The deal seems to have disappeared now.
Reading Pyramids at the moment. Honestly, I think it is very very good so far.
I don’t remember much about Pyramids, beyond thinking at the time that it was a relatively weak one.
I thought Pyramids was great, especially on reread. I really liked the characters, Teppic and Ptraci, and wished they had showed up again later.
Pyramids always felt like the first “real” Disc World novel, where Pratchett first really finds his voice as an author. It’s there in the previous novels to varying degrees, but Pyramids was where it really came together for me.
I’d say that point was Wyrd Sisters, which I think was one or two books previous?
Wyrd Sisters was the one right before Pyramids and I agree that when Pratchett came into his own.
In fact Pyramids was kind of weak coming between Wyrd Sisters and the first great one, Guards! Guards!
Publication order: Discworld - Wikipedia
Pyramids was the first Discworld book I read, so it’ll always have a special place in my heart. I borrowed it from a friend in 1991 or so, read it all in one day, and went out hunting for the rest of the series.
I bought and read Colour of Magic when the paperback came out and so for the longest time I thought Terry Pratchett wasn’t very good, not even as funny as Robert Aspirin.
So I didn’t find out about how great he was until like 2006, mostly thanks to the SDMB and especially @silenus & @Qadgop_the_Mercotan IIRC.
Same here, more or less. I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club when I got out of grad school, and I got that book, thinking it sounded fun. I found it to be boring and not terribly funny.
I didn’t try Pratchett again until around 2008, when some new-at-the-time gaming friends were shocked that I didn’t read Discworld. When I explained, they said, “well, that wouldn’t be the one to start with.” They loaned me their copy of “Guards! Guards!,” and I was hooked.
What I found sort of interesting about The Color of Magic was that Pratchett wrote it as if it were some great classic. When Twoflower meets Rincewind, his reaction was something like “Wow, THE Rincewind?”, like he was meeting Fahfrd or Gandalf or something.
Another one here where I believe Small Gods was my first, and I liked his style but didn’t fully grasp the story, but went on to Guards! Guards! and that was a great introduction to the guards piece.
Guards! Guards! was my entry point and it grabbed me right away, hooked me into the Discworld.
I love that this thread is still active. Although I have to confess that while I started it almost a year ago now and I have several of the suggestions sitting in my Kindle, I still have not read them.
I find it very strange here to be taking the discworld novels here as a fully connected body of work. Sure, characters appear in their main and other novels, and there are connections, but the man started in his thirties and had to work out a starting formula which made the Colour of Magic (and of course, the Luggage) and eat. I met him once two years after that at Glasgow Albacon and wasn’t famous or really a full time author at this point. He couldn’t just start with a novel full of intent and future. He had to become successful in his career and the Rincewind series was his monthly paycheque. Only when he got to make enough money could he do what he really wanted, which was to selectively parody modern or historical worlds and mythical figures. The man had to learn to walk before being able to run.
I’d suggest starting at the beginning and doing them in chronological order. The colour of magic and the Light Fantastic are good books, and he does get to develop his writing style after that.
Terrible advice ignoring a lot of real world experience by other posters in this thread. Colour of Magic is a poorly written parody of Fantasy. Not the excellent Satires he learned to write so well later.
If you include the caveat that, if after reading Colour Of Magic they did not like it, to maybe try again with a suggestion further along the timeline, I think starting from the beginning is fine, because so many of his lifelong fans did so with no ill effects.
I’m mostly reading them in order.
You need to start somewhere, and Colour of Magic contained so many essentials used later - from octarine to Ankh-Morpork to UU to the basics of wizardry, not to mention the pitter-patter of luggage legs. It’s a great book even if it is slightly less than most subsequent ones. That’s like getting mad at the first ten minutes of a movie for establishing the atmosphere.
I’d still recommend Good Omens. If I was trying to persuade a friend to read more Pratchett. If one disliked Monty Python or Douglas Adams, it may be a poor match.
Wyrd Sisters was very good; most of us read Macbeth in school. I like the beginning and ending of Pyramids but admit it does drag a bit in the middle with the space-time nonsense.
Any Pratchett book contains a worthwhile joke every few pages. I got the vast majority of references posted on @Darren_Garrison Usenet list, and quite a few more. This applies even when the plot or some of the characters are a little weaker. One might dislike Rincewind (I don’t) but still appreciate Cohen the Barbarian, his daughter, or certain orangutan librarians.
Going Postal was early in my DiscWorld reading, and it is certainly one of my favorites. It could work as a standalone as well as intro, though obviously you’ll see some of the characters later in their careers which some might find spoilery.
I believe it is one of the few that have been made into feature films.
It depends on whether you’re going in with the attitude “I’m going to try one book to see if I like this series/author, and I’ll decide whether or not to continue based on how well I like that one book,” or with the attitude “I plan to read the whole series (or at least get well into it before I consider giving up), and I just want to know what order to read it in.”
If you really hate The Colour of Magic, you probably will not appreciate the rest of the series.