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Eric the Mauve posted:
I've always thought half of Reaper Man is top tier. It's just the Windle Poons stuff drags it down.
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Sep 9, 2017 01:00
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Repo Man is one of the greatest American movies by the by. (It sounds like Reaper Man so it's relevant.)
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Sep 9, 2017 01:08
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Xander77 posted:I don't bother reading his stuff (he never has anything of value to say) but I do occasionally listen to videos of him reading. Like an audio-book with the occasional commentary / reaction. I gave a couple of his Discworld reviews a shake, and it just seems like he really doesn't enjoy reading Discworld. And also completely misses the point a whole lot.
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Sep 9, 2017 01:12
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Eric the Mauve posted:
Not necessarily in that order, right? 
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Sep 9, 2017 06:48
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cptn_dr posted:I gave a couple of his Discworld reviews a shake, and it just seems like he really doesn't enjoy reading Discworld. And also completely misses the point a whole lot. I've read/watched a couple now (I've never heard of the guy before this), I'd disagree that he doesn't enjoy it - although yeah it's a pretty superficial gloss. And while it's nice he provides trigger warnings for people (although it makes the expected content much worse - a rape warning for a chapter in Witched Abroad - for the sole mention of Greebo doing cat-things), and aims at inclusivity, it's a tad zealous when pointing out that "mad", "idiot", "stupid" are present in the text. And self-censoring the word "crazy", (as "c***y") which gave me pause when I tried to figure out what was "cunty" about something.
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Sep 9, 2017 13:18
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kanonvandekempen posted:I bought The shepherd's crown the moment it was published, but until last week it sat unread in my kindle. I couldn't get myself to read what would be the last discworld book I could ever read. This week on a holiday I finally pushed myself to do it, fighting tears in the second chapter, finishing the book in two days. It was clearly unfinished, but it was a good way to end the series. There is a part where I realized that something really bad was going to happen and I honestly considered to stop reading before I got to that.
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Sep 9, 2017 17:27
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Eric the Mauve posted:e: And actually two of my personal all time favorite one-off quotes are from Thief of Time, one for pure comedy and the other for funny-because-it's-true value: One of my favorite Discworld quotes is from Thief of Time too. I remember posting it on Facebook when I heard Pratchett died. quote:Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.
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Sep 9, 2017 17:53
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chiasaur11 posted:I've always thought half of Reaper Man is top tier. It's just the Windle Poons stuff drags it down. I recently reread Reaper Man and it has the biggest quality gap between the A and B stories I can think of in Discworld. The parts with Death hit that wonderful mix of funny and touching that Pratchett does so well, but everything with Windle is just a chore to get through. I ended up skipping everything about that plotline once it got to the wizards fighting the shopping carts. I'm currently on Wyrd Sisters and while I don't care for it that much overall, I did have something of a laughing fit over this. Not exactly the smartest joke out there but it hit my sleep deprived brain just right. quote:‘Meat is extremely bad for the digestive system,’ said Magrat. ‘If you could see inside your colon you’d be horrified.’
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Sep 9, 2017 17:57
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Pesky Splinter posted:And while it's nice he provides trigger warnings for people (although it makes the expected content much worse - a rape warning for a chapter in Witched Abroad - for the sole mention of Greebo doing cat-things), and aims at inclusivity, it's a tad zealous when pointing out that "mad", "idiot", "stupid" are present in the text. And self-censoring the word "crazy", (as "c***y") which gave me pause when I tried to figure out what was "cunty" about something.
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Sep 9, 2017 20:19
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bloom posted:I recently reread Reaper Man and it has the biggest quality gap between the A and B stories I can think of in Discworld. The parts with Death hit that wonderful mix of funny and touching that Pratchett does so well, but everything with Windle is just a chore to get through. I ended up skipping everything about that plotline once it got to the wizards fighting the shopping carts. The wizard b-plots are almost always the worst parts of the books they're in.
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Sep 9, 2017 22:38
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Reaper Man has great highs and is definitely in the upper 1/4 of Disc books.Alhazred posted:The wizard b-plots are almost always the worst parts of the books they're in. The wizard b-plot is the best part of Moving Pictures not named Gaspode.
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Sep 12, 2017 02:39
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So, I'm relatively new to discworld but really loved the first several I read (Equal Rites, Wyrd sisters, Small Gods, Mort) and I kinda wanna branch out. Do I really sacrifice anything by not following the reading order for the arcs? Thinking about jumping to interesting times or masquerade.
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Sep 12, 2017 03:56
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meanolmrcloud posted:So, I'm relatively new to discworld but really loved the first several I read (Equal Rites, Wyrd sisters, Small Gods, Mort) and I kinda wanna branch out. Do I really sacrifice anything by not following the reading order for the arcs? Thinking about jumping to interesting times or masquerade. Now that you're already hooked, I recommend just reading everything in published order. With the exception of Small Gods, the published order is also chronological order, and since the different storylines sometimes bleed into one another a bit, it's more satisfying to read them that way in my opinion. Although, if you want to skip stuff, skip The Color Of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, and If you do read Interesting Times, be aware that it is more or less a continuation of the storyline of The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, but all you really need to know is (minor spoilers for The Color of Magic) Rincewind had some weird-rear end adventures with the Discworld equivalent of a stereotypical Japanese tourist, during which he acquired a sentient suitcase that trundles around on hundreds of tiny legs and eats people.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:01
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meanolmrcloud posted:So, I'm relatively new to discworld but really loved the first several I read (Equal Rites, Wyrd sisters, Small Gods, Mort) and I kinda wanna branch out. Do I really sacrifice anything by not following the reading order for the arcs? Thinking about jumping to interesting times or masquerade. I'd recommend against Night Watch being your first in the Watch series, as I think it's more effective if you're already familiar with the characters, but that aside you can honestly read them in any order. There's character continuity, but no real arcs or plot that requires reading them in order - each book is a self-contained story.
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Sep 12, 2017 11:18
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The wizards get better the further away they are from being the B-plot. (Partly this is because Pratchett generally repeats everybody's basic joke beats for new readers, so the less someone appears in a book, the more repetitive their performance is.)
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Sep 12, 2017 17:30
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precision posted:The wizard b-plot is the best part of Moving Pictures not named Gaspode.
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Sep 12, 2017 17:49
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meanolmrcloud posted:So, I'm relatively new to discworld but really loved the first several I read (Equal Rites, Wyrd sisters, Small Gods, Mort) and I kinda wanna branch out. Do I really sacrifice anything by not following the reading order for the arcs? Thinking about jumping to interesting times or masquerade. Nah reading order doesn't matter at all in anything except maybe the Tiffany Aching books.
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Sep 12, 2017 18:12
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Their little bits in Soul Music aren't awful but I think I'm just biased because both "BORN TO RUNE" and "BORN TO LIVE FATS DIE YO GNU" make me laugh every time. BORN TO EAT BIG DINNERS
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Sep 12, 2017 18:38
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As far as reading order I would vaguely advise reading the internal storylines in their respective order, but if you don't it doesn't really matter. So: DEATH: Mort Reaper Man Soul Music Thief of Time WITCHES Equal Rites Wyrd Sisters Witches Abroad Lords and Ladies Maskerade Carpe Jugulum The Wee Free Men A Hat Made of Sky Wintersmith I Shall Wear Midnight The Shepherd's Crown CITY WATCH: Guards! Guards! Men at Arms Feet of Clay Jingo The Fifth Elephant Night Watch Thud! Snuff RINCEWIND The Colour of Magic The Light Fantastic Sourcery [strike]Faust[/strike] Eric Interesting Times The Last Continent MOIST VON LIPWIG Going Postal Making Money Raising Steam
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Sep 12, 2017 18:51
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I'm an advocate of publication order, insofar as I'm an advocate of telling anyone how to read anything. If you mainline a series, or two or three in succession, you get a much increased focus on character development but the sense of how the setting itself is evolving, and how TP evolved as a writer, is almost completely lost. Publication order preserves the sense of the evolution of the setting and you lose very little of the character development.
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Sep 13, 2017 01:06
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Rand Brittain posted:As far as reading order I would vaguely advise reading the internal storylines in their respective order, but if you don't it doesn't really matter.
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Sep 13, 2017 08:25
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Pesky Splinter posted:I've read/watched a couple now (I've never heard of the guy before this), I'd disagree that he doesn't enjoy it - although yeah it's a pretty superficial gloss. lol
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Sep 13, 2017 08:51
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chiasaur11 posted:I've always thought half of Reaper Man is top tier. It's just the Windle Poons stuff drags it down. yeah "what if a zombie was defending himself against malls" would probably make for a decent photoshop thread, but not a half a book
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Sep 13, 2017 08:55
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Hogge Wild posted:yeah And they're so disconnected, too. Like, they share an inciting incident, and DEATH shows up again at the end. That's it. Yes, it's said the shopping mall thing is from DEATH being on holiday, supposedly, but there's plenty of things like that mess when he's around, too. It's weird.
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Sep 13, 2017 09:41
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Rand Brittain posted:As far as reading order I would vaguely advise reading the internal storylines in their respective order, but if you don't it doesn't really matter. Those are all stand-alone, so reading order is optional Rand Brittain posted:WITCHES First, Tiffany Aching should be considered its own series and is more of YA. Equal Rites is stand-alone. Rand Brittain posted:CITY WATCH: No issue here. Also, why the hell does people keep on insisting they should start reading at Night Watch? The drop in quality in this series happens in Jingo. Rand Brittain posted:RINCEWIND Mostly since the rest of them starts with RinceWind appearing out of existence in weird places. Rand Brittain posted:MOIST VON LIPWIG
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Sep 13, 2017 12:16
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I really don’t know why people advocate for weird reading order type poo poo. Just read them in the order they came out... Like any book series. You know because that’s the order they were released...
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Sep 13, 2017 13:33
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[quote="Bum the Sad" post="476353808"] I really don’t know why people advocate for weird reading order type poo poo. Just read them in the order they came out... Like any book series. You know because that’s the order they were released... [/quit] Most people who have read any long "series"* of books did not read them in order. They started with whichever one they happened to pick up (very likely the newest one) at a book store and then from there who knows. I'm not advocating one way or another but there's nothing "normal" about reading a bunch of non-serial* books from what, four different decades?, in publishing order. *) The Discworld novels are not a series in the way that poo poo like Eddings where they literally leave you with a "To be continued..." every volume.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:38
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start with mort and from that on continue reading them in order, then read the first books
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Sep 13, 2017 15:56
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“Jerry Cotton” posted:Farts I just decided hey I’m gonna start reading this nerd poo poo one day and picked up the first four at B&N.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:05
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Read them in alphabetical order imo.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:22
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Dirty Frank posted:Read them in alphabetical order imo.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:23
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I recommend reading them in reverse order by length.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:51
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Read his short story in Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, then stop.
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Sep 13, 2017 17:53
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Segway Rave posted:Read his short story in Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, then stop.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:56
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That's the one with Granny and the yearly witches' competition, right? It's godsdamn amazing too. Publication order starting with Mort is maybe the best way, but there's a lot to be said for reading them in whatever order you're able to get them after borrowing one in the middle from your English teacher and then finding out you can't easily get the rest, so you buy the ones you can and dream about the ones you can't and also print out the entirety of Pyramids on the school printer when no ones paying attention.
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Sep 13, 2017 22:38
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That's the one with Granny and the yearly witches' competition, right? The Sea and Little Fishes, yeah. I just had to pick up my chapbook again and flick through it. Reading "A Little Advice For Life" will never stop making me smile and feel sad. 
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Sep 13, 2017 22:47
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Publication order it is! Thanks all.
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Sep 14, 2017 03:57
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Jerry Cotton posted:[quote="Bum the Sad" post="476353808"] At least in Eddings' case his series were only series because doorstoppers weren't seen as viable in the early 1980's. I think it did him a service, though, as his attempt to do the whole story in a single book with The Redemption of Althalus came off as rushed and much less polished.
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Sep 14, 2017 05:02
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I know Night Watch is usually the winner by acclamation but I will go to my grave believing that Small Gods was the absolute peak of Discworld
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Sep 15, 2017 01:34
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Eric the Mauve posted:I know Night Watch is usually the winner by acclamation but I will go to my grave believing that Small Gods was the absolute peak of Discworld They're my top two and I can never decide what order they should be in.
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Sep 15, 2017 04:13
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