this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is fuckin amazing.
Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are responsible for 80% of my sense of humor.
Never found Douglas Adams books funny but loved how entertaining they are. And discword is one of my favourite series, Pratchett's writing style makes the books effortless to read.
I really love Douglas Adams books and just going through the middle of the colour of magic... Not feeling like the best book ever, but enjoying It so far. Any recommendations for the next one from Terry Pratchett's discworld saga? Too many to choose from.. 😔
Edit: didn't expect so many replies, thank you all!!
There's a reading order guide. Take your pick! I agree that The Color of Magic is one of the worse starting points. I liked the Watch novels (starting with Guards! Guards!).
You people are insane, I tried the ebook for the first one from my library: 7 copies, 37 people waiting
It's a great book. It's just got some fantastic competition.
Lol I tried starting with colour of magic and hated it.
So which series do you start on? Rincewind, Witches, Death, or Watch? Does it matter?
Whichever you want. It doesn't really matter.
Pick whichever of the orange “starter novels” you want (maybe read series synopsis and pick whichever appeals to you most) and proceed down the flowchart. Once you finish one line, go to another.
Where you start is largely a matter of preference, it's true, but beginning at the start of a subseries makes sense.
Rincewind is a great protagonist. He stars in The Colour of Magic, but several other books also have him. The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are a pair, the first two books and one story told in two parts. They're fun but a bit slight. They do introduce Rincewind, Twoflower, The Luggage, Lord Vetinari, The Librarian, Ankh Morpork, Unseen University and a few other things.
The Witches have been my least favorite Discworld books, but I'm much in the minority there. They do have some great characters.
The Death books are uniformly great. Although Death is a main character in all of them, I think it's only Reaper Man in which he's the main character. Other characters are Mort, Ysabelle, Albert and later Susan.
The Watch books center around the watchpeople, but especially Capt Vimes. Other characters include Carrot, Angua, Cotton, Nobby, CMOT Dibbler, Gaspode, Detritus, and Vetinari also usually plays a role.
Many, but not all, of the Discworld novels are focused around the biggest city on the Discworld, Ankh Morpork. The Wizards, Watch and Industrial Revolution series are mostly set there. The Witches novels are mostly set in the country of Lancre, and so are a bit more rural. A few books are what you might call one-offs, set in a place that's never returned to, and that makes them good stand-alone books. I think maybe Small Gods is the best of these.
I would recommend going through at least the first few in order because of world building. My favorite book is Night Watch though.
Colour of magic and light fantastic are 2 of the worst books in the discworld series. They're not bad books, but nothing compared to what comes later. I read the series in chronological order and don't regret it, so don't give up on it. You can also follow the story arcs, if one particularly appeals to you.
Witches is a significant step up, and it only gets better from there, as Pratchett hits his stride.
I disagree, they set the scene for what's to come.
We see ankh morpork and the wider discworld through the eyes of rincewind (lives it, knows it, mostly hates and/or scared of it) and twoflower (all new, loves it all, naive).
So it sets the stage for all the other characters to enter and exit from there onwards.
Don't get me wrong, they are important books, and quite good. They just lack something compared to the later books. It's like the shutter start effect on some films. Initially it's a bunch of stills. At a critical point it becomes a stuttering moving image. It finally becomes a living breathing film.
You can go with the chronological order of publication or by series. So far I like the Death and the Guards series the best.
Read all the night's watch books. They are hilarious. Mort is good as a stand alone and the witches books are brilliant too.
I just wanted to recommend Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley Its a very similar style of humor and was actually written before Hitch Hikers. The audiobook is particularly exceptional.
Never heard of it, let me save it for later!
I've never read any Pratchett. Any suggsstions on what would be a good startingpoint (as a particularly good example of his writing)?
E: It seems this question was mostly answered in other comments.
There are whole website that are dedicated to advising the reading order of his books. But if you want something from his main book series I suggest Guards Guards, read all the books in that series and then read Making Money, read all the books in that series and then you'll want to start on anything with the Wizards, possibly not Sorcery despite that being the first one because it's kind of an early book and sort of weak, and not funny like the later books in the series.
But this guide should help you. Pick something start on the left and go to the right.
Why is there a key in the top left of types of stories designated with shapes. And not a single point in the infographic matches any of those symbols. Which are starter novels? And which are YA?
The key is the colors not the shapes as far as I can tell, as the starter books are all that orange/yellow color
So the YA novels appear to just be the Tiffany Aching series.
The red ones are also labeled "Science Novels," both in the legend, and as the title of the series attached to the arrow pointing at the first of the series, which isn't orange, so I guess that the order isn't as important with those books?
I didn't make the graphic so I'm not sure on the shapes, but the starter books are the ones on the left with the arrows.
Cheers! Saving the image for later.
I'm not much of a reader but thoroughly enjoyed these books.