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PresterJohn posted:I didn't like it. I liked Moving Pictures more. I liked Monstrous Regiment much more than either. No, I'm actually curious. Usually in Pratchett topics I get nothing but across-the-board adoration (except for where Equal Rites and Monstrous Regiment are concerned), so I'd like to hear issues taken with some of his other books. That sort of opinion can be useful. If it were not for that sort of opinion I would still think Stephen King was universally adulated.
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Oct 15, 2007 23:16
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PresterJohn posted:I didn't like it. I liked Moving Pictures more. I liked Monstrous Regiment much more than either. Sorry I just wanted to repeat the question because of your response to it, I never managed to finish Eric and I love Monstrous Regiment.
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Oct 16, 2007 02:14
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Grum posted:Sorry I just wanted to repeat the question because of your response to it, I never managed to finish Eric and I love Monstrous Regiment. What did you like about Monstrous Regiment? I just found it extremely predictable -- I wasn't a quarter of the way through the book before I guessed what the big "surprise" at the end was going to be. And why do people not like equal rites? I mean, it's one of the earliest discworld books so deserves some slack, it has decent pacing, a decent plot, good characters, things happen that are surprises, etc.
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Oct 16, 2007 02:20
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Calenth posted:What did you like about Monstrous Regiment? I just found it extremely predictable -- I wasn't a quarter of the way through the book before I guessed what the big "surprise" at the end was going to be. I mean, honestly. The title of the book gives the so-called surprise ending away.
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Oct 16, 2007 10:50
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To tie all this discussion back to the thread title, I think there's a shift early in the series from parody-gag books to character-driven stories. I believe Mort and Sourcery are transitional books (the earlier of the two being better, oddly) and by Wyrd Sisters the change is complete. Rincewind, Death, and Granny Weatherwax are the only major characters who bridge the gap. I think while Granny Weatherwax and Death expanded and changed significantly, there's only so much that can be done with Rincewind. He's an intrinsically flat character. Later on Pratchett can add some interest by adding other characters to a Rincewind book: Cohen and the Silver Horde in Interesting Times, the UU staff in The Last Continent, and basically everybody in The Last Hero. In my opinion Eric represents a throwback to the earliest Discworld books. It doesn't have really developed characters and relies on the here's-a-gag, here's-another-gag format of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Plus the hell and demons content smacks of "Stuff Terry thought up while writing Good Omens that Neil didn't want in the book."
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Oct 16, 2007 16:07
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Calenth posted:What did you like about Monstrous Regiment? I just found it extremely predictable -- I wasn't a quarter of the way through the book before I guessed what the big "surprise" at the end was going to be. I read it ages ago and to be honest I can't remember anything about it other than Igor, I just recall enjoying it.
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Oct 16, 2007 20:04
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Calenth posted:And why do people not like equal rites? I mean, it's one of the earliest discworld books so deserves some slack, it has decent pacing, a decent plot, good characters, things happen that are surprises, etc. I liked the tribe that couldn't lie, and they had competitions of who could bend the truth the most, and the most accomplished liar got to be the tribe liar and go out and trade with the world. I was always dissapointed that they never got mentioned again.
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Oct 16, 2007 22:58
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About three years ago a friend of mine paid quite a large sum of money at the charity auction at DW-Con to be a character in an upcoming book. I laughed way to loud on the train this morning when he turned up in Making Money. I had read two pages with him in before it twigged, and it's not as though his name has been changed. Quick edit, I just spoke to him about the book part, and he mentioned that he was recently an extra on the Colour of Magic production Sky TV are doing, lucky bastard. Good book so far, I need to get it finished fairly quick so my wife can read it before we go to see the Stephen Briggs play of the book next month. If any UK fans are interested it's in Abingdon and you can get tickets here. The Saturday evening is great if you can get in as that's normally when Terry and the rest of the discworld regulars show up. Jekub fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Oct 18, 2007 |
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Oct 18, 2007 08:50
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It wasn't Piss Harry was it? 
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Oct 18, 2007 11:59
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I just started Soul Music, and I absolutely loved the Blues Brothers reference.
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Oct 18, 2007 12:55
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Jekub posted:About three years ago a friend of mine paid quite a large sum of money at the charity auction at DW-Con to be a character in an upcoming book. I laughed way to loud on the train this morning when he turned up in Making Money. I had read two pages with him in before it twigged, and it's not as though his name has been changed. Cosmo, Alf, Robert Spittle, Robert Parker, Charlie, or Wallace?
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Oct 18, 2007 23:00
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None of the above! Dr John Hicks, post mortem communications. I though the rather normal name, by Discworld standards stood out a bit. Otherwise Terry got him pretty much right. It's kind of wierd to have someone I know running about in a fantasy book, but I know he's really happy with it. It's going to be even stranger going to see Making Money at the theatre next month and seeing someone playing him. There are a lot of real life characters running about in Discworld, the most well known is probably Hodgesaargh, real name Dave Hodges.
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Oct 19, 2007 08:36
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bobula posted:picture of signature Lots of wishes? He has a whole set of dedications that he does (Best Wishes, Better Wishes, Even Better Wishes, More Wishes, Far More Wishes, Still More Wishes, Lots of Wishes, Extra Wishes, A Whole New Quantum of Wishes and -- for those people with two carrier bags full of books -- Son of Best Wishes, Bride of Best Wishes, and Return of the Killer Best Wishes for 20,000 Fathoms) Has anybody (re)read Jingo recently? There's a scene in it that I know has to be a reference to something but I don't know what. A donkey gets stuck in a minaret and Lord Vetinari gets it unstuck in an impossible way. Does anybody know what it's from?
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Oct 23, 2007 21:58
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Isn't there some proverb about how if you manage to get a donkey up a minaret then you still have to get him back down? Something to do with how being able to complete only one difficult task is often not enough.
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Oct 24, 2007 00:00
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I've never actually read the man because I often filed it under the "extremely popular fantasy like Robert Jordan and you probably won't finish it" category. I've had some people tugging at me to read some of his stuff recently. I almost went ahead and got the good he and Neil Gaiman did (forgot the name), because I do love Sandman. Tell me, good introduction or not?
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Oct 24, 2007 00:06
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As good an introduction as any. Be forewarned though, all of Pratchett's books will be absolutely nothing at all like Jordan's.
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Oct 24, 2007 00:30
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RightHonourableHolt posted:I've never actually read the man because I often filed it under the "extremely popular fantasy like Robert Jordan and you probably won't finish it" category. I've had some people tugging at me to read some of his stuff recently. I almost went ahead and got the good he and Neil Gaiman did (forgot the name), because I do love Sandman. Tell me, good introduction or not? Good Omens  Yes, good introduction.
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Oct 24, 2007 06:45
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There's a ton of places to jump in, if I had to advise anyone I'd just tell them to steer clear of the later books at first, as well as Sourcery, Moving Pictures and The Light Fantastic. Men At Arms, Mort, Jingo or Hogfather are really easy to get into. Actually just about any of the Watch books up to and including Fifth Elephant are good starting places, but afterwards it becomes more complicated. He's doing that more recently. Making Money had a metric rear end-ton of throwbacks to earlier books. Edit: And the donkey up the minaret thing is just a "for'ner" take on the getting the wardrobe up the fire escape or whatever problem.
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Oct 24, 2007 14:26
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Good Omens is a good introduction both to Pratchett and Gaiman. Personally, I find it the best out of all their work. It lacks Pratchett's often OTT silliness and Gaiman's "everyone dies, the end" attitude.
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Oct 24, 2007 17:59
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Nilbop posted:There's a ton of places to jump in, if I had to advise anyone I'd just tell them to steer clear of the later books at first, as well as Sourcery, Moving Pictures and The Light Fantastic. Men At Arms, Mort, Jingo or Hogfather are really easy to get into. Funny enough, Sourcery was the first Discworld I read all the way through, when I was about fifteen, and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. I was hooked, I was looking forward to the next time I'd be able to read it. I just had a fantastic time. I think I know why, as well. I went in with a certain idea of what Discworld was about, partly because my dad read them and partly just because it's difficult not to get some idea, living in England. I also had the first PC game, so I thought Discworld was this: wizards being silly. I already had a sort of fondness for Ankh-Morpork just from that, and in particular the Unseen University. There being a decent amount of that in Sourcery, I had a great time. I never quite caught up though, so you find me now in the middle of trying to read all the Discworlds. Not in a row, mind you, but I'm not bothering with any of that silly "list of Death books then list of Watch books" business, and I'm afraid I don't agree with all the people who say you can jump in where you like or read them in just any old order - I want to be carried along by the progression of ideas, characters and writing style, so I'm reading them in the order they came out. That means I had to read through the first books first. It wasn't easy, but I stuck with it, and now I'm into the good stuff. I'm currently about halfway through Guards Guards, and things seem to have settled in nicely. Trouble is it's going to take blimmin years to catch up. Buml0r fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Oct 28, 2007 |
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Oct 28, 2007 21:09
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Buml0r posted:so I'm reading them in the order they came out. That's what I'm doing, and I think it's a better idea than "Watch books, then Witch books" etc, because I get tired of the sub-archs pretty easily and it's nice to split them up between each other and that's pretty much how the chronological order works out.
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Oct 28, 2007 21:19
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Yeah. Plus, it didn't harm all those people who read them as they were being released, and Terry certainly seemed happy releasing them that way. Without meaning to offend those who have laboriously worked out 'reading orders' for the Discworld books (I can see why they did it), it seems like they come with a reading order built-in. It strikes me as similar to something like the Narnia series, where list-writers are adamant the prequel books, which come before The Lion, the (etc etc) chronologically, should be read first. But they don't take into account the spoilers you get that way, and that you are supposed to build up an affection for the old guy who owns the house in The Li(etc) before you read about him in a prequel. I remember being in the middle of an argument about this once, where the guy to my left was telling me I should read the Foundation series in release order, whereas the woman to my right had a list of the books in chronological order. Her argument, again, was based on reading along the timeline, his was to do with twists and turns that are supposed to be experienced in release order, and so it goes on. Obviously Discworld doesn't have quite the same problem, as it doesn't skip about the timeline and isn't particularly littered with vital twists and reveals, so to an extent you could read them in chunks the way the fans suggest. But I think it's quite clear that Terry didn't have the whole series as it exists today planned out from the outset, so I would feel out of the loop if I was reading the books according to a fan's order list written in retrospect, because I'd see Terry's ideas, style, characters etc hopping about dramatically that way. Tiddly-pom. Buml0r fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Oct 29, 2007 |
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Oct 29, 2007 00:38
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I finished Making Money a couple weeks ago and I'm considering reading it again. I think it's one of Pratchett's best works thus far. Here's hoping they invent Methuselah tech so this man can write forever! Also, I'm for reading books in publication order, I can't see why you want to do it any other way.
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Nov 2, 2007 08:46
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Moist von Lipwig posted:I finished Making Money a couple weeks ago and I'm considering reading it again. I think it's one of Pratchett's best works thus far. Here's hoping they invent Methuselah tech so this man can write forever! It's weird, but I don't think I would have fallen in love with the books quite as much if I'd started with Colour of Magic instead of The Fifth Elephant. Though I admit that was an entirely bizarre choice on my part.
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Nov 2, 2007 14:18
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Also, I'm for reading books in publication order, I can't see why you want to do it any other way. There are a couple of reasons. As people already stated, some times they only like certain characters and really do not like others. So reading only about your favorite characters track does make sense. And really, I do think it speaks extremely well of a author that not only can each book be read individually, but each character track can be read without having to read the others. Through it is fun to read them in publish order and slowly watch the city grow and change. (I really think the more we have gotten to see of Vetinari the less of hardass he's been.) PS Moist, where did you find the art work for your avatar?
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Nov 2, 2007 16:13
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BexGu posted:PS Moist, where did you find the art work for your avatar? I'm not Moist (ooer, Missus, etc) but I'll chip in anyway. His avatar is taken from the cover of the UK print of Making Money. Which leads to a question that I've asked before, but for which I've never had an answer: why is the cover-art for US editions of Pratchett's books so god-awfully poo poo compared to the UK versions? Edit: A case in point... The UK cover art is a very cool homage to Rembrandt's painting 
magimix fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 3, 2007 |
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Nov 3, 2007 00:07
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magimix posted:Which leads to a question that I've asked before, but for which I've never had an answer: why is the cover-art for US editions of Pratchett's books so god-awfully poo poo compared to the UK versions? The illustrator and Pratchett talk a lot about it, if I remember correctly. His initial character sketches were pretty close to how Pratchett had invisioned the characters, too.
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Nov 3, 2007 00:19
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The current artist is Paul Kidby and he is pretty amazing. His first Pratchett works were published in the 'Pratchett Portfolio' which contained his portraits of each major character with a short description of each from Terry, it's worth getting hold of if you can. One of the pictures is called 'The Nightwatch' and remains my favourite Discworld picture, from my favourite Discworld book. I have a print of it signed by Paul and Terry hanging above my Discworld collection as well as a couple of other smaller Kidby prints around the house. I still love the old Josh Kirby covers, the detail was amazing and his habit of drawing what he felt like regardless of what the book said was always fun. His wife brought along a selection of the originals to dwcon a few years ago which was a bit of a treat. The US covers are all pretty dull to my eye. I would also recommend Pratchett fans try and locate a copy of Once More with Footnotes. It's a collection of short stories, speeches and newspaper articles written by Terry over the years. Though copies can fetch up to £100 over here now, pity my wife dropped mine in the bath  Discworld monthly is also worth keeping an eye on if you want to keep up with everything that's going on with Terry and Discworld.
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Nov 3, 2007 09:57
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Making Money has a few lines of ancient golem language; does anyone know what they mean?
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Nov 7, 2007 21:46
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God drat, I just finished Making Money. For pure entertainment, I don't think I've ever liked a Discworld novel that much - totally awesome. I'm glad to hear he already announced the taxes book, too 
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Nov 10, 2007 16:31
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What taxes book?
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Nov 10, 2007 16:34
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Bonus posted:What taxes book? The third Moist von Lipwig novel is going to be called Raising Taxes found at the bottom of this list. BexGu posted:PS Moist, where did you find the art work for your avatar? As magimix said, it's the UK/Canada cover for Making Money. It was $20 more for the hardcover, but because of the whole USD vs. Canadian Dollar thing Chapters was giving an additional 20% off, so I got it instead.
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Nov 10, 2007 16:50
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Loutre posted:God drat, I just finished Making Money. For pure entertainment, I don't think I've ever liked a Discworld novel that much - totally awesome. For an author as prolific as he is, he expertly (IMO, of course) avoids getting stuck in a rut. Existing characters meaningfully change over time, and new characters get introduced. Going Postal, in particular was unlike the darker Discworld books that preceeded it - nothing short of an Ealing-style caper, with hijinks, rogues and lovable rascals. Clearly Pratchett wanted to return to something lighter in tone, but felt he couldn't do this with any of his existing characters. Good for him, because Moist von Liwig has very quickly become one of my favourite Discworld characters (primarily I'm a Vimes fan, and regularly read the 'guards' books back to back). Edit: Actually, I really, really like how the different 'tracks' of Discworld books (guards books, witches books, MvL, etc) aren't just different with respect to focus on different characters, but are stylistically different in presentation. magimix fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Nov 10, 2007 |
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Nov 10, 2007 17:29
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magimix posted:Edit: Actually, I really, really like how the different 'tracks' of Discworld books (guards books, witches books, MvL, etc) aren't just different with respect to focus on different characters, but are stylistically different in presentation. Yeah, but I think the Tiffany books are a little too different. I like them; they are very amusing reads, but they don't feel like they are really discworld books. If not for the presence of some other discworld characters, like Granny Weatherwax, it would be hard to tell that they were even taking place on the same world.
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Nov 11, 2007 09:17
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Enfenestrate posted:Yeah, but I think the Tiffany books are a little too different. I like them; they are very amusing reads, but they don't feel like they are really discworld books. If not for the presence of some other discworld characters, like Granny Weatherwax, it would be hard to tell that they were even taking place on the same world. At least in the UK, they're not really presented as part of the series - they're sold as young adult fiction rather than being shelved under SF&F with the rest of the Discworld novels. I agree that there's quite a difference in tone and not a lot of crossover with the rest of the novels, but maybe that's for the best if they're trying to appeal to a different group of readers (younger, not interested in fantasy beyond Harry Potter, whatever). They could end up being like a gateway drug into Discworld.
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Nov 11, 2007 11:20
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magimix posted:Edit: Actually, I really, really like how the different 'tracks' of Discworld books (guards books, witches books, MvL, etc) aren't just different with respect to focus on different characters, but are stylistically different in presentation. Speaking of this, the moment I saw the obvious setup for the next book at the end of Making Money I started to wonder when the Discworld Reading Order image would be updated to have him as an entirely new tract, "Starter Book" and all. Edit: Man I haven't checked that thing in forever, I guess it kind of is that way already, though the first two are only tangentially related to the Moist series. Loutre fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Nov 11, 2007 |
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Nov 11, 2007 15:52
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Just started Interesting Times. Rincewind!
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Nov 11, 2007 16:17
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I'm still holding out for a Susan/Lobsang/Death book. 
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Nov 11, 2007 16:18
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Just to chip in on the reading order, I started Pratchett as a primary schooler, iirc, with the audio books read by Tony Robinson (which are thus my mental source for nearly all the voices of the characters, including RASPY DEATH), and more importantly I began with Eric, which I loved. Of course I later went back and read it again when I was old enough to get all the jokes. After Eric I began to read what books I could find, completely out of order, listening to some, reading others, until finally I had to fall in line with the release order because I'd run out of books. I've got to say that reading order doesn't matter a drat from my experience with the series and its permutations. The books stand alone so well that you can happily read them completely out of order, switching between characters and so on. But I guess like with all things other people's mileage may vary. As for Making Money, I'm going to have to go read up on how reflected-sounds-of-underground-spirits works before I re-read. Some of the gags went over my head. My father, on the other hand, who trained as an accountant, found it hilarious. v  v
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Nov 13, 2007 01:13
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Re: reading order. I started off with Hogfather and read that a couple of times, before starting on others, completely out of order. It was influenced entirely by what my local library had at the time and how motivated I was to go to a non-local library to get the rest. I think I accidentally read a couple of books in the Watch storyline in order, but that's it. I read completely haphazardly and then strung together the timeline in my head (I do remember that I read The Last Continent before Interesting Times).
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Nov 13, 2007 11:24
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