The Terry Pratchett Thread

[Danster]

8 hours ago, Blu3Flame said:

Does anyone know where I can find the Radio 4 plays? I can't seem to find them for purchase anywhere.

 

Small Gods is available now on the Radio Player.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03mz1wb/episodes/player

 

 

 

 

[JohnnyNolan]

Well following on from a much earlier post (where I'd only read Colour of Magic) I've been reading a few Pratchett novels over the last year or so and I've adored some, other less so.

 

I've worked my way through the Guards series of books and those I adore. Feet of Clay in particular had me in tears laughing. The Guards books work so well for me. I love the characters, the jokes and the insight into how the world works and how people react to situations.

 

I've started on the Death books recently, and while I enjoy them, I'm not enjoying them anywhere near as much as the Guards books. I've read Mort and I'm just coming to the end of Grim Reaper. I really enjoy Death as a character, but the overall story in these novels I've found rather lacking.

 

I also gave Good Omens a read, which I enjoyed. That did feel to me more like a Gaiman novel to me, but that maybe because I was more familiar with his work at the time I read it.

[Danster]

9 hours ago, JohnnyNolan said:

Well following on from a much earlier post (where I'd only read Colour of Magic) I've been reading a few Pratchett novels over the last year or so and I've adored some, other less so.

 

I've worked my way through the Guards series of books and those I adore. Feet of Clay in particular had me in tears laughing. The Guards books work so well for me. I love the characters, the jokes and the insight into how the world works and how people react to situations.

 

I've started on the Death books recently, and while I enjoy them, I'm not enjoying them anywhere near as much as the Guards books. I've read Mort and I'm just coming to the end of Grim Reaper. I really enjoy Death as a character, but the overall story in these novels I've found rather lacking.

 

I also gave Good Omens a read, which I enjoyed. That did feel to me more like a Gaiman novel to me, but that maybe because I was more familiar with his work at the time I read it.

 

Worth reading Hogfather to see if you really do like Death or not.

[rsbrowndog]

I've read 2 or 3 Discworld novels previously (sorry, can't recall which ones off the top of my head but if it is important to know I can try and work out which ones they were!) and not really enjoyed them. Despite this I remain convinced that Discworld is something I should like, I just need to find the right stories which make it "click" for me!

 

So, where would you recommend I start?

[Danster]

24 minutes ago, rsbrowndog said:

I've read 2 or 3 Discworld novels previously (sorry, can't recall which ones off the top of my head but if it is important to know I can try and work out which ones they were!) and not really enjoyed them. Despite this I remain convinced that Discworld is something I should like, I just need to find the right stories which make it "click" for me!

 

So, where would you recommend I start?

 

The first three are probably the weakest of them all. It's worth trying out the Guards novels, starting with Guards Guards and then Men At Arms (probably one his very best). I love them all, so I'm probably biased, but it's worth checking out the Witches novels, if only so you can read Lords and Ladies which is wonderful. Or try Pyramids or Small Gods for standalone books. If you liked Rincewind then reading all his are also worth doing just so you can really enjoy Interesting Times which is also one of his best. 

 

Then there are some of the more recent ones like The Truth, Going Postal or Making Money which are three great books.

 

Death and the Auditors and the History monks make a welcome return in  Thief of Time, while the guards series has its pinnacle in Night Watch and Thud! Two of Pratchett's best for sure. 

 

They are all (relatively) good and not very long really, so I suggest you start with Mort, then try Guards Guards (and if you enjoy that Men at Arms, which is the better of the two) and then Small Gods. If you are still not feeling it at that point then you're probably best off leaving it. If you are liking it, go back and fill in the ones in the series that you've missed and go from there. I've been listening to them all again on Audible over the last twelve months (i'm up to -just finished- Jingo) and they are lovely books to listen to and work in chronological order very well.

[Chindie]

The usual starting points (ignoring the first 3 books) are, as said above, Mort, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, Guards! Guards! and Small Gods.

 

Mort is the first story where he starts to cement the Discworld properly and starts poking at ideas and themes that he deals with for the next 20 books or so. It's still not quite the mature world it eventually will be and personally I think it's a slightly overrated fairy tale, but I'm very much on the minority on that.

 

Guards! Guards! introduces his best characters and kick starts the Watch arc, and is brilliant, and still early enough that you don't miss much starting there.

 

Pyramids is a standalone story that contains more or less the best sequence in any of the books and makes Ankh-Morpork a very real place in an instant, and does a surprising amount of fleshing out the world.

 

Wyrd Sisters starts the Witches arc, which ultimately leads to Pratchett playing with an eclectic bunch of ideas, from satire of English country life to psychology, but this first book is mostly a Shakespeare satire

 

Small Gods is different to the other books. Another standalone, it deals with religion almost entirely. Other books make references to religion, this is about religion. It's probably his 'worthiest' book, and you can almost feel that he's angry writing it. It feels very slightly heavier than his other books, the satire is slightly more biting, and it plays a little more seriously at times. I probably wouldn't start here myself but it'd be one of the earlier ones I'd go to if I planned on reading all of the books.

 

Pratchett's style changes as the books go on and the world changes with it, so it's hard to say you'll like every book, especially as he also used different sets of characters to tell different kinds of stories even while the whole world is changing (literally). You might read a Witches story like Lords and Ladies (which is awesome) and love it, but then read Carpet Jugullum (which is a superb Witches story but changes a few things) and hate it. And the later books are different beasts, still excellent (..Mostly) but the Disc in those isn't the same as the one in Guards! Guards! for instance.

[Jamie John]

I'm currently reading Raising Steam. For the most part I'm enjoying it but it's yet to make me laugh out loud, which I did inumerable times after rereading Guards! Guards! last year. I'm half way through and the plot doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. Some of it doesn't really seem coherent in places, either. Is this the one he wrote when he was a fair way into his illness? 

[Chindie]

Raising Stream is the last 'proper' Discworld book he wrote, coming out about 18 months before he died.

 

It seemed to me that he knew there weren't many books left in him so it kinda plays like a who's who book - nearly every major character makes an appearance, if only a cameo, he revisits some old territory (the Reaper Man crossover), and feels like a rush to finish the arc of development he began with the Truth. So it ends up being a little less of a satire and more of a tribute really. Plus it's obvious he just really liked trains.

 

I do think there's a bit of a drop in his very late books. The characters are still there and they're still well written, but they're not the books they were. He changes things at the Truth, which is great, and the books have a different feel after that but are still as funny and cutting, and in the case of Night Watch, dark, but after Making Money they start to wobble a little. Unseen Academicals is a weird messy book, Snuff is a weak Vimes story which has ideas that don't fit quite right in the world he's made at that point IMO, and Raising Steam is just a goodbye really.

[rsbrowndog]

"Terry Pratchett: Back in Black" was on BBC 2 this evening. I only caught the last five minutes or so, but it looked worth a watch and is on iPlayer:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08fjlvx/terry-pratchett-back-in-black

 

Poignant and humorous film telling the story of the hugely popular author Terry Pratchett in his own words.

[Lothar Hex]

On 02/01/2017 at 10:01, Chindie said:

. Unseen Academicals is a weird messy book, Snuff is a weak Vimes story which has ideas that don't fit quite right in the world he's made at that point IMO, and Raising Steam is just a goodbye really.

 

Shepherd's Crown was definitely a goodbye, but yeah, pretty much from Unseen Academicals onwards you can tell things weren;t quite right. I suspect that's when things really started hitting him mentally. Raising Steam in particular felt like he was trying to condense 3 books worth of plots of world building in to one story and it didn't really work. The story was spread over months (possibly a year?) but it felt particular rushed.

 

IIRC Snuff was the first book that was completely dictated as well. Again while not quite as "bad" (I maintain Terry's worst was miles above a lot of peoples best) it felt more like a list of things that happened in linear order, rather than a story.

 

I think the last truly great Discworld novel was Making Money, even though it was kind alike Going Postal again. I always got the sense that Terry wanted to have Moist being groomed for Patricianship by Vetinari, but ran out of time.

[Chindie]

38 minutes ago, Lothar Hex said:

 

Shepherd's Crown was definitely a goodbye, but yeah, pretty much from Unseen Academicals onwards you can tell things weren;t quite right. I suspect that's when things really started hitting him mentally. Raising Steam in particular felt like he was trying to condense 3 books worth of plots of world building in to one story and it didn't really work. The story was spread over months (possibly a year?) but it felt particular rushed.

 

IIRC Snuff was the first book that was completely dictated as well. Again while not quite as "bad" (I maintain Terry's worst was miles above a lot of peoples best) it felt more like a list of things that happened in linear order, rather than a story.

 

I think the last truly great Discworld novel was Making Money, even though it was kind alike Going Postal again. I always got the sense that Terry wanted to have Moist being groomed for Patricianship by Vetinari, but ran out of time.

I've still not read the Shepherds Crown. I've had the big thing spoiled, but I'd only read the first 2 Tiffany books (I think, years ago). I can barely remember the plot of those. I've got them all but it's getting round to reading them. 

 

I'd agree the last really good book is Making Money. The ideas, the wonder at how the world works was still there. There were hints at troubles IMO, the protagonist is a bit of an afterthought, as good as he is, and it is just Going Postal 2. 

 

Unseen Academicals is just a mess. It's a weird halfbaked idea he's tried to spin a story out off, but its strangely one note from what I remember. I might need to reread it just to recall how weak it was.

 

Snuff feels like it's a rewrite from a decent Vimes story, but nothing more for me, and I have always had a problem with the goblins and their plot in it. It feels... Tacked on somehow, despite the book ultimately being about them? I never felt like the concepts they introduce fit Discworld, it doesn't work for me. One of the more disappointing books in the entire series for me I think.

 

Raising Steam feels like a goodbye simply for all the characters popping up and him introducing something that physically unifies the world IMO. It felt like by checking in with everyone, even for a line or two, and giving the Disc a way of having every character be in any story in theory, the development of the Disc had pointedly come towards the point he was happy to leave it, which also might be why it feels a little rushed.

 

There's clearly a wobble after Night Watch for me. Which is so good that anything that followed was going to be a step down, but a lot of what followed, bar the Moist stuff, is noticeably weaker.

[Captain Novaforce]

On 11/02/2017 at 21:56, rsbrowndog said:

"Terry Pratchett: Back in Black" was on BBC 2 this evening. I only caught the last five minutes or so, but it looked worth a watch and is on iPlayer:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08fjlvx/terry-pratchett-back-in-black

 

 

 

 

Watched this today, unfortunately it spoils a bit of the Shepherd's Crown but it's a great programme. 

 

Just finished I Shall Wear Midnight, so now going to carry on with the last book. However even after this I've still got 4 science of discworld books I've not read, plus the long earth books, Dodger, and Johnny books and strata.... Not sure about the last ones. Oh and the short stories.

 

It really is a ridiculously large body of work he left behind.

[cassidy]

Shepherds Crown now finished. No more new Pterry for me.  This is a terrible sad thing. 

[smac]

Ah, finally started The Shepherd's Crown.

 

Had a wee cry at the first bit; didn't think I would be affected at all after all the spoilers out there, but it really got to me.

[MikeBeaver]

13 hours ago, smac said:

Ah, finally started The Shepherd's Crown.

 

Had a wee cry at the first bit; didn't think I would be affected at all after all the spoilers out there, but it really got to me.

 

I went to the book launch in London for Shepherds Crown, they read the spoiler there, I don't think there was a dry eye in the entire building.

As for Snuff, I think that is one of my favourites, although as I consume them mostly through audio books, that could be why.

[Lothar Hex]

Sir Terry died two years ago on 12/3/2015. The world has only gotten less funny since.

[Lorfarius]

Just came across this thread by accident but was a huge Terry fan back in the thread, even went to a couple of book signing of Jingo (it's on a shelf somewhere but it wishes my loins be full of camels) and the 98 DW convention where I met him first hand (still got my signing photo where I look so young!). He actually sat right next to me and spoke for a couple of minutes whilst we waited for them to do the next bit on the stage. I could feel all the people around me almost pass out in amazement but he seemed an all right bloke and we just chatted about the show  Shook his hand, noted the ring, watched the show and off he went. Surreal.

 

Anyway.... I only seemed to keep reading them on release until about the Fifth Elephant where rl got in the way and sadly I was dabbling in the books by this point and I'd moved on but I always came back to them every so often but I don't think I was enjoying them as much. However I was determined that I'd finish the DW journey one day so off I trotted a couple of weeks back. 

 

RS was.... very disappointing and felt very rushed (no surprised with what was happening to the poor guy) often felt like there was so much else to tell and that a big chunk of the story was missing. Doesn't seem like Terry and anyone who didn't know what had gone on would write it off but there's lots of touch of his usual genius hidden away if you look. Was more of a goodbye Ankh-Morpork and a fond farewell.

 

Then we get to Shepherds Crown and this really was a struggle to get through, I'm not in the sense of if it being a good or bad book. It's just so... sad. As a story it's quite good and a very good tale but.... it's the end of the writer and just  He knows it, we know it but there's still hints of what other stuff we could have seen. Such a shame he's gone and we've truly lost out. Anyway a week after finishing and I really liked it as a book.

[Danster]

At a Dorset fair over the weekend this happened:

 

 

 Fair play.

[Vespa Alex]

Seems odd that he was using an ide hard drive. 

[Pistol]

He always used old PCs, hated upgrading from anything he was comfortable with. If I recall correctly, he stuck with an old Amstrad word processor for longer than humanly possible, and then an ancient PC running a version of Word Perfect that he liked, so not really surprising the drive was IDE. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was SCSI!

[Captain Kelsten]

I've just started re-reading the Guards series, my favourite of the lot, for the first time in probably a decade. Well, I say re-reading: I got about 30 pages in Guards! Guards! and then Amazon offered to bump it up to audiobook, read by Nigel Planer, for £6.50. "Why not?", I thought. Would make it easier to get through the books whilst doing other things. 

 

At first I wasn't sure. Nigel Planer doesn't sound like Neil from Young Ones. Like, not even close. This threw me a bit. I didn't like his nasal voice for Vimes, my favourite Discworld character. Most of the supporting or background characters do, sadly, end up sounding like Neil from Young Ones, especially Angua, which is weird, to say the least. Anyway, but Jingo I'd totally gotten used to him and actually quite enjoyed it. Then I started listening to Fifth Elephant, probably my second favourite in the Guards series (after Night Watch), where the narrator switches to Stephen Briggs. He's terrible. His voice is too droney, his tone too clipped. He reads it to fast, not allowing words or sentences time to breath. His character voices are both vastly different (Carrot is now Welsh! Colon is no longer northern Irish!), but they're also terrible. He mostly sounds bored. Nigel Planer read with such gusto, he was basically how I'd like to think I sound when I read my son a bedtime story. Stephen Briggs is more like what I actually sound like when reading my son a bedtime story: lacking in enthusiasm, inconsistent and half-hearted voices and a desire to get through it as quickly as possible.

 

Anyone else got any opinions on the audiobook versions?

[MikeBeaver]

5 minutes ago, Orko said:

I've just started re-reading the Guards series, my favourite of the lot, for the first time in probably a decade. Well, I say re-reading: I got about 30 pages in Guards! Guards! and then Amazon offered to bump it up to audiobook, read by Nigel Planer, for £6.50. "Why not?", I thought. Would make it easier to get through the books whilst doing other things. 

 

At first I wasn't sure. Nigel Planer doesn't sound like Neil from Young Ones. Like, not even close. This threw me a bit. I didn't like his nasal voice for Vimes, my favourite Discworld character. Most of the supporting or background characters do, sadly, end up sounding like Neil from Young Ones, especially Angua, which is weird, to say the least. Anyway, but Jingo I'd totally gotten used to him and actually quite enjoyed it. Then I started listening to Fifth Elephant, probably my second favourite in the Guards series (after Night Watch), where the narrator switches to Stephen Briggs. He's terrible. His voice is too droney, his tone too clipped. He reads it to fast, not allowing words or sentences time to breath. His character voices are both vastly different (Carrot is now Welsh! Colon is no longer northern Irish!), but they're also terrible. He mostly sounds bored. Nigel Planer read with such gusto, he was basically how I'd like to think I sound when I read my son a bedtime story. Stephen Briggs is more like what I actually sound like when reading my son a bedtime story: lacking in enthusiasm, inconsistent and half-hearted voices and a desire to get through it as quickly as possible.

 

Anyone else got any opinions on the audiobook versions?

 

I've got the entire collection in Audio format, and listen to them almost weekly when I go to sleep it's got to the point where I have no need to go back when I drop off now as I know them all so well.

"Thief of Time" was the only thing I listened to whilst I drove from Ipswich to Ibiza in a car on my own back in 2013 and is still a favourite of mine.
Personally I like how the different races ( with Briggs ) all have regional dialect, the Trolls are Scots, Dwarves are Welsh etc, the only ones I have trouble with are those read by Celia Imrie ( Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters ) and any of the abridged ones by Tony Robinson.
If you want your ears to bleed, go find some done by an American cast, I have "Thief of Time" done by a collective group of American VO artists and it's fucking terrible.

 

I guess it's down to personal preference which voice you prefer, but the source material is so good to begin with it almost doesn't matter

[Delargey]

When I first listened to Nigel Planner I was put off because I kept hearing him take a breath which annoyed me. I went back to it after a few months and realised you quickly forget about it.

 

I think his voice really suits Rincewind. I didn't like Celia Imrie, which is a shame because the witches books are probably my favourites.

 

I would love it if they got the guy who voiced the Joe Abercombie books to do them.

[Lothar Hex]

Listening to Interesting Times on my daily commute at the moment and Briggs does well there. It's a bit jarring when you're going through and it takes him a couple of books to really get a handle with the material. I say his delivery in the annotatations is great though.

[Captain Kelsten]

I've now listened to all of the watch books. The transition to Stephen Briggs was rough at first, what with characters having drastically different accents and so on (carrot suddenly Welsh, colon no longer northern Irish), but it's fine now.

 

I'm really struggling with Snuff, though. I'd read all of the previous watch books probably a dozen times each, but I've only managed snuff once and, even in audiobook format, it's hard going. Vimes is my favourite character, the watch books my favourite series, but snuff isn't great. I thought I was coming to the end and checked to find I was just halfway through. 

[Chindie]

Snuff just doesn't fit very well. There's potentially a decent Vimes story in there but the goblins stuff just really doesn't fit in the world he had established so well at that point. He obviously made additions as time went on through the series (stuff like filling in the dwarvish world with religious fanaticism and allegory, tweaking focus on the undead etc) but those mostly felt natural. The goblin stuff just gets parachuted in and feels wrong in the world he has made, half baked and a little too on the nose and a little too hokey. Down there with Monstrous Regiment as the worst he wrote.

[MikeBeaver]

40 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Snuff just doesn't fit very well. There's potentially a decent Vimes story in there but the goblins stuff just really doesn't fit in the world he had established so well at that point. He obviously made additions as time went on through the series (stuff like filling in the dwarvish world with religious fanaticism and allegory, tweaking focus on the undead etc) but those mostly felt natural. The goblin stuff just gets parachuted in and feels wrong in the world he has made, half baked and a little too on the nose and a little too hokey. Down there with Monstrous Regiment as the worst he wrote.

 

No chance, Monsterous Regiment and Snuff are some of my favourites, it's all a matter of opinion of course and my first time experiencing Snuff being sat around a pool in the sunshine whilst I listened to it and before I had really jumped into the majority of the books may have skewed my views on it, but I have listened to it at least 10 times, probably more, and it is a great story with some nice twists, Carser being a coplete psycho and Willikins flexing his butlery muscles, the Goblins making their way from vermin to people is handled well and leads them to be more prominent in Raising Steam.

 

Worst book by  far is the last one, The Shepherds Crown,  and only because it made me cry  

[omus]

On 25/05/2018 at 23:20, MikeBeaver said:

Carser being a coplete psycho

 

Carcer is Night Watch, it's Stratford in Snuff

 

To me the worst books are the Tiffany ones, just don't get on with them at all. I read some Pratchett every night to get to sleep (comfort, i don't know) and the fact there are several that i have no interest in is a little sad. 

 

Also there's this. Which sort of reminds me of Don Quixote for some reason.

 

 

[Nick R]

Whereas I think the Tiffany books are great (though a little of the Feegles goes a long way, and I'd have been interested to read a book about how she'd get on without them). A Hat Full of Sky in particular is one of my favourites from the whole series; almost up there with Lords and Ladies from the main Witches books.

 

I remember first reading about that Troll Bridge adaptation on alt.fan.pratchett some time around 2004, and checking the Snowgum Films website regularly for updates. But after a while I assumed it was going nowhere and had been abandoned. In the years since, whenever I was reminded of it I'd check online and learn that, yes, they still intended to make and release it! So I'm pleased that it's come this far.

[Protocol Penguin]

I know they’re not Discworld books, but are either Strata or Dark Side of the Sun considered worth a read?