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What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic.3D Megadoodoo posted:Colour of Magic is the best one. It's pretty good. There's a weird kind of joyous madness to the whole thing that I really like.
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Aug 6, 2020 11:54
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I started with Colour of Magic as well. And a translation, at that. I'd I mostly kept reading just because I was really starved for fantasy books as a teenager rather than because I actually, like, enjoyed it.
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Aug 6, 2020 12:22
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:*I find it funny that when you think about it, the fantasy setting in popular culture that's probably closest in setting to Discworld since Discworld stopped being a parody of generic medieval fantasy is probably Warhammer Fantasy, of all things. Pratchett was in talks with Games Workshop back in the early days about writing for Warhammer so the connection maybe isn't as far off as you might think.
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Aug 6, 2020 12:50
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Roller Coast Guard posted:Pratchett was in talks with Games Workshop back in the early days about writing for Warhammer so the connection maybe isn't as far off as you might think. Are you saying Pratchett didn't write the bird people?
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Aug 6, 2020 12:51
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. My first was Thief of Time, and it’s still my favorite Discworld book. The Death and Susan books are my favorites, there’s something about cosmological Discworld that I adore
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Aug 6, 2020 13:11
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. My first was a copy of "Men at Arms" loaned to me by my HS lit teacher. I was dubious at first, because surely this couldn't be as good as HHG2G, right? Or I'd have heard of it. Hooked right away. Immediately borrowed the other 2 she had which I don't actually remember atm. I think one of them might have been Reaper Man. Anyway, I think Men at Arms might be an even better entry to the Guards books than Guards Guards. It's got that more modern AM feel. Everything is a little more polished and Vimes is somewhat sorted out.
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Aug 6, 2020 13:27
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? When I started reading Discworld there were only two books, so I began with the first one.
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Aug 6, 2020 13:42
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Pyramids for me- I was 10 or 11 and used to really enjoy boarding-school stories, so it was sold to me on that basis. I read up to the then current book in the next two months.
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Aug 6, 2020 13:58
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Moving Pictures when I was 12 or so. Then when I was in high school, I picked up Men At Arms, saw that Detritus was in that one too and fell in love. That was also when I became the sole member of the Carrot Ironfounderrson Fan Club.
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Aug 6, 2020 16:33
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I started with Thud! I’m also ready to fight anyone who says I Shall Wear Midnight is bad.
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Aug 6, 2020 18:21
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. Men at Arms, which is IMO a great starting point because it's the first 'modern' Watch book and the Watch is the best storyline, followed closely by Witches.
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Aug 6, 2020 18:31
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Mine was Soul Music, which as a tiny 9 year old proto-metal head I loved. Then I think it was Mort and Feet of Clay. It was all from my primary school's tiny library. Picked it up cos I recognised it from my uncle's pile of books and then stuck with them cos they were fun and I was sick of buying kids books with my pocket money and finishing them the same day.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:23
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Jingo. Recommended by a friend who could have recomended me most anything he wrote up to then, but they knew exactly what would resonate best with me. I'd been given the Johnny Maxwell books as a kid and liked them well enough, but Jingo was one of those special moments that only comes along a few times in your life when you just know this is going to stay with you forever, and I don't think anything else he'd written to that point could have resonated nearly as well.Beachcomber posted:Anyway, I think Men at Arms might be an even better entry to the Guards books than Guards Guards. It's got that more modern AM feel. Everything is a little more polished and Vimes is somewhat sorted out. It's also one of the first books where he starts writing in an "[other genre], but with fantasy trappings" kind of way instead of "fantasy, with trappings of [other genre]".  point has been made, extensive bloviating on an incredibly minor matter follows This is tied up with one of those absolutely miniscule details that I find fascinating out of all proportion to its importance and prominence; in Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms, Vimes is almost always a guard, and he usually thinks of himself as a guard. quote:Captain Sam Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch), sat in the draughty anteroom to the Patrician's audience chamber with his best cloak on and his breastplate polished and his helmet on his knees. quote:'And of course I shall have to promote a new chief officer for the Night Watch,' said the Patrician. 'Have you any suggestions, captain?' quote:And it emerged that no-one, no-one, knew where he lived, or even if there was a Mrs Kepple. They had a whip-round to bury him, Vimes remembered. There were just guards at the funeral . . . quote:'You can't just kill me. That's the law. And you're a guard,' Dr Cruces repeated. He licked his dry lips. The word appears about 70 times (only occasionally in different contexts, and when it does it's often to make wordplay about guards guarding things): "police" is only in there twice, "policeman" eight times. "Copper" is there 18 times, but a lot of them are about the material; its most notable use by far is the one time Vimes uses it of himself: quote:Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn't a good copper, but he'd probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him. There was a certain core of stubborn bloody-mindedness there which upset important people, and anyone who upsets important people is automatically hot a good copper. But he'd developed instincts. You couldn't live on the streets of a city all your life without them. In the same way that the whole jungle subtly changes at the distant approach of the hunter, there was an alteration in the feel of the city. "Watch" and "Watchman" are in there a lot, but I can't find Vimes calling himself a watchman, although he does call other people "watchman". He is very clearly and definitely a guard. By the time Feet of Clay rolls around, the word "guard" appears only twice; once in Vimes's full title at the start (it's still the City Guard, not the City Watch), and once when he thinks back to old guard crossbows. Most of the words above barely appear in that book, which itself is interesting when you consider it's probably the most police-y pure detectoring story in the series. Then in Jingo, there's lots of "police", "copper" and "Watch" flying about (ironically, by this point Vimes is starting to move outwith the usual province of detectorers), but the only time "guard" appears is as a verb, or to describe the Klatchian guards in El-Khali. I'd love to be able to ask how deliberate this was... Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 21:29
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Interesting Times for me, but I was aware of them for many years before that. I pretty much devoured all the other Discworld books at the time over the next few weeks.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:31
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. Small Gods. Then I went back to Colour of Magic which was...an experience.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:36
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Crap, I completely forgot about the Maxwell books. Only You Can Save Mankind would be my first- I got it from one of those in-school book catalogues that would come around once a term or so. As I was at the time obsessively playing Wing Commander on my then top-of-the-lone 386 SX16 (no sound and a gravis game pad to control it) it stood out to me in the catalogue. I was not disappointed.
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Aug 6, 2020 22:51
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Mine was carpe jugulum, and I'm pretty sure I picked it up just by reading the blurb in the back and thinking "this can't be as hilarious as it sounds".and it wasn't.it was even better. I immediately fell in love with the witches and went back 2 days latter and bought all discworld books in the shop, which if I'm not mistaken was pyramids, Eric, Mort, sourcery and wyrd sisters which was a significant chunk of my money because I was a poor high school student. This was back in 1998, I had to order the books in the shop and they would take about a month to arrive because English is not my mother tongue and I kind miss that anticipation of when a new book is gonna come in.
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Aug 6, 2020 23:08
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. Reaper Man was first. Then Eric, followed by Soul Music. I enjoyed them, but Discworld didn't really stick with me the way it does now. I'm glad I eventually acquired the taste.
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Aug 6, 2020 23:55
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I think the PS1 game was my first interaction with a Pratchett thing, though my uncle read the hell out of the books before he passed away, just never indicated that he did or tried to get me to read them. I think the first Discworld book I read was Mort, then I quickly went back and read the first 3, then the rest in order very quickly. I was a voracious reader back in the day, these days it takes me a couple months to get through one book.
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Aug 7, 2020 00:12
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The first Discworld I read was a short story in a collection of shorts by various fantasy authors. It was a Granny Wetherwax story, I had no context for what was going on but I enjoyed it enough to seek out The Color of Magic and went from there.
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Aug 7, 2020 01:09
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Lords and Ladies, from the school library when I was 13 or 14. I'm not sure why that one. I loved it despite not knowing the history, and immediately went back and started from Colour of Magic. Witches books are still my favourite setting to this day.
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Aug 7, 2020 01:21
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I remember my first Discworld novel very clearly and can even tell you exactly when it was: Late April, 2009. I was a sophomore in high school (Apologies to everyone that I just made feel old  ), and was visiting Atlanta as part of a robotics competition. Walking through a small bookstore in the CNN center looking for something to read on the bus ride home, I picked up The Colour of Magic and ended up buying it on the recommendation of a friend. I blazed through it, loved it, and immediately started scouring my local library and Borders bookstore for more, until I'd eventually gone through the entire series.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:18
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I'm a little disappointed to find that I can't remember my first discworld novel. I've been reading them so long, and from such a young age that they've just been a constant backbeat to my life. I do remember that I read them all out of order when I did, not understanding how things linked up until one day it all sort of assembled in my head. I think my brother or maybe my dad had copies of some of the books, and I picked them up because I was one of those kids who was always reading, and moreover, was always looking for new fantasy stuff. I must have been maybe 8 or 9? I remember finding copies of Only You Can Save Mankind and Diggers in our basement, too. At some point I started actively hunting for them in bookshops, especially if they had the UK covers. I think that Thief of TIme was the first one that I bought when it came out, and I remember being blown away by it. I was also a member of the Carrot Ironfoundersson fan club. I remember thinking how cool it was that a person could inspire others around them to be better just by believing they were good people. My schoolfriends who also read the books thought I was an idiot not to like the grittier characters and to think that way. But I'm glad that I did, honestly. I think it made me a better person, in some ways.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:34
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I started with Equal Rites in year 7 from the school library, then blazed through all the ones up to date at the time in a few weeks.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:13
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I also liked Carrot and just wanted him and Angua to get a happy ending.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:33
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I read the illustrated Last Hero when I was about ten, didn't get it, and then picked it up again a few years later and was hooked immediately. Started from the color of magic and worked forward from there.
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Aug 7, 2020 07:41
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GodFish posted:I read the illustrated Last Hero when I was about ten, didn't get it, and then picked it up again a few years later and was hooked immediately. Started from the color of magic and worked forward from there. Wait...what would have happened to Angua on the moon?
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Aug 7, 2020 08:38
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My first Pratchett (not just discworld) was Truckers at age 7. It's been incredible re reading that trilogy over the following years, and having more and more of its weird double-reverse-scifi structure unfold for me.Khizan posted:Men at Arms, which is IMO a great starting point because it's the first 'modern' Watch book and the Watch is the best storyline, followed closely by Witches. Yeah, if I were to recommend a starting Pratchett, it'd be this one.
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Aug 7, 2020 09:06
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Small Gods is another good option.
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Aug 7, 2020 09:42
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"What is the best starting point to this incredibly versatile series" is a dumb question to try to answer. (Asking the question isn't dumb because obviously the asker does not know that it's dumb to try to answer it, yet.)
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Aug 7, 2020 10:04
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3D Megadoodoo posted:"What is the best starting point to this incredibly versatile series" is a dumb question to try to answer. (Asking the question isn't dumb because obviously the asker does not know that it's dumb to try to answer it, yet.) it's mort
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Aug 7, 2020 15:44
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3D Megadoodoo posted:"What is the best starting point to this incredibly versatile series" is a dumb question to try to answer. (Asking the question isn't dumb because obviously the asker does not know that it's dumb to try to answer it, yet.) It's not a stupid question, but the answer depends entirely on who's trying to start. If you'd tried to start me with the Witches, or Death, or Moving Pictures, or Pyramids, I may well have just bounced straight off it and never given Pratchett a second thought. However, if I'm recommending to my mate who's a massive theatre nerd, I'm absolutely starting them off with the likes of Wyrd Sisters or Maskerade; the guy who loves rock and roll gets Soul Music; the crime maven gets Men at Arms or Feet of Clay; the YA lover gets Tiffany Aching (or possibly Johnny Maxwell); the Fritz Lieber fan gets The Colour of Magic. That's part of the greatness of Discworld, no matter who you are, there's probably something that'll speak deeply to you in a way that most of the other books won't, but once the setting and world-view bites you, it's generally entertaining enough to carry you through the books that don't speak to you in the same way. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 7, 2020 |
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Aug 7, 2020 16:41
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Tree Bucket posted:What was the first Discworld everyone read? I started with "Interesting Times" and it absolutely blew my 12-year-old mind. I had no idea what was going on but "your wife is a big hippo" and "there he is! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!" were pure magic. Equal rites here cause it was one of few Pratchett books that was translated into Swedish at that time. Ie 30 years ago or so. Interesting Times is my favourite, mostly due to the cynicism with regards to any kind of revolution that Pratchett describes through Rincewind. Then again, I consider Vimes to be a new protagonist compared to Esme and Rincewind.
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Aug 7, 2020 17:52
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Also Equal Rites for me. I ended up liking other books in the series a lot more, but it still intrigued the hell out of me.
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Aug 7, 2020 20:59
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effervescible posted:Also Equal Rites for me. I ended up liking other books in the series a lot more, but it still intrigued the hell out of me. Equal Rites would have had an effect on Discworld if it was a later book rather than book three. Female wizards is basically a footnote in the series compared to the things happening to the world during the Watch series. On the other hand, Sourcery pretty much ends Discworld so ....
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Aug 7, 2020 21:07
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Detritus looks good.
The_Doctor fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Aug 7, 2020 |
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Aug 7, 2020 21:08
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I definitely read the Johnny books and I think Truckers/Diggers before my first Discworld book. Interesting Times was my first disc book though. Picked up second hand around 1996/7ish. Then filled in the rest gradually. When I was a kid I used to read Hogfather every Christmas, think I'm going to resurrect that tradition this year! Night Watch is probably my favourite, and the Watch series is probably my fave 'strand' of the Discworld. Love Small Gods and Thief of Time as well.
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Aug 7, 2020 21:48
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The_Doctor posted:Detritus looks good. Still lmaoing at young skinny hot vigilante Sybil Ramkin.
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Aug 7, 2020 22:08
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Pyramids was my first, a friend gave it to me as a birthday gift. I remember being disappointed finding out later the characters and setting were a one-off.
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Aug 7, 2020 22:15
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I get that man at arms presents the more established version of the watch, but the ending gets a extra kick if you follow carrots arc from guards guards. Same as jingo, for me. The rolodex death call really hit me in the feels, because I've followed these characters in the previous novels.
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Aug 7, 2020 22:15
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