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Why give them unique shapes in the legend and then proceed to NOT use them in the actual diagram? ,`:•|
I bow to your superior emoticon use :o
Lol I never noticed that
Because someone really dislikes colour blind people :P
comedy
It also seems the color for “young adult novel” isn’t used at all.
That’s the purple.
I’m one of those heathens that read through for the first time in publication order. The ancient civilization side trips were a bit disorienting at first but I managed.
I just finished The Last Continent next up is Carpe Jugulum
I’m considering that for my next read through.
Ok but where do I start?
There’s a lot of opinions on this. I found Small Gods to be a good jumping in place because it’s a stand alone book and late enough that he had found the tone he wanted for the series. But a lot of other people recommend picking a subseries and starting with the first book there. The Vimes books are very popular so a lot of people recommend Guards, Guards as a starting point.
The reason a lot of people don’t recommend publishing order is that the first two books are written in a very different style to the later ones. They’re pretty straight parodies of heroic fantasy. But Pratchett becomes so much more later.
You can do whatever I think, either read them by series (rincewind, witches, city guard, etc.) or by publishing order, starting with the colour of magic.
Witches look self-contained. For the rest, pick a group and read up to before the series crossover, then proceed to the next series’s starting book
Witches aren’t bad to start it’s where I did. But I recommend ending with Tiffany Aching. The shepherds crown wasn’t intended to be the final book, he was writing until he died and would’ve kept going if he could’ve, but it is the perfect final book.
I’d say start with Rincewind, Witches, or Death. City Watch is good too but it’ll hit you hard with Industrial Revolution stuff and is very much the story of the world progressing as people try to deal with it.
I recommend ending with Tiffany Aching.
I heartily agree. It reads like a beautiful capstone on Sir Terry Pratchett’s life’s work.
Mort
The books represented by the orange dots are typically recommended starting points between fans. They start some of the more popular longer running character arcs.
That said, every book is a solid stand-alone story. No story requires reading more than the book it is in.
That said, every book is a solid stand-alone story. No story requires reading more than the book it is in.
Yeah, I will mention that at the time I started reading them, availability of the series in the US was pretty spotty so I read a lot of the books out of order. I didn’t find it impacted my enjoyment. Some of the later books have more continuity, particularly the later watch books, but I think the majority of them could be read in any order without too much problem.
What kinds of books do you like? Different ‘series’ have different connecting themes and are asking different sorts of questions. Any types of themes in stories you are drawn to?
The night watch, if you enjoy detective mystery
I was the weird one and started with The Color of Magic and didn’t regret it. Weird Pratchett advised to skip 2 of his own books.
I think starting with Color of Magic is just fine, IF you know and enjoy classic heroic fantasy. Otherwise it’s very hard to enjoy without understanding what tropes it’s mocking.
They’re very different from the rest so it makes sense. IMO you’ve really got 4 eras: The first two, the era where he’s got an idea of what he wants but it’s still forming and being explored (pre industrial, lots of new stuff, characters change a lot as he explores them), his stride (longer series, less satirical, beginning to display his feelings on people as a whole), and then the embuggerance books (frustrated and powerful stories that leave very little of himself held back). They definitely bleed into each other, but there’s a reason Snuff feels a lot more like I Shall Wear Midnight in tone than it does to Guards Guards.
I think what he’s really saying is “don’t start with the books that came with an assumption that this was a one off parody, start where it’s being written as a series meant to evolve, then when you have a feel for it go read them”
I tried reading Color of Magic and hated it.
I also read them in Roundworld chronological order and was thrilled with them, but looking back as an adult I can see where the guy who wrote Thud! and Dodger might not be entirely proud of the first couple.
Don’t sleep on Small Gods, it’s incredibly good.
That was the first one I read, and it got me hooked. Very good stand alone book with minimal references to the rest of the series.
my personal favorite after decades of dedicated fandom, and self-contained enough that it’s one I recommend everyone start with.
Sir Terry Pratchett.
I’ve kinda been wanting to get into the disc world books for awhile but fuck, this looks intimidating.
Meh, read 'em in order. I was all but done with the series when I saw posts like this.
You can read them any which way you like. I started with Hogfather because it sounded wild. If you go in order you catch more of the jokes and characters from the previous books.
The opposite. There’s no need to read all of them. Each is self contained. So this amount just means you have a lot more to consume of you liked them
Not only is each self-contained, but I have found that each “sub-series”- if I can call them that- has a different vibe from the other, and are oftentimes entirely unrelated. So it’s not like you’re missing out on part of the story you were reading in Mort and Reaper Man by not reading a Rincewind book. Not many people actually read every book anyway.
Should be the opposite, there’s a lot of options for where to start.
Just read Small Gods, which is fully self-contained and incidentally my favorite. If you like it, pick up another one and go from there. Most of the books are relatively short but all the ones I’ve read so far are amazing.
Did Pratchett really recommend starting with sourcery? I’ve been stumped for years on where to start
I think pterry was personally fond of Rincewind as a character, which may have influenced this recommendation.
I’m so confused.
Basically, while all of the novels take place in the discworld, different books in the series focus on different groups of characters, making it so that there are different subseries within the series. A lot of people choose to read the subseries in order instead of going through the books in publication order. This is also because the first two books, while not bad, have a very different tone from the later books. They’re kind of straight parodies of heroic fantasy rather than being more focused on the unique setting and characters within the discworld.
So most people would recommend starting with one of the major subseries. The city watch books start with Guards Guards (this is probably the most popular subseries). The witches start with Equal Rites. Death starts with Mort. And Rincewind starts with The Color of Magic. Or you could pick one of the stand alone books to get a taste of Pratchett’s style without continuity. Small Gods is probably the best choice for this IMO.
I appreciate your explanation and recommendation. Just wanted to second how incredibly confusing this guide is. According to you, starting with Small Gods is a good place. But in this “guide” that’s the 8th row, 3rd column, and not colored as a starter book.
This guide seems more fit for someone who’s already read the books, rather than being useful for someone looking as a place to start.
I agree that this guide isn’t very easy to follow. It also seems to be attempting to show additional subseries like “industrial revolution”, which is sort of an ongoing theme across different subseries but not necessarily something that stands on its own (I would consider Moving Pictures or The Truth more standalone books). Or the history monks that pop up in several scattered books but aren’t exactly major characters for the most part. That said, there’s not exactly a wrong place to start so long as you’re willing to give the first few books a little leeway, somewhat like the first season of a longer TV show.
Don’t kill me but I finally started reading Discworld. I saw this image and after reading some posts I ended up reading Guards! Guards! It was great and can’t wait to read another
Does reading this count as reading one of the books
I asked Pratchett’s ghost. He said it didn’t matter.
I JUST bought the books on humble!
This is great.
This one?
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/terry-pratchetts-discworld-harpercollins-books
Sad it doesn’t have quite all of them.
Hmm looks like it’s just missing Raising Steam?
And it looks like it’s through kobo.com? Do you just get the files or have to use their site/app?
Edit: looks like these books can only be downloaded as .ascm files. DRM-managed adobe files. Very lame.
Welp I just burned $18 as I’m absolutely not going to use Adobe Digital Editions or the Kobo app to read books. Humble’s “Use on Any Device” is an absolute lie.
Humble gives you a code to use on kobo.com
Which isn’t ideal, but for the price…
Have you tried using Calibre + the appropriate plugin to get them into a format your reader can handle?
Yes. Dedrm doesn’t appear to do anything. It doesn’t have a button like obok does. But the files won’t read.
I saw you mentioned ascm files, those are apparently not actually the books, just a token for them. Have you used Adobe Digital Editions to download the actual books?
Shamelessly copied from an old reddit thread:
Acsm files are not Ebooks. They are files that tell Adobe Digital Editions what to download and how long you have the ability to use the file. Download and install ADE, sign in, and then install Calibre deDRM pug in. Go ahead and double click the acsm file and ADE will download the epub or PDF. Go to where the files are stored (for me documents>Adobe digital editions) drag that book file in calibre and it will remove DRM. Convert the ePub to azw3 in Calibre and pop it onto kindle. Done :)
And this:
If someone else finds this post in 2022 or later: there’s a pretty new “DeACSM” plugin for Calibre that makes things a lot easier (especially if you try to remove Adobe DRM on Linux where it’s almost impossible to install Adobe Digital Editions).
You’ll find more info here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=341975
At the moment (v0.0.15) it doesn’t really work with PDF but I had no issues with ePub.
Sorry if this is repeating what you already know and have tried. Hopefully it helps someone.
I did install ADE first and did find the DRM epubs. I also pulled those into Calibre and saw the same thing: can’t open or convert because of DRM. Of note I have not configured the Obok plugin because I don’t have a Kobo device, but DeDRM is setup as I followed in the post above.
The second quote I can’t figure out how to use. Doesn’t seem to have an executable and isn’t a Calibre plugin as it isn’t a .zip.
I’ve heard it’s not too hard to recoup your value for your $18, by making the books actually readable on your devices:
https://github.com/subdavis/kobo-book-downloader?tab=readme-ov-file#alternatives-to-kobodl
Thanks! I’ll have to try that. When I got the epub downloaded from ADE my reader said it was encrypted and even suggested a search to remove the DRM.
Welp, I tried all that but it can’t remove the DRM. Guess this is the last time I buy ebooks.
That sucks, sorry.
I wanted to purchase that same bundle, but I didn’t want the hassle of getting DRM books into my device ecosystem, so I skipped it, since I noticed it was through Kobo.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had great luck with purchasing other (explicitly DRM Free) Humble Bundles (i.e. Tor books).
But I can understand wanting one reliable place to shop. It’s a shame that the one reliable place to shop for widely compatible eBooks seems to be the high seas, at the moment. Yo ho!
Did it convert it to .epub? If so you can remove epub DRM with Calibre and the DRM recover plugin
It popped up in calibre and knew the title but wouldn’t open. I didn’t see a dedrm button or option.
You have to install the plugin. You can get it from https://github.com/ramanveerji/DeDRM_tools . It removes DRM automatically when adding a book to the library.
I have that. It imported the 2 certs it found. Still doesn’t work.
It’s not even available everywhere.
Adobe digital editions are very easy to de-drm into epub files.
I tried the calibre dedrm plugin. Didn’t work. Spent about an hour going through the read mes and tutorial before giving up. There’s better ways to get what I payed for.
Just pirate them, you’ve already paid.
That’s the goal. I do like doing things the right way and learning new skills. But fuck it. Burned on Kobo.
It’s the publishers not the marketplaces that insist on DRM. Kobo just picked the off the shelf option.
Me: fuck your reading order - I read “the fifth elephant” as my first book.
Small Gods was mine. If I’d started with the Rincwind books I might never have finished any of them.
Mine was “Eric”
Funny how you made this post now. I decided to get into Discworld very recently and finished Mort just the day before.
Mort.
I grabbed the humble book bundle a while ago, so this will be really useful. Thanks.
Edit: what category are the purple books?
Young Adult.
The Tiffany Aching books are a young adult subseries that spins off from the witches series. Very much worth reading even if you’re not huge on YA stuff, especially since they essentially finish off the witches storyline.
As others have said “Young Adult,” but they’re not significantly different from the rest of the series imo. Protagonist in most is a child versus adults as in the rest of the books and they lack the off-color jokes and occasional swearing of the main series. Stories in the YA novels are about the same level of complexity as the others, and the violence is about the same, too.
One reader’s opinion.
