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[pmcd9]

This guy was totally off my radar until this week.  If his wiki is to be believed he's frikkin' huge.

Apparently there is a subset of the artcar crowd who are also Terry Pratchett freaks.  Or to be more specific they are waaay into Hogfather.  I guess I'm gonna need to watch this just to know what they are on about.

Meanwhile today I get my arts calendar from Rice University and their drama department are putting on Wyrd Sisters.  All of a sudden he's everywhere.

It's kinda startling to me that I have overlooked someone so well known.  I guess it's similar to how I've met a lot of people, especially older people who have never heard of Radiohead.  I'm incredulous that anyone hasn't heard of Radiohead, they're one of the most popular bands in the world.  I don't want to be that guy.  I want to know what's popular even if it sucks.

I guess I'm posting this to find out what you guys think of him.

[Ben-San]

He's pretty good but a lot of people, especially on the Internet, are way too fanatical about him and will talk him up as the greatest author in human history. He's not but he writes some pretty good books. He has some patterns that start getting apparent and tiresome (to me, at least), though, so I haven't read his new releases for a while. I met him once and he was an okay guy.

I do recommend reading some of his books, although I have no idea how approachable the newer stuff is.

[AugustWest]

I'm pretty much with Ben.  He's kind of a cult figure some places.  I like him, but I'm not a total convert.

It took me a while to warm to his writing.  I think part of the problem is that when he's good, he's very good.  When he's not his pretty mediocre.  If you start with the wrong book it's easy to get turned off.

I think Reaper Man was the one that convinced me to start reading more.  Off the top of my head, Small Gods was very good.  I just finished listening to Making Money a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it. 

On the other had The Last Continent was terrible.  I couldn't finish the first book in the series, The Color of Magic, until I had read several others. 

On the whole, they're good social satire disguised as fantasy.  Pratchett is definitely talented and can turn a phrase.  There are some wonderful characters throughout the books.  But he should probably have written about half as many as he did.

[Victoria Waterfield]

He has some patterns that start getting apparent and tiresome (to me, at least), though, so I haven't read his new releases for a while.

Yes, thank you! I thought I was the only one. I've read about ten or twelve of his books altogether. I thought he was great at first, but then after a while started noticing the same annoyingly noticeable stylistic tics, and suddenly I just couldn't take any more. I haven't read any of his stuff in years.

I also remember getting annoyed at the comparison I've seen more than once, that he's the Douglas Adams of fantasy. Adams's works have an effortlessness completely lacking in Pratchett.

[CortJstr]

When I saw this topic I was worried he had died.

I met him at a signed when Thud! was new. I'd only read Bad Omens (which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman). He asked if anybody was new to the Discworld series and Thud! was their first book. I raised my hand and he said I'd picked a terrible place to start, because that was one of the few Discworld books that relied on having read previous ones.

The books to have strong continuity, but normally you pick up plenty of background as you go along. There's lots of little bits for long-time fans to appreciate, but new readers get along just fine.

Anyway, if you like Neil Gaiman then I'd recommend starting with Good Omens. Otherwise Small Gods is a good stand-alone book. I'm such a rule-follower that I just started with book 1 and read in order from there.

[Doc]

I'm not one of the rabid fans mentioned above but a few years ago I might have been. He was certainly my favourite author throughout high school and Good Omens is still one of my favourite books.
I think he reached a peak around Small Gods/Reaper Man/Soul Music/Wyrd Sisters/Men at Arms. I wonder if he might have been a bit better off not keeping himself in the same universe and just writing something new since he seems to need to subtly retcon stuff more in recent books. That said I picked up Making Money in the library the other day and read through a couple of chapters and enjoyed it and that's probably the first time I've read any Pratchett in a year or more.

[littlefallsmets]

There is a very blurry line between an author "expanding and expanding ever further on a great stories with other great stories" and "lazy masturbatory universe-building to exploit the obsessions of completists without the effort of coming up with new ideas".

We call it "The Lucas line".

[lprkn]

I thought the Lucas Line was in reference to George's valiant attempt to delineate his chin from his neck.

Exhibit A:


Does seem like a sweet old guy, considering he has crushed the fond memories of millions.

[Choop]

I like his later stuff a lot, honestly, but I never got into the witches or the wizards other than Rincewind and the Orangutan. I was a Sam Vimes fan, and Night Watch remains my favorite of the series. This new character, from Making Money and Going Postal, this guy's stories are a lot of fun.

I honestly just read for the escape, and I'm no rabid fan. It's just nice to have a new visit to a familiar environment.

[Ruta Bagas]

I wonder if he might have been a bit better off not keeping himself in the same universe and just writing something new since he seems to need to subtly retcon stuff more in recent books.

His latest, incidentally, isn't a Discworld novel. I haven't read it but I've heard good things.

Pratchett is great when you just want an entertaining, easy-reading novel to plow through. I reckon that makes him a valuable asset to anyone on a literature course.

[Choop]

Apparently he was just knighted.

[Lister]

I've been a fan for a long time -- my first internet purchases were imports of the books that were then not yet published in the US, in 1995.  I paid for them by emailing my credit card info to the bookstore.  Yeah.

That being said, his later books haven't excited me like what he was writing 10 years ago or so.  They're not bad books, per se, but they're not brilliant like much of his earlier work was (once he worked the kinks out around book 4 or 5).

I highly recommend Soul Music as a good introduction to the Discworld series, especially for fans of rock music.  Some of his descriptions are eerily provocative.  I can't recommend Good Omens enough, either -- it's a wonderful collaboration, and the first few pages of dialogue are like a lesson in characterization.

If you want a guide to the series, have a look at this page.  Be careful though, as that site leads directly down the rabbit hole.  Also, it was started in 1994 or so and looks like it.

[Doc]

Most importantly it leads to the Annotated Pratchett File, again more rewarding for the older books I think but I lost many hours there.

[wombat]

Isn't it kind of a hoot that people still get knighted?

[Ruta Bagas]

I'll have you know we've got far more ridiculous archaic practices up our sleeves than knighthood.