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Terry Pratchett

It just needs a cloak and a tiny scythe. ‘Squeak’.
 

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I've one of them knocking around somewhere, left-over from the window display of my shop.
I think I might've given it, along with doggie ones, to my daughter. She's well into Halloween.
I've still got a copy of Nanny Ogg's cookbook, which includes recipes for Klatchian curry and Wow-wow sauce!
 
Stormkhan said:
I've one of them knocking around somewhere, left-over from the window display of my shop.
I think I might've given it, along with doggie ones, to my daughter. She's well into Halloween.
I've still got a copy of Nanny Ogg's cookbook, which includes recipes for Klatchian curry and Wow-wow sauce!
Click to expand...
Carrot and oyster pie?
 
Predictably, I am a HUGE Granny Weatherwax fan.

Speaking of merchandise, I have on my living room walls the completed cross-stitch of the Great A'Tuin with the Discworld, and Death on Binky, the kits of which I bought from these people:
http://www.lyndisfarne.com/catalogue.php?title=discworld1&col=3
I also have Rincewind and the Luggage, but have not yet got stuck into that. My best friend completed the Librarian for her husband...
 
I want some advice. There’s loads of the Discworld books I love. I’ve read (and listened to in audio book) to various and I generally liked the stand alones I’ve read: Going postal, making money, raising steam, the truth, moving pictures and I loved monstrous regiment. I’ve also enjoyed the Death series. I mostly liked the Watch. I read and enjoyed a few Watch books but the last one I read the Fifth Elephant I found a bit of a drag, I wasn’t that engaged. But I finished it. But I’ve got the audio book of Sourcery which I’ve given up with, I’m just not bothered. It’s put me off a bit. Is it just me?

I’ve got Equal Rites but I’ve not started.

Any idea of ones more like the ones I’ve enjoyed.

Any recommendations?
 
MorningAngel said:
I want some advice. There’s loads of the Discworld books I love. I’ve read (and listened to in audio book) to various and I generally liked the stand alones I’ve read: Going postal, making money, raising steam, the truth, moving pictures and I loved monstrous regiment. I’ve also enjoyed the Death series. I mostly liked the Watch. I read and enjoyed a few Watch books but the last one I read the Fifth Elephant I found a bit of a drag, I wasn’t that engaged. But I finished it. But I’ve got the audio book of Sourcery which I’ve given up with, I’m just not bothered. It’s put me off a bit. Is it just me?

I’ve got Equal Rites but I’ve not started.

Any idea of ones more like the ones I’ve enjoyed.

Any recommendations?
Click to expand...

The Watch: Have you read Nightwatch & Jingo?

Both heavy on the satire, the former is my favourite: very dark toned in places, though it works much better if you're already acquainted with Vimes' story-arc.

Plenty of jokes--a bit of gore--and more world-weary truisms from the mind of Vimes:

"People said things like “Quite possibly we shall never know the truth” which meant, in Vimes’s personal lexicon, “I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn’t come out, because things are all smoothed over now.”​
​
Or like this:
​
“Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men, and fools, and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People.​
​
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.​
​
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.”​
 
MorningAngel said:
I want some advice. There’s loads of the Discworld books I love. I’ve read (and listened to in audio book) to various and I generally liked the stand alones I’ve read: Going postal, making money, raising steam, the truth, moving pictures and I loved monstrous regiment. I’ve also enjoyed the Death series. I mostly liked the Watch. I read and enjoyed a few Watch books but the last one I read the Fifth Elephant I found a bit of a drag, I wasn’t that engaged. But I finished it. But I’ve got the audio book of Sourcery which I’ve given up with, I’m just not bothered. It’s put me off a bit. Is it just me?

I’ve got Equal Rites but I’ve not started.

Any idea of ones more like the ones I’ve enjoyed.

Any recommendations?
Click to expand...
IMO Equal Rites is the weakest of the books, and Sourcery not much better. Sir pTerry was feeling about there I think trying to evolve from the outright parody of the first two books into a satirical style of his own. Strange that Mort is in between those two.

I think TP got kind of fed up with the all powerful magic in those two not-so-good books and subsequently made it much more jokey and ineffective. To the huge benefit of all the subsequent books.
 
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Yithian said:
The Watch: Have you read Nightwatch & Jingo?

Both heavy on the satire, the former is my favourite: very dark toned in places, though it works much better if you're already acquainted with Vimes' story-arc.

Plenty of jokes--a bit of gore--and more world-weary truisms from the mind of Vimes:

"People said things like “Quite possibly we shall never know the truth” which meant, in Vimes’s personal lexicon, “I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn’t come out, because things are all smoothed over now.”​
​
Or like this:
​
“Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men, and fools, and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People.​
​
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.​
​
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.”​
Click to expand...
I have read either of them yet. I’ll give them ago. Thanks.
 
Cochise said:
IMO Equal Rites is the weakest of the books, and Sourcery not much better. Sir pTerry was feeling about there I think trying to evolve from the outright parody of the first two books into a satirical style of his own. Strange that Mort is in between those two.

I think TP got kind of fed up with the all powerful magic in those two not-so-good books and subsequently made it much more jokey and ineffective. To the huge benefit of all the subsequent books.
Click to expand...
So it’s not just me then? I’ll give Equal Rites a miss. I did like Mort, I did like all of the death series. Thanks.
 
His later work is generally the best, though Unseen Academicals is an exception.

I'd have liked to see him write some with no supernatural/non-human characters at all, to show that he didn't need the fantasy element any more. He almost managed it in Monstrous Regiment and the Moist von Lipwig series.
 
I had an Audible credit to use up and was casting around for something to spend it on. I'm trying to collect most of the Discworld series on audio, so I went for Feet of Clay. Now, I don't remember enjoying the book overmuch when I read it (and reread it), which will probably be ten or more years ago, but I LOVE the audio version! I have no idea why, partly I misremembered the story I think.

But I have to say that I am enjoying it a lot more this time round. Perhaps I have just grown into it
 
MorningAngel said:
I went looking for the Night Watch on Amazon and found this which I don’t remember seeing before on Audible.

  • Terry Pratchett: BBC Radio Drama Collection​

  • Seven BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisations

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Terry-...on_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Edit: Oh Death is Mr Birling aka Geoffrey Whitehead.
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Geoffrey W. is a 'good booking' whatever he does.
"I'm so incredibly rich that I will not pause to have you killed, cremated, and your ashes sent into a fiery death by a rocket into the Sun. Not because I care ... but because I can!" (Time, Gentlemen, please!)
 
catseye said:
I had an Audible credit to use up and was casting around for something to spend it on. I'm trying to collect most of the Discworld series on audio, so I went for Feet of Clay. Now, I don't remember enjoying the book overmuch when I read it (and reread it), which will probably be ten or more years ago, but I LOVE the audio version! I have no idea why, partly I misremembered the story I think.

But I have to say that I am enjoying it a lot more this time round. Perhaps I have just grown into it
Click to expand...
I think the audiobook can bring something different depending on the narrator.

I loved Monstrous Regiment I think Katherine Parkinson was brilliant in that. The Truth too had Matthew Baynton who was great.
 
Got to admit, Monstrous Regiment as a book didn't amuse me as much as his earlier work.
I loved his writing for its critique on the modern world as well as the fantasy genre. Once the series went into Napoleonic mode, it lost the 'feel' of familiar areas of fun-poking.
I loved Thud. To me this was a very clever combination of genres using the limitations of a fantasy world.
 
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