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Humble Bundle Books: (Almost) the entirety of Discworld for $16
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- Title
- Humble Book Bundle: Best of Humble Bundle: Terry Pratchett's Discworld by HarperCollins Encore 2026
A heads up this one appears to be region locked, and isn't available in the UK or Europe as far as I can tell.
Fuck em. If you live in the UK or somewhere else that's region locked, DM me and I can give you the books. I ask that you give $16 to a charity of your choice, but I won't ask for any proof or anything, NOTAFLOF. Edit: to be clear, this is an available offer for anyone affected, not just the person I replied to. Region-locking books from a dead author has actually made me mad, the greed of it all
Thankfully I already own them all, but thank you for the kind offer.
I imagine the region lock is down to how has the publishing rights for different parts of the globe?
This frustrates me as a Brit who used to love Terry Pratchett as a kid.
Also not available in Canada.
Even with a VPN it looks to be checking the account region. If I'm not logged in I can see the bundle, but once I login it goes back to being unavailable.
Someone elsewhere suggested making a US Kobo account and downloading books using an online tool. Not sure how that works if you can't buy the bundle, :/
Humble brought back this amazing Bundle! Discworld is one of the best silly fantasy genres, I've been reading them in published order over the years and just recently finished book 8 and have enjoyed all of them immensely. The entire series for the cost of a burrito bowl may very well be the best ROI on art you will ever get!
Note a few quirks of the bundle:
It is missing two books, The Last Hero (which is a coffee-table picture book and doesn't seem to have any available e-book version), and Raising Steam (inexplicably, as it seems to be just another discworld book?). So if you want to be a completionist you gotta do a teeny bit more work/purchasing.
Second, this bundle uses Kobo DRM, which means you have to use one of their readers/apps or AdobeDRM. Thankfully, AdobeDRM is so easy to break as to be almost trivial, happy to give any tutorials if people want it. (Or, if you are a busy boy without that kind of time, DM me with a proof of purchase and I'm happy to share my Drive link of the books I've already cleaned).
/offtopic
Fun personal fact: this bundle in its original run is what taught me about Calibre, and De-DRM'ing my ebooks, in the first place! I purchased the bundle, was very upset upon learning I couldn't use them on my Kindle, and some googling later I'm now an e-book
hoarderarchivistHow dare you read a book you paid for in an unauthorized way???
I really hate how publishers are all using DRM. I understand why, but I feel that it hurts readers more than it does pirates. If this bundle was $16 for no DRM, I would probably buy it regardless on weather I plan to read it or not. Yes, even Anticonsumerism Akir is not immune to occasional hoarder mentality.
I know there's not a lot of consensus on big projects like movies and games, but I wonder what the popular opinion is on piracy for works by dead authors such as this.
Honestly, while I also hate DRM, I can understand having some, as unfortunately the grand majority of consumers don't care about the ethics of supporting artists etc, and just want it however is cheapest and easiest. That being said, I still think a DRM-free world would function just fine, but I can see how business types would get nervous.
DRM-lite I find is a good compromise. It has some barrier to entry, but it's so small. So Adobe-DRM gets a pass from me, while still allowing publishers and storefronts to point and say "see we're making sure it's protected!". What I cannot tolerate is things like Amazon, where they continue to go out of their way to patch even extremely roundabout methods to jailbreak books; this does nothing to dedicated pirates, who will find a way anyway, but greatly hurts casual book archivists, who just want to ensure they can read their own books forever. They've constantly broken the gentleman's agreement to not be too harsh on the DRM, which is why I broke up with them and don't buy any books from them anymore.
All that being said, I always like to buy my books, even for dead authors etc, it just feels more legitimate for me. But I do not turn up my nose at anyone pirating for pretty much any reason; the landscape is fucked, and I'm not gonna fight any little guys when there's corps polluting it constantly.
For my ebooks, I basically use the judgement that if I would reasonably lend you a physical book, I have no issue "lending" you my digital books. I keep all of mine in a regularly backed-up Google drive, and share with my housemates openly. And then there's cases like this, where I'll give you the DRM free versions with your purchase (basically just saving you time to learn how to do that, you're still buying the bundle after all), or in the case of completely unreasonable nonsense like region blocking circumventing that bs, while having the benefit of more money going to charities too.
Aaaannndd bought, with a bit extra added for good measure.
Perfect timing, these are on my "to read" list and I've been meaning to check out humble bundle. Thanks for the heads up! :D
Coincidentally, Tildes book club will be discussing The Truth at the end of this month. Anyone is welcome to join the conversation.
I’ve heard the Discworld name mentioned for ages, but never really looked into it. What’s it about? What do people love about it? Gimme your best elevator pitch!
Is this the sort of thing I should start with a particular book for? Is there a recommended reading order? Any I should skip?
It's a satirical fantasy setting which uses its fantasy world to explore real world issues. It starts off in real swords and sandals territory and over the course of the series undergoes an industrial revolution. Lots of interesting looks at how a fantasy world reacts to that kind of change too.
As for reading order, the community has made this guide:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1c/10/d9/1c10d9e1c5800ead1dd17223125f9ecb.jpg
There's basically 7 major subseries:
Most of the books are relatively independent for their main plot and message, but characters from earlier in their subseries are going to reappear. I think the only subseries where reading in order is really mandatory are The Watch and Tiffany Aching though, you can read the other subseries out of order if you don't mind some spoilers. The books aren't thrillers or mysteries though, so it's usually not a big deal. The one exception is the first two books (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic) are a sort of duology.
My suggested starting point is either "Guards, Guards" (the first Watch book) or "Equal Rites" (the first Witches book) which will give you a good taste of if you'll like those subseries and should continue or not.
As for books to skip, honestly most of them are very good. There's a couple of ones that are commonly considered weaker though:
It's a fantasy world (magic, heroes, etc), but it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's full of dry-wit British style, clever wordplay, and absurd but fun characters. The setting has defined structures and rules, but also the rules are never allowed to get in the way of telling a fun story. It subverts traditional fantasy tropes in lots of interesting ways. And the series has many bits of morality and wisdom that comment on our society as a whole (the "$50 boots vs $10 boots theory" about how being poor is way more expensive than being rich, is from one of these books). They are light and easy reads; the stakes are never high, even when they are world-shattering, because the tone of the world is just set up to be humorous. But they still maintain compelling narratives.
Note that there's several "sub-series" within the series, and you can ready any book in almost any order. If you do decide to read in published order like I did, note the first book is way weirder, as it was essentially him just writing a bunch of random goofs, before deciding apparently that the setting had real legs and making the rest of his books have actual coherence. (I really enjoyed that first book still but it is very random)
I think it’s something you could write a huge amount about.
For me, they are funny, clever stories l, written in an easy way that makes it fun to read. They don’t take themselves too seriously.
Ultimately they are all set in a fantasy world (the disc world) with magic, politics and nicely fleshed out characters. There are multiple references to the modern world dressed up in ye old style framings, which are amusing and sometimes thought provoking.
You don’t have to read them in order, there are multiple threads following different characters. I don’t actually like the first book or the Rincewind thread, and I prefer the stories about the witches or the city guard.
I’d pick up one of the books at the start of a thread which sounds good to you and take it from there. Guards guards! Is probably a good one to start with.
My best elevator pitch is that these are creative, fun, funny, thought provoking stories. Pratchett plays with the English language, plays with ideas and uses parody and satire effectively while maintaining a streak of hope balanced with realism regarding how people (of all fantasy types) interact with each other.
Re reading order, There are charts! reading order
There are 39 books set on discworld, but for the most part each one tells a complete story. However, some follow the same character or group of characters, so there are de facto subseries. These subseries include the city watch, the witches, the industrial revolution, the Rincewind books, the books that feature death as a character. There are also some stand alone books set on discworld.
To start I would choose one and if you like it either dive into a subseries or do publication order. I tend to recommend Going Postal or Small Gods or the Wee Free Men as test cases, but it's hard to go wrong. The earliest books have a different style and content than later books, so if you start with one of the first four books bear that in mind.
Humorous fantasy satire about life and society.
I traditionally recommend starting with Guards Guards, Mort, Going Postal, or a stand alone like Small Gods. Some of his earlier stuff can be a bit rough/less interesting, but all of those start decent and lead to some of stellar writing.
I absolutely believe several of those series, or at least stand alone novels from them, should be mandatory reading in schools.
Pro tip for anyone who gets these kobo bundles and rips them into a different book manager: you can archive books in the kobo web interface. It won’t show up in your books section, but will show in an archive page if you ever need it again. I archive all the books I have ripped into Booklore. That way, when I get a new bundle, I can just blindly download everything from my books page instead of carefully having to download only the new books.
Thanks to you (and anyone else posting book humble bundles) I've drastically increased my ebook collection over the past year or so. Thank you!
Make sure you check out this other thread I posted not too long ago about other places to get e-book bundles! While several people kind of ignored the post and suggested pirate sites, there were quite a few good suggestions! Humble still has the most consistently high quality ones so far, but I've nabbed a few interesting bits from other sites since
Sorry for the noise, but the typo in the title has been bugging me for a couple days. Would one of the mods be available to fix that? @mycketforvirrad @cfabbro
If you're someone who's bothered by typos in titles then you're a perfect fit for having title editing rights! Feel free to ask our overlord for the permissions if that interests you.
I don't do nearly as much editing as our GOATs @mycketforvirrad or @cfabbro, but it's nice to be able to make the occasional tweak or two. Also I'm mad that I saw this topic multiple times and didn't even notice the typo until now!
I am absolutely that sort of person and didn’t realize that limited title-editing privileges were a thing! Of course if you know anything about my posting habits on Tildes you’ll know that I’m so chronically critical of power that I run screaming whenever even the smallest amount is offered to me, lol.
fixed