this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
818 points (94.7% liked)

Funny: Home of the Haha

5833 readers
59 users here now

Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.

Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.


Other Communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are responsible for 80% of my sense of humor.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Never found Douglas Adams books funny but loved how entertaining they are. And discword is one of my favourite series, Pratchett's writing style makes the books effortless to read.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I really love Douglas Adams books and just going through the middle of the colour of magic... Not feeling like the best book ever, but enjoying It so far. Any recommendations for the next one from Terry Pratchett's discworld saga? Too many to choose from.. 😔

Edit: didn't expect so many replies, thank you all!!

[–] kogasa 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's a reading order guide. Take your pick! I agree that The Color of Magic is one of the worse starting points. I liked the Watch novels (starting with Guards! Guards!).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You people are insane, I tried the ebook for the first one from my library: 7 copies, 37 people waiting

[–] kogasa 5 points 1 year ago

It's a great book. It's just got some fantastic competition.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

So which series do you start on? Rincewind, Witches, Death, or Watch? Does it matter?

[–] kogasa 4 points 1 year ago

Whichever you want. It doesn't really matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Pick whichever of the orange “starter novels” you want (maybe read series synopsis and pick whichever appeals to you most) and proceed down the flowchart. Once you finish one line, go to another.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Where you start is largely a matter of preference, it's true, but beginning at the start of a subseries makes sense.

Rincewind is a great protagonist. He stars in The Colour of Magic, but several other books also have him. The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are a pair, the first two books and one story told in two parts. They're fun but a bit slight. They do introduce Rincewind, Twoflower, The Luggage, Lord Vetinari, The Librarian, Ankh Morpork, Unseen University and a few other things.

The Witches have been my least favorite Discworld books, but I'm much in the minority there. They do have some great characters.

The Death books are uniformly great. Although Death is a main character in all of them, I think it's only Reaper Man in which he's the main character. Other characters are Mort, Ysabelle, Albert and later Susan.

The Watch books center around the watchpeople, but especially Capt Vimes. Other characters include Carrot, Angua, Cotton, Nobby, CMOT Dibbler, Gaspode, Detritus, and Vetinari also usually plays a role.

Many, but not all, of the Discworld novels are focused around the biggest city on the Discworld, Ankh Morpork. The Wizards, Watch and Industrial Revolution series are mostly set there. The Witches novels are mostly set in the country of Lancre, and so are a bit more rural. A few books are what you might call one-offs, set in a place that's never returned to, and that makes them good stand-alone books. I think maybe Small Gods is the best of these.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Lol I tried starting with colour of magic and hated it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I would recommend going through at least the first few in order because of world building. My favorite book is Night Watch though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Colour of magic and light fantastic are 2 of the worst books in the discworld series. They're not bad books, but nothing compared to what comes later. I read the series in chronological order and don't regret it, so don't give up on it. You can also follow the story arcs, if one particularly appeals to you.

Witches is a significant step up, and it only gets better from there, as Pratchett hits his stride.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree, they set the scene for what's to come.

We see ankh morpork and the wider discworld through the eyes of rincewind (lives it, knows it, mostly hates and/or scared of it) and twoflower (all new, loves it all, naive).

So it sets the stage for all the other characters to enter and exit from there onwards.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Don't get me wrong, they are important books, and quite good. They just lack something compared to the later books. It's like the shutter start effect on some films. Initially it's a bunch of stills. At a critical point it becomes a stuttering moving image. It finally becomes a living breathing film.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can go with the chronological order of publication or by series. So far I like the Death and the Guards series the best.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Read all the night's watch books. They are hilarious. Mort is good as a stand alone and the witches books are brilliant too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just wanted to recommend Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley Its a very similar style of humor and was actually written before Hitch Hikers. The audiobook is particularly exceptional.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Never heard of it, let me save it for later!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've never read any Pratchett. Any suggsstions on what would be a good startingpoint (as a particularly good example of his writing)?

E: It seems this question was mostly answered in other comments.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are whole website that are dedicated to advising the reading order of his books. But if you want something from his main book series I suggest Guards Guards, read all the books in that series and then read Making Money, read all the books in that series and then you'll want to start on anything with the Wizards, possibly not Sorcery despite that being the first one because it's kind of an early book and sort of weak, and not funny like the later books in the series.

But this guide should help you. Pick something start on the left and go to the right.

Discworld reading order guide

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Why is there a key in the top left of types of stories designated with shapes. And not a single point in the infographic matches any of those symbols. Which are starter novels? And which are YA?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The key is the colors not the shapes as far as I can tell, as the starter books are all that orange/yellow color

So the YA novels appear to just be the Tiffany Aching series.

The red ones are also labeled "Science Novels," both in the legend, and as the title of the series attached to the arrow pointing at the first of the series, which isn't orange, so I guess that the order isn't as important with those books?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't make the graphic so I'm not sure on the shapes, but the starter books are the ones on the left with the arrows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cheers! Saving the image for later.