I was very happy to be back in the Discworld again after being away for awhile. I did read Maurice last year and it was great, but this is the first time I’ve been back to a main series Discworld book since Thud! in October of 2019.
I enjoyed Snuff quite a bit even though it mainly features Vimes instead of the whole crew. I do get that the Watch shows up here and there, but this is a Vimes story almost entirely. I’m sad that this is the last real City Watch book, though. I’ve finished all the original Witches books(Tiffany Aching still awaits), but the Watch has always been my favorite series of the Discworld.
I think I’ve enjoyed watching Vimes get older, get married, have a son, etc. It’s been kind of a fun journey. I don’t know I thought too much of him in his earliest appearances, but he has become one of the best characters in the books to me now.
I finished it and instead of going elsewhere, I immediately began Going Postal, the “Moist” series of books I have yet to touch.
Yeah, Snuff isn’t the worst, but it’s definitely in the lower echelon. Going Postal and Making Money, on the other hand, are great, so Pratchett’s decline wasn’t monotonic.
I had a bit of a lock-down splurge a month or so ago - I had read The Wee Free Men and The Shepherd’s Crown and enjoyed them both (I’m a fan of the Witches series), so decided to get the 3 remaining Tiffany Aching books - and so far, I’m a little disappointed. A Hat full of Sky was fairly dull, but redeemed in the last few chapters, while Wintersmith, I thought, made a very poor story. (Both had the requisite number of Pratchett logic-and-wordplay, so no complaints there).
I always thought I Shall Wear Midnight would be the best of the 3, because I get the title refers to a specific ‘growth’ in a witches development, so we shall see.
Oh and -
The Fifth Elephant
Carpe Jugulum
Hogfather
Pyramids
(Ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably change).
Although I reckon a Best Of Rincewind Compedium would be the ultimate. He can’t quite carry a story arc on his own, but he has the best moments.
My favorite Rincewind moment is from The Last Hero:
“I just want to make it clear that I do not wish to volunteer for this mission.”
“OK, so what are you doing here?”
“Sigh… Volunteering. But I don’t wish to.”
Best Rincewind book for me is the one where they go to the equivalent of Australia and he teams up with that teacher who gave up teaching to become a warrior.
Am I mixing up books? Is that all in the Last Continent?
I don’t usually post early impressions, but Going Postal is very charming straight away. He’s meeting and greeting all the postal workers and I had one of the best “laugh out loud” lines I’ve seen in Discworld for many books.
“Needles? Those are just pins with holes in them!”
I credit Stephen Briggs for doing such a great job with his audio recording.
Would you believe I saw it a few years ago? I wasn’t much impressed, but also have not generally been impressed with any adaptation of Terry. It was bland enough and fell flat enough that my main memories are:
He takes over the postal system
Andrew Sachs(from Fawlty Towers!) is in it
in the movie version, I think some Watch members show up
Oh, they win in the end. Woo hoo. I don’t even remember how or what the primary conflict is other than “save the postal system”.
I am mostly unspoiled, though. I don’t remember anything that stood out.
Right now (perhaps 8 books in), Going Postal and Mort are my two favorites, and I think both are very approachable by readers who aren’t necessarily well-versed in the universe. Both suck you right in from the very beginning with an interesting twist.
I’d say I’m 70% through Going Postal and it is top-tier Discworld. Shows how much life the series had even with creating new characters well after the series-of-series had all been established.
I might say I’m laughing or giggling more than almost any previous book. I kind of love the post-office crew. And the main villain, Reacher Gilt, is excellent. I forget how Moist is described thinking of him. “The most blatantly fraudulent man in existence” or something like that. It’s downright admirable to Moist that someone could be so boldly fraudulent. Reminds me of a recent president, though only that description, not in the way he acts in the book.
I rank this book third of all the Discworld books I’ve read and I have now read 31 of them. It was excellent all the way through and proof that there was a lot of creativity and life in the Discworld series, so much that Terry could introduce a new series very late like this and make it so excellent.
I laughed more with Going Postal than I can remember laughing at almost any of the books in the series. I found the characters to be charming and a lot of fun. I even found the entire plot to be really engaging even though it is simply about the post office competing against modern technology.
Even with this book being so late in the series, it almost serves quite well as an introduction to Discworld. I don’t remember if the book slows down to explain how the Clacks system works, but other than that, everything seems really open to newcomers.
With a name like Moist Von Lipwig, I was actually kind of ready to not like the character. I liked him a lot.
I’m not going straight on to Making Money. My next book is:
I bought a copy to read aloud to my class(6th grade), but I actually decided not to once I read it through. A good book, but perhaps not a great read aloud for kids to listen to.
I will be re-starting Tiffany Aching at some point since I read two of them before I had read all the witches books. It makes more sense as a continuation of those.
There are kid’s books (Dragons at Crumbling Castle, The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner etc.) which are nice to read for kids because they’re short story collections. But they’re not Discworld.
Neither is The Carpet People or the Bromeliad trilogy (the Nomes books - Truckers, Diggers & Wings). But they’re excellent.
The Discworld juvenile I think would be a good place start is The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents as it’s largely a standalone, but it does have quite scary bits, I think 6th grade is a little too young for that.
Oh, there is always Where’s My Cow?. But that’s more of a nursery book than a classroom one.