In most polls of actual Discworld readers, Night Watch & Small Gods fight it out for the top spot. YMMV.
I read the entire set once every other year or so. I find something new Every. Rreakin’. Time. The man was brilliant beyond my ability to describe (which is why I’m not a writer).
I would rate “brilliant” Night Watch, Small Gods, Carpe Jugulum The Wee Free Men, Thief of Time, Thud, Going Postal, The Last Hero, Lords & Ladies, Reaper Man. The rest are just spectacular ranging to awfully darned good.
As has been previously established, the list is nonsense. While I agree that some of the later stuff is a little overrated, he’s also way overrating the early stuff. Rincewind, fundamentally, is not that funny. The Lost Continent is a book I barely remember.
Honestly, you could probably have put all the Discworld books in a hat and pulled names out at random and gotten a list at least as valid as this one.
Oh, and P.S. I liked Small Gods so LITTLE that it put me off reading anything else by Pratchett for YEARS.
Rincewind can be funny, but it’s really easy to get too much of him.
My favorite Rincewind moment comes from the oft-forgotten The Last Hero: “I just want to say that I do not wish to volunteer.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Sigh… Volunteering. But I don’t wish to.”
Yes, often. (And, now that I think of it, is fitting for the “worst retcons” thread. In the original appearance, the luggage was a unique magical item found in one of those shops that disappear once you leave them. In a later book, the luggage is of a type common in Twoflower’s home country.)
That’s not really a retcon. Things common in one exotic country are considered rare and special in another all the time. But having said that, the Colour Of Magic has a lot of stuff that was never really followed up on reliably, such as Twoflower wearing glasses, or the mystery of insurance and economics (Inn Sewer Ants, and Echo Gnomics), and the sacred nature of the number 8, amongst other things.
Isn’t a giant part of the plot of Sourcery, that the kid wizard is an 8th child, and therefore super-powerful magically?
Aside, not only did I not really remember the previous threads on ranking Discworld books, I completely forgot that I voted in one, and the book I voted #1 (Feet of Clay).
I’m a bit torn. Moving Pictures is kind of low but at least it’s mentioned. It usually get forgotten. And I love Pyramids but I wouldn’t put it at 3. I wouldn’t put it anywhere near 3.
And why rank books in terms of merit anyway? It’s like comparing them to vegetables. “Read this one! It’s good for you!”
Here is the relevant passage from The Light Fantastic:
“I bought it in a shop,” said Twoflower defensively. “I said I wanted a traveling trunk.”
“That’s what you got, all right,” said Rincewind.
“It’s very loyal,” said Twoflower.
“Oh yes,” agreed Rincewind. “If loyalty is what you look for in a suitcase.”
“Hold on,” said Cohen, who had sagged onto a rock. “Wash it one of thoshe shopsh—I mean, I bet you hadn’t noticed it before and when you went back again it washn’t there?”
Twoflower brightened. “That’s right!”
“Shopkeeper a little wizened old guy? Shop full of strange shtuff?”
“Exactly! Never could find it again, I thought I must have got the wrong street, nothing but a brick wall where I thought it was, I remember thinking at the time it was rather—”
Cohen shrugged. “One of those shops, [COLOR=blue]* he said. “That explainsh it, then.”
[/COLOR]
This at least implies that the nature of the luggage–and the fact that it could walk–was something that was unique even to Twoflowers.