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Beachcomber posted:I always start people with Small Gods. I started with Small Gods, and I bounced off of it just a bit. I found some of the critiques of religion to be annoyingly shallow in a way that they seem less so now that I've read more. Later I read The Fifth Elephant, which I snagged from a used bookstore while travelling, and I liked it much more, and then Carpe Jugulum, which I adored. I would be happy to read nothing but his Witches stories. At that point I just hit The Colour of Magic (which I didn't find particularly weak tbh) and started moving sequentially, picking up a few at a time. I think that Equal Rites or Wyrd Sisters would have been optimal entry points for me. A friend of mine always begins people with Guards Guards e. chaos reigns entry point is Pyramids
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Jan 27, 2021 06:16
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Megazver posted:I'd start with Guards! Guards! Cool. I'm enjoying these. Thanks!
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Jan 28, 2021 03:49
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I'm about 90 pages in to Moving Pictures and I just realized that I'm reading the Archchancellor as having a cartoonish Australian accent. Is there something in the text to suggest this and I just picked it up in passing or am I brokebrained
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Apr 20, 2021 14:57
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ok so I'm brokebrained, but I'm going to continue reading him as Australian because it rules.
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Apr 21, 2021 04:49
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There are weirdos like that in lots of places. I once asked my roommate if he noticed "the stick dudes" and he was like what? And three days later he said "ok I've noticed the stick dudes."
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Jun 22, 2021 16:23
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Ccs posted:Does Oregon have a lot of hiking trails? Maybe that's why there's lots of people with walking sticks? Or it could just be old people with long canes? Oregon probably does, but we lived downtown in a major Canadian city
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Jun 22, 2021 18:16
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I'm reading Discworld from the start in publishing order and I just read Lords and Ladies. That may have been my favourite one yet. Also on the (re) read I think that Small Gods is a piss poor book to recommend as a starter, as it was to me years ago, but I enjoyed it more on the reread. Like, it was ok enough when I first read it, but it didn't make me go "I want to read 40 more of these." FWIW, the order I've read them was Small Gods -> several year break -> The Fifth Elephant -> Carpe Jugulum -> The Colour of Magic etc. I tend to order them in groups of 3 and fold them in with my other reading. CommonShore fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Jul 10, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2021 14:18
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What the gently caress. I wonder if it's from a bad reading of The Fifth Elephant
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Jul 31, 2021 14:52
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:
By seeing that women are inherently want to wear dresses and completely ignoring the satirical irony that makes the bigots the real target
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Jul 31, 2021 15:16
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Agreed - Troll Bridge is wonderful
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Oct 25, 2021 16:35
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I, also, am on a sequental reading and I'm up to Maskerade. Lords and Ladies was my favourite so far and I can agree that Moving Pictures was weaker.
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Nov 9, 2021 15:21
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Covid cancelled my plans and my SO is working over xmas so in the empty house I read Hogfather on the 24th and 25th because by sheer coincidence it was the next one in my sequential reading of discworld. It's one of the best ones in the series, isn't it?
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Dec 26, 2021 17:46
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gonadic io posted:I'm looking for the particular quote that involves two big nations deciding to have a war/battle/conflict/fight and them explaining to a smaller neighbour that the it had to actually take place in the smaller country. This is very convincing to the person from the smaller country but it gets harder and harder to remember the argument by the time to get home. I have very recently read Jingo, and I don't recall it being in there, and I finished a reread of Fifth Elephant last night and I don't recall it there either.
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Feb 11, 2022 22:48
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And speaking of digging up mouldering arguments about Terry Pratchett, I'm half way through The Truth right now. What's amazing to me is how the watch looks entirely different from the outside in. Not so much "copaganda," especially when read back-to-back with The Fifth Elephant.
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Feb 14, 2022 15:24
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gonadic io posted:I preferred Going Postal for this viewpoint Haven't read it yet but now I look forward to it.
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Feb 14, 2022 15:36
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gonadic io posted:It's funny because Carrot started as him trying to spoof that. From what I remember, The Truth is the book I'd place at the main turning point between old pratchett when he was still trying to parody stuff and the later (well, mid I guess) stuff where he was like oh poo poo I'm a big fantasy author now. I found it a very awkward middle-ground, especially with that swearing stuff which constantly got on my tits. Granny is pretty much the heroic version by Lords and Ladies, though I feel that the terrifying Granny Weatherwax of L&L and Carpe Jugulum is still in step with the earlier parodying of fantasy tropes, and in both of those plots it's moreso internal struggles that define her. In Maskerade she's much more mundane, splitting two Super Granny performances. Carpe Jugulum is the last book that puts Granny front-and-centre, right? Her subsequent appearances are as a supporting character in Tiffany Aching books? I'm not finished the Vimesiad yet, being only up to The Truth and thus with a few of his major books to come, so I don't have coherent thoughts on him yet. There's something going on there with him failing upwards, despite his best attempts, and some "knave of the first rate" critiques of policing. The key factor in his story that I've seen to this point is that his successes and sense of duty keep taking him farther away from what he says he wants in life (to be left alone and have nobody bother him) but which is also at odds with how he acts (being completely unable to stop working despite his best efforts).
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Feb 14, 2022 22:50
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Phenotype posted:Yeah, one of the flaws of the "good cop" character is that they only work particularly well as the protagonist -- it's all cool and good when the protagonist sees the bad guy about to hurt someone and they get in a fight and the protagonist has no choice but to shoot him. It's quite another thing when your protagonist is in the jury box and some cop you've never heard of gets on the witness stand and says "yeah I had no choice but to shoot him." I think that's why Vimes in the Truth worked so well for me. De Worde can't know that Vimes has his and the public good in his heart of hearts - he can only react to the authoritarian who he sees.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:03
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cptn_dr posted:Amazing Maurice trailer: I hate this animation style so much
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May 24, 2022 19:01
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we're on a mission from glod
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Jun 19, 2022 16:23
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freeedr posted:I had only heard of Terry Pratchett through this forum and just finished reading Small Gods because it was recommended as a good standalone. I went in blind with no clues as to even basics like genre or anything. I’m not sure it was for me, but I’m not sure it wasn’t, either. I have never read very much fiction. I think I will read back through recommendations and pms to see where to go from here Someone got me to read Small Gods years ago as my first one and I too bounced off of it a little bit. Without having a sense of Pratchett's overall sense of humour and the wider setting the jabs at religion and philosophy felt pretty shallow. Years later I read The Fifth Elephant and Carpe Jugulum and enjoyed them much more, and then I went back to the beginning (and Small Gods was much better on the second read). Imo Wyrd Sisters is the best place to start, though you probably wouldn't go wrong with Lords and Ladies. Why yes, the witches are my favourite.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:54
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BigglesSWE posted:Almost finished with Lords and Ladies. I really appreciate how Pratchett subverts the common fantasy trope of elvish grace and beauty and making them into bad guys. And honestly, rather intimidating I must say. It's my favourite. I enjoy how that subversion isn't just a contradiction - he bends his elves back into the Fair Folk tropes.
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Sep 15, 2022 13:54
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I really really enjoyed Wintersmith. There's something about the overall package of the Tiffany Aching books that is just a slam dunk for me
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Oct 5, 2022 21:19
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Canuckistan posted:The only thing keeping me from doing a Tiffany Aching reread is that I'd be reminded of The Shepherd's Crown. It's stupid I know, but that book makes me sad for the wrong reasons and I don't like to even think of it. you're making me nervous. That's the only Discworld book that I don't own yet.
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Oct 5, 2022 22:08
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I gotta reread the Aching books, the ending of the first one with Ghost Granny and the dogs is something that I think of fairly often and I read that book 20 years ago. The Aching books - the ones I've read so far (on my publication order discworld read) - have two cool things going on imo. On one hand, they read like a Granny Weatherwax origin story, but in a far more creative, productive way rather than a simple look to the character's past, and to this point Granny is my favourite character in the series by a very wide margin. On another, they're so steeped in folklore and folk mythology. I'm a total sucker for those abstract quasi-logical stories that reach from just beyond the fringes of human history. The weird stuff with the chalk horse is entirely my jam. It's perfect. My love of this characteristic is also why Lords and Ladies is my favourite main-series book so far (I'm up to Making Money), and Hogfather is a near second.
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Oct 5, 2022 22:50
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I'm going to go through Snuff and Raising Steam for the first time probably in the next couple of months, likely before the end of the year (I tend to intersperse a couple of discworld books between other selections, and I'm due to go back to one of the heavier books on my list, (which I think in this case is Gibbon Vol 2) after I finish Unseen Academicals Would the thread like for me to post my thoughts/reactions/reviews as I read them?
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Oct 9, 2022 05:05
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I finished volume 2 of Gibbon so I'm back into Pratchett and I should be able to finish the last four Discworld novels before the end of the year. I'm going to post about them as I go. I'm just about finished with I Shall Wear Midnight (I'm past the climax and I'll probably wrap it up and start the next one tonight) and I'm consistently blown away with just how good the Tiffany Aching books are. I'm a sucker for ancient folklore stories and sublime terrors from outside of the fringes of history, and the witches are my favourite characters in Discworld, so I may be focusing more on its strengths than weaknesses. It's so much stronger of a plot than Making Money or So because of the poor reviews I've read here and elsewhere of Snuff and Raising Steam, I was expecting to see some of that decline here too, as I see beginning in those three previous "main" books which are definitely weaker, but nope. Was there something different in the creative process for the Aching books? CommonShore fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Dec 22, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 05:55
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Xander77 posted:You just like the characters enough not to notice the flaws (random new love interest with no characterization, a villain that's menacing on paper whom the plot treats like an utter random nuisance). Thud (for example) is generally regarded as one of the best Discworld books. Really. Huh. I might have gotten some titles crossed late at night then then - is Thud the murder mystery with the dwarves and trolls (good) or the one with the ton of golems (less good)... That's making money too isn't it. Yep. I should have refreshed my memory. I had put the last third of Making Money onto the end of the plot of Thud. I'm off to a great start here. e. I'll edit the initial post CommonShore fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Dec 22, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 15:53
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I've been thinking about it and Tiffany's love plot isn't really so hamfisted. It develops through a few scenes and encounters as he goes from an acquaintance to a friend to an intimate. It's not Pride and Prejudice, sure but...
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Dec 23, 2022 04:16
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Kesper North posted:Terry is terrible at writing romance. He seems too cynical to give in to it. Maybe yeah. Sam and Sybil had an interesting romance though. Perhaps he was just trying to give romantic representation to awkward, cynical people! Anyway speaking of Sam and Sybil I'm about 100 or so pages into Snuff and the premise is now on the table and the plot just is starting to show itself a little bit. I have to say, I like the premise/maguffin of this one so far - it's like Vimes has been transported from one genre of detective fiction to another: what happens when the hard boiled rough and tumble copper finds himself as the protagonist of a Dorothy Sayers novel? I suspect that he won't remain the country aristocrat amateur sleuth for too long...
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Dec 24, 2022 05:06
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Ok I finished Snuff last night. It took the turn out of the Dorothy Sayers mode about 5 pages after I posted about it, and Vimes started the shakedown again, so I'll describe the premise as the rough-and-tumble gumshoe visiting the setting usually inhabited by the sly English aristocratic detective. It's pretty fun in that respect. Aside from the fish-out-of-water or character-out-of-subgenre parody, it's a pretty standard Vimes story, where the self-assessed unrefined brute of a copper is once again baffled by the fact that he's somehow the most civilized guy in the room. The goblins are a perfectly fine addition to the setting, and the plot works well enough, though the "dyk that other races are people too" is something Terry had worked through already with ... uh every non-human sapient species in Discworld. Some of the fantasy solutions to plot problems (see: Wee Mad Arthur's teleportation) are a bit much (I'm not a fan of the practice of introducing an insurmountable plot problem and immediately solving it with a new, fantastic solution) but it's Discworld and not The Three Body Problem that we're discussing here, so I'll shrug at that. The whole plot resolves itself, again, along the lines of the standard Vimes-Vetinari formula of the world being kept safe in a tenuous balance of power by the enlightenment of the fortunately good tyrant, in a compromise that leaves every stakeholder unsatisfied but allowing the system as a whole able to move forward. The villain, and Vimes's relationship to him, felt to me like it was revisiting Night Watch, which again is another point where the book is only weak in its relation to the other books, not a flaw in its own right. Likewise with Vimes's relationship to the younger watchmen. We've simply been there before. The freshest part is probably Vimes's family life and his relationship with Young Sam, which imo is a solid development of previous books and not just a retracing. I don't think it's a "bad" book and any weaknesses that it has probably owe more to it being the 40th Discworld book than anything else, and the characters and setting having been stretched too thin: much of what we've seen, we've seen before, and the new characters necessarily displace the things that we like about the setting and subseries, e.g. we don't get much of Cheery or Detritus, but Willikins is a delight. It would probably be more enjoyable for someone who hadn't read Night Watch and Thud, if not for the fact that many of the fantasy techs don't get explicated in Snuff because they had been more thoroughly explored elsewhere. I somehow doubt that it'll be on my list of rereads, though - the witches books, especially Lords and Ladies, the early watch books, Reaper Man and Hogfather are my favourites (do you see the thematic pattern with my recent posts adoring the Tiffany Aching books?). Starting Raising Steam today some time.
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Dec 28, 2022 18:39
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I'm about 40 pages into RS now and... Too many irons in the fire so far.
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Dec 30, 2022 06:22
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I've been trying to figure out the joke in his name and I was way.... Over thinking it. (Casa? House? House nunda? Nova? New? Nunda?)
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Dec 31, 2022 22:33
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Quite a bit farther into Raising Steam now and I've put my finger on how it's different from the rest - it has huge sections of tell rather than show, and at times it's structured more like a narrative history than like a novel. Elsewhere, too it's guilty of pointless-seeming side plots/events which are just poorly integrated. I've just gotten through the part where Moist and Harry King arrange the expulsion of the bandits from Quirm. This is one of the worst-integrated scenes in any Discworld book as the problem of the bandits is introduced only one or two chapters before and then resolved without any difficulty and without any clear implications, mostly by side characters who we haven't met before and probably won't meet again. Now I'm sure that all of this has something to do with the Quirmian goblins and Moist is up to something in that way, but it was just so blandly integrated into the unfolding story that it seems pointless. That isn't to say that I'm not finding things to like so far, but it's just uneven and worse in sum than nearly any other book - it reminds me of The Colour of Magic, honestly, the way it bounces between scenes and then just leaves them and their characters in the dust behind.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:27
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Youremother posted:Raising Steam really has the burden of being The Final Discworld Book! so it's crammed packed with as much stuff as possible to remind you that our heroes are all really cool. It's the start of a new Discworld era, it's a cross-continent tour, it's got action, it's got commentary on religious fundamentalism, it wants to be a Vimes book and a Moist book and a novel about a new protagonist! Too much to deal with at one time. was it known when it was written/published that it was carrying that burden?
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Jan 4, 2023 06:01
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Trin Tragula posted:The back half of the Rob Wilkins official biography is very hard work to get through, he's not spared a lot in how he writes about Terry going downhill. dang I wonder if that accounts for the summary passages that I was noting above.
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Jan 5, 2023 01:11
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The problems with Raising Steam are getting worse as the book goes - unnecessary scenes that are just flat. I'm quite amazed in fact at how rough it's getting
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Jan 7, 2023 14:36
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Skios posted:I've only read Raising Steam once. What was really jarring is the complete 180 the Patrician seemed to do, going from the sly manipulator to the barking tyrant. Right? I had a commute with my RL friend who reads Discworld and we were discussing this exactly. It's as if the first draft is Vettinari hitting the key points and the outcomes necessary for the plot, and then the sly manipulation gets cajoled in through the revisions, but those revisions never happened.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:17
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ok I'm finished with Raising Steam General thoughts It has the overall structure and vibe of a discworld book. I'm glad that I was given the warning that it was not so good and the notes about how it was written with extreme involvement from the editor to create a coherent whole because it allowed me to forgive its weaknesses and appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it isn't. I'm pretty convinced by the discussion here and from what I read that it was essentially an unfinished novel, but that Terry's writing style was one of refinement and so instead of a book with gaps, an unfinished discworld novel is more of a flatter notebook sketch. It's not the worst experience if you go into it expecting to read that. More specific thoughts Certain scenes in particular popped out to me as placeholder/draft points. The scenes where the train gets attacked and dwarves are getting killed like extras in a bad Kung Fu movie were the least "discworld" moments of the whole. They needed heavy rethinking. The only places I can remember where mass carny death happens like that are comedy spots with The Silver Horde. The picaresque journey of the train to Uberwald was disjointed but worked scene by scene. I would have expected that a greater connected theme would have been written into them. Something that was being suggested but which the book never developed was Iron Girder's evolution, and I was expecting that was going to play into the problem of water and coal supplies, but it didn't happen. Likewise, the golems at the climax came out of nowhere. I don't remember those super golems from the end of Making Money being mentioned anywhere in the text before they Save The Day and get explained after the fact. That also seemed to me like something that would have been either written into the previous plot somehow, or resolved differently. The Goblin subway, with the goblins's compulsive tinkering seemed like a dangling, frayed thread that was pointing in that direction, either from an earlier draft, or something that was being developed to fill in or interact with the golems somehow. It could simply be that all of these moments were part of an effort to get every single Discworld thing into the book at one point or another. So there's that. I'm starting The Shepherd's Crown tonight, and probably Nation right after, then I'm going to cool it on Sir Terry for a while.
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Jan 11, 2023 05:04
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I've been enjoying the Tiffany Aching books thoroughly yeah. I'm now uhhh 3 or 4 chapters into the shepherd's crown and... drat we have some stuff going on hah
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Jan 11, 2023 15:03
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I think my favourite standalone is Hogfather, but Granny is my favourite character and I think that Lords and Ladies, in context, is my top one stillyaffle posted:I've not read the Shepard's Crown and I probably never will, Raising Steam and Snuff were depressing enough. well I'll continue to live post about it as I read! If I have complaints I'll be forthright about them so maybe I can productively influence your ultimate decision.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:11
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