Come to think of it my first Pratchett book was Pyramids, bought in Helsinki. One of the best books to start the series on, as luck would have it. I always think of the suiting up parody in that book with the Assassin Guild's gear when I see that old device used in all sorts of media.
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Jul 29, 2016 15:22
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Perhaps not coincidental that Sandman was written by Pratchett's Good Omens co-author Neil Gaiman.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:19
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Sandman death is "lovable" if you're a terrible child nerd.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:33
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Jerry Cotton posted:"Puns are hard to translate" is a very common idea among sweaty nerds, especially sweaty anime nerds who hold the "ooh the intricacies of Nihonese* plays on words are too subtle for our lovely Western tongues to represent" fallacy so dear. Of course, as you'll learn in any basic translation class, the question is moot since you just replace them with other, better puns in the target language. German is legit hard to pun in... or maybe that's just cultural.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:47
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Jerry Cotton posted:"Puns are hard to translate" is a very common idea among sweaty nerds, especially sweaty anime nerds who hold the "ooh the intricacies of Nihonese* plays on words are too subtle for our lovely Western tongues to represent" fallacy so dear. Of course, as you'll learn in any basic translation class, the question is moot since you just replace them with other, better puns in the target language. Do you mean better than a literal translation, or better than Pratchett's puns? Because even if we accept that, in theory, someone could write better puns than Terry, why would a literal genius like that work as a translator, when they could be an author or quantum physicist?
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Jul 29, 2016 16:52
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Nerds spotted.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:55
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A lot of successful translators are authors by the way.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:58
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SeanBeansShako posted:I hope they did. Terry half taking the piss and half saying sorry for some of the puzzles in Discworld 1 to me is such a fond memory. Some of those puzzles were just downright insane trying to find a solution for them. My 13 year old self just went to the local library and printed out a guide for that game in the end. Discworld Noir had a lot of logical puzzles, except for one: At one point you have to read the notice board in a pub to progress. You have to do it at specific time and there was no indication that you had to do it.
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Jul 29, 2016 18:18
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Alhazred posted:Discworld Noir had a lot of logical puzzles, except for one: At one point you have to read the notice board in a pub to progress. You have to do it at specific time and there was no indication that you had to do it. Ouch, good god. I remembering stumbling over that eventually. I just remembered too that I manually wrote down a walkthrough section for Discworld 2 copying straight from the teletex pages it was being posted on. God.
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Jul 29, 2016 18:36
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The only thing I remember from Discworld 2 are the numerous "puzzles" that only required you to realize an area had more than one screen to it and was just drawn to fool you into thinking it didn't.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:06
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