Terry Pratchett: Discworld?

Mars Bar

What's the difference between Terry Pratchett's Disc world and non-disc world books?

I've read Unseen Academicals and I enjoyed it. I also read Good Omens with Neil Gaiman.

So I'm wondering what's the difference as I want to start from the top and make my way down through his books.

How should I go about reading them?

I found this image that charts the books but it makes no sense to me!

Necronomicon

Unseen Academicals is a Discworld book, Good Omens is not.

There's some debate about the best reading order. The Discworld novels centre on different groups of characters (Rincewind, the Witches, Death etc. as listed in the chart you posted) so there are groups of novels related to each other that were published years apart.

You can read them in order of publication (so you might read a Rincewind novel, the next one might be about Death, and they would have little or no relation to each other); or you could decide to read all of the Death novels which have strong ties to each other, but have little ties to the Rincewind novels, and so on.

The chart shows the reading order of the books if you were to take one group of characters at a time. So if you were to take the Rincewind novels, the reading order is The Colour of Magic --> The Light Fantastic --> etc. Alternatively you could begin with the Death novels, in which case you would begin with Mort, followed by Reaper Man, followed by Soul Music, and so on.

Mars Bar

Ok that makes sense. I've found a better chart too that's easier to read. I think I might start with the Rincewind novels and work my way across.

Thanks very much!

Necronomicon

No worries! The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic aren't the greatest novels IMO, so keep with them if they aren't your cup of tea. Death and the City Watch are my favourites. Guards! Guards! is a masterpiece.

Mars Bar

Necronomicon wrote: »

No worries! The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic aren't the greatest novels IMO, so keep with them if they aren't your cup of tea. Death and the City Watch are my favourites. Guards! Guards! is a masterpiece.

Hah, they are the two I've ordered!

No harm though. I like going from start to finish of a collection and I need a break from crime books for a while. Got the two for €14 on the book depository with free delivery.

gufnork

Mars Bar wrote: »

Necronomicon wrote: »

No worries! The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic aren't the greatest novels IMO, so keep with them if they aren't your cup of tea. Death and the City Watch are my favourites. Guards! Guards! is a masterpiece.

Hah, they are the two I've ordered!

No harm though. I like going from start to finish of a collection and I need a break from crime books for a while. Got the two for €14 on the book depository with free delivery.

I seem to disagree with a lot of people about these two. They are two of my favourites, and I've read them all. Death and the wizards are great characters and the city watch books are well worth the read.

I tend to just read any that I happen across in any order these days, but then I have already read them.

Whichever you decide to read, they're all fantastic so you'll enjoy them I'm sure.

gufnork

By the way, don't forget to check out the discworld forum here on boards, doesn't get much traffic these days but still worth a look.

r3nu4l

I prefer to read them in the order they were written. The reason being that the discworld evolves a lot from the first book until the last and you will find that if you just read the witch books one after the other or the city Watch books one after the other you will have missed out on certain developments but also many in-jokes and puns related to books that you skipped over.*

Some of the books are loose parodies, others focus strictly on the evolution of technology and communications within discworld. .

*That said, I agree with the Cthulhu fan (Necronomicon ) and would feel that The colour of magic and light fantastic were not brilliant compared to other books. I'm not a big fan of the witches but DEATH and the Watch really crack me up and Moist von Lipwig (a newer character) is also one of my favourites.

copacetic

Agreed, ignore the fan type categories etc, order of writing.

Tin Foil Hat

Necronomicon wrote: »

No worries! The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic aren't the greatest novels IMO, so keep with them if they aren't your cup of tea. Death and the City Watch are my favourites. Guards! Guards! is a masterpiece.

Interesting. Those two are the only two Discworld novels I've read an I didn't like them either. I don't think I even finished the second one. Pretty much wrote off the Discworld as not being my cup of tea after that.
I've got a copy of Mort on the shelf somewhere. I might dig it out and give it a look.

okmqaz42

If they click with you they are great . I always enjoyed using them as lighter read to give my brain a rest after something more difficult. I recommend reading them in order although I do find I re-read the Watch ones more often.

Mars Bar

okmqaz42 wrote: »

If they click with you they are great . I always enjoyed using them as lighter read to give my brain a rest after something more difficult. I recommend reading them in order although I do find I re-read the Watch ones more often.

I've been reading so many crime novels for so long now that I need to step away from it.

I also picked up Snuff for €7 so that's gonna be on my shelf until I get to it.

Daith

I'm a huge Discworld fan however I def have a preference about what type of books to get.

Generally it's the Watch Books, the Witch Books, any set in Ankh-Morpork (like Making Money, Going Postal, Interesting Times etc).

Then the "misc" books Like Small Gods.

Never got into the wizard books tbh.

I recommended a friend start with Guards!Guards! first. It introduces you to Ankh-Morpork and most of the major players. Then the earlier books like Colour of Magic can be seen as the history.

However I did start if with Colour of Magic and was hooked so eh I'm not sure what my point is

Queen-Mise

Small Gods is genius - I like the god books & the wizard ones. I read the first 20 :eek: but haven't read one now in 7 or 8 years.

I loved Light Fantastic & Colour of Magic - the opening line of one of them, can't remember which 'the sun rose slowly over the disc as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the bother'. It goes downhill from there.

The shopping trolley book was disturbing/odd.