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Five of the best Terry Pratchett books and suggestions for how to read Pratchett's work
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- Title
- The Best Terry Pratchett Books
- Authors
- Five Books
- Published
- Jan 13 2024
- Word count
- 5540 words
Probably not coincidentally timed, but you can grab the entire Discworld for about $20 : https://www.humblebundle.com/books/terry-pratchetts-discworld-harpercollins-books
It's not the entire Discworld, but only because it's missing The Last Hero and Raising Steam which seem like odd omissions given that you're looking at missing out on the final Rincewind and Moist von Lipwig adventures, books 27 and 40 respectively of the whole 41 books.
Raising Steam is an odd choice. Last hero was the larger illustrated book right? I could see that one being skipped for formatting reasons. (or the illustrator didn't give permission maybe)
I've never actually owned a physical Pratchett book. I own all the Audiobooks and have ePubs of the written versions and I never knew until now that there are supposed to be illustrations in The Last Hero. TIL. That said, it holds up exceptionally well without the illustrations, so I wouldn't consider not being able to get artist approval a reason to not provide the un-illustrated text, it remains an excellent story even in the absence of the art.
Interesting! I hadn't read that one any other way. Good to know
Well, shit.
EDIT: Did the VPN thing and it's not even a proper download, you get to activate the books in Kobo's web service, meh.
This seems to not be available in Europe. Is there someone with access to this willing to help out?
Small Gods
Thief of Time
Night Watch
Going Postal
Making Money
Of the 5, I think Small Gods is my favourite. That and Thief of Time are interesting takes on interesting concepts, and the Moist books are a great take on the nature of currency and money. Obviously the characters in all 5 are incredibly funny and interesting; but you can expect that as standard for Terry Pratchett.
+1 for Small Gods as well. Ironically it did a lot to help me develop a belief in a higher power. Amazing parable. I went through a Pratchett phase that lasted probably a dozen or so of his books.
I adore the idea that books are dangerous and the library is a scary place that has to keep the most dangerous books caged and in chains.
I might have to revisit Discworld.
I got into Terry Pratchett a few weeks ago because we watched Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. (I have to resist calling it “The Hogfather”) We had some pagan friends who used to have “Hogwatch” parties during the 12 days of Christmas where people get together, watch Hogfather and maybe cosplay as Discworld characters.
We fell out of the habit during the pandemic so this year the family watched it. I decided to get the book because there are quite a few details that the movie doesn’t quite articulate. (e.g. Susan’s status as someone a bit more than human is revealed slowly in the movie, for instance). That got me reading about Pratchett and then it hit me that I had vague memories of reading some of the early Rincewind books as a kid because I do remember some stories that had something like the luggage he travels with.
Only one i ever read was Mort and it was fantastic
If people are looking for specific books rather than the series, I will often suggest Going Postal or the Truth. The ones discussed in the article are good too
I was considering this myself a while ago.
The best result I found was a reddit thread and its expandable image.
That chart is famous and excellent.
You showed me a new subreddit. r/Discworld is also a good community
These days I think my rule is just skip the witches/rincewind stuff and you're probably fine. Not that either of those series are inherently bad but they're early works and somewhat niche in appeal. His standalones, death, guards, government, other arcs are all easier to approach.
Skip witches, really? I'm a bit surprised at that. My favorites are the Guard and the Moist books, but I'm not sure I would consider any of the witch books skippable. But I'm really of the opinion that they're all practically required reading so I'm probably not the right person to ask 😅
Tiffany is an easy recommend to anyone but I recall the early witches stuff having some cruder humor that just wasn't for everyone.
Tiffany was my introduction into Discworld (although not to Pratchett altogether, that came in the form of Only You Can Save Mankind), and it was so delightful. I'm so excited to go back and reexperience those stories again, now that the Penguin audiobooks are out!
I'm just going through them in release order with the Audible audiobooks: https://www.audible.com/series/Discworld-Audiobooks/B006K1LRQO
The format works really well, each book group(?) has its own narrator, but Peter Serafinowicz voices Death in all of them and Bill Nighy reads the footnotes.
Mort is my absolute favourite.
https://archive.org/details/discworld-complete-43-books-by-pratchett-terry-z-lib.org