Basically that’s it. I’ve read Thief of Time, because it was highly regarded in a previous thread. I’d like to read more, but where to start?
The first thing to realize is that Discworld isn’t really one series; it’s several different series all set in the same world. There’s some intersection between the subseries, but they’re mostly disconnected.
Within each subseries, you probably want to go in publication order, since they build on previous ones. And you can of course read the whole shebang in publication order, but if you do, be advised that the first two or three aren’t as good as the later ones.
Perfect, thank you!
I read them in publication order. (Mort and Sourcerer are easily skipped.) I enjoyed watching the world grow over the course of the books.
Ditto, but IMO the ones easily skipped are Sourcerer and Equal Rites.
It’s Sourcery. But yeah, not his best work. Still got some good jokes in it, though.
So you can see how much of an impact the book has - we can’t even be arsed to remember the title!
But yeah, comments about the efficacy of a half-brick in a sock were pretty good.
I thought Mort was a lot of fun. I listened to the audiobook version, though, so that may have helped.
To me the answer to any similar question regardless of the genre or medium is the order in which it was made. To me Discworld is no different. It’s not because of not understanding what went on before. Most of them can be read on their own without much difficulty. It is mostly because of how much Pratchett grew as a writer as the years went by. It would be jarring to read one of his more maturely written books and then go back to one of his early light parodies.
You may not know if you will like the books if you read just one. Try at least a couple of books from the different sub-series. Order isn’t all that important, if you like them you’ll have the fun of reading them again to pick up the references from preceding books.
Sorry - it was Eric, not Mort that I was thinking of.