I'm curious as to how you all read the Discworld series. Where did you start? In what order did you read them? Do you think it's better to read them in release order, or is it better to read them by sub-series (Rincewind and Wizards, Death, Witches, City Watch, etc.)?

I like the idea of reading the series in order of release... but I think some of the early books are weaker than the later books where Pratchett had gotten his different series settled down into their final forms. I don't know if I would have gotten into the series had I started with The Colour of Magic, for example.

When I first started reading the series, it was not easy to find all of the books (the early 1990s). So I happened to start with the earliest book of the series that was available in my local bookstore, which was Wyrd Sisters (this was back before the days of Amazon.com). I loved it, and continued with the books, reading from the earliest ones I could get at the time and filling in the older ones as I was able to acquire them (and waiting for the new ones as they were released).

When I finally got to read some of the early books (such as The Colour of Magic and the Light Fantastic) I was somewhat disappointed in them...so I'm leery of just telling someone to start at the beginning. Also, the Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites seemed very odd compared to the Granny I had come to love from reading Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, and Lords and Ladies (although I still thought Equal Rites was good). I think that the first books of the Death series (Mort) and the City Watch series (Guards! Guards!) begin their sub-stories in fine fashion...but maybe that's because I didn't start in the middle of those.

So... what was your path through the series like?

Just The Colour of Magic for me so far. I enjoyed it.

Release Order - of those Kathy had - then I continued as you bought them for Kathy, borrowing them months after you presented the latest ones to her and she had already read them.

Then I got hung up. Tried several times to read Making Money but never finished. Haven't borrowed or read any since. IIRC, I had more trouble with my eyes at that time and found reading books much harder than before.

But I have better glasses now.

I should pick it up again - I certainly think I'll be missing some good things if I don't.

The Colour of Magic
The Light Fantastic
Equal Rites
Mort
Sourcery
Wyrd Sisters
Pyramids
Guards! Guards!
Eric
Moving Pictures
Reaper Man
Witches Abroad
Small Gods
Lords and Ladies
Men at Arms
Soul Music
Interesting Times
Maskerade
Feet of Clay
Hogfather
Jingo
The Last Continent
Carpe Jugulum
The Fifth Elephant
The Truth
Thief of Time
The Last Hero
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Night Watch
The Wee Free Men
Monstrous Regiment
A Hat Full of Sky
Going Postal
Thud!
Where’s My Cow?^
Wintersmith
Making Money
Unseen Academicals
I Shall Wear Midnight
Snuff
A Blink of the Screen : collected short fiction
World of Poo
Raising Steam^
The Shepherd’s Crown


Is that the full list, or are there some that are missing? 44?

Which ones are which if I want to read the Witches?

Equal Rites 1987
Wyrd Sisters 1988
Witches Abroad 1991
Lords and Ladies 1992
Maskerade 1995
Carpe Jugulum 1998
The Wee Free Men 2003 (Tiffany Aching)
A Hat Full of Sky 2004 (Tiffany Aching)
Wintersmith 2006 (Tiffany Aching)
I Shall Wear Midnight 2010 (Tiffany Aching)
The Shepherd's Crown 2015 (Tiffany Aching)

I think, but I'm in a rush. Later.

Cool. Thanks!

There were a couple short Discworld stories that are found in some books that are collections of Pratchett's shorter stuff.

I think I started with Guards, Guards!, then jumped back to The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, then Small Gods. It's one of the only book series that I've been okay with reading out of order.

I have all the Discworld audio books on the iPod touch (along with many other audio books) that I sent home for Mother to listen to. Apparently she didn't do well trying to listen to them, but you could discover the joy of audio books by using that iPod. Whenever possible nowadays, my new books are audio books.

I'll try to find them and give one a try and see if I like it (listening to books, rather than reading them, I mean. I'm fairly certain I'll like the book itself).

Discworld stories stand alone as independent works set in the same fantasy universe. However, a number of novels and stories can be grouped together into grand story arcs dealing with a set number of characters and events, and some books refer to earlier (or later) events. The main threads within the Discworld series are:

Rincewind:

Rincewind was the first protagonist of Discworld; a wizard with no skill, no wizardly qualifications, and no interest in heroics. He is the archetypal coward but is constantly thrust into extremely dangerous adventures. In The Last Hero, he flatly states that he does not wish to join an expedition to explore over the edge of the Disc—but, being fully geared for the expedition at the time, clarifies by saying that any amount of protesting on his part is futile, as something will eventually occur that will bring him into the expedition anyway. As such, he not only constantly succeeds in staying alive, but also saves Discworld on several occasions, and has an instrumental role in the emergence of life on Roundworld (Science of Discworld).

Other characters in the Rincewind story arc include: Cohen the Barbarian, an aging hero of the old fantasy tradition, out of touch with the modern world and still fighting despite his advanced age; Twoflower, a naive tourist from the Agatean Empire (inspired by cultures of the Far East, particularly Japan and China); and The Luggage, a magical, semi-sentient and exceptionally vicious multi-legged travelling accessory, made from sapient pearwood. Rincewind appeared in eight Discworld novels as well as the four Science of Discworld supplementary books.

Death: Death (Discworld) and Susan Sto Helit:

Death appears in every novel except The Wee Free Men and Snuff, although sometimes with only a few lines. As dictated by tradition, he is a seven-foot-tall skeleton in a black robe who sits astride a pale horse (called Binky). His dialogue is always depicted in small caps, and without quotation marks, as several characters state that Death's voice seems to arrive in their heads without actually passing through their ears as sound.

As the anthropomorphic personification of death, Death has the job of guiding souls onward from this world into the next. Over millennia in the role, he has developed a fascination with humanity, even going so far as to create a house for himself in his personal dimension.

Characters that often appear with Death include his butler Albert; his granddaughter Susan Sto Helit; the Death of Rats, the part of Death in charge of gathering the souls of rodents; Quoth, a talking raven (a parody of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", although it flat-out refuses to say "Nevermore"); and the Auditors of Reality, personifications of the orderly physical laws and the closest thing Death has to a nemesis. Death or Susan appear as the main characters in five Discworld novels. He also appears in the short stories Death and What Comes Next, Theatre of Cruelty and Turntables of the Night.

Death also appears in the non-Discworld novel Good Omens, written by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

Witches:

Witches in Pratchett's universe are largely stripped of their modern occultist associations (though Pratchett does frequently use his stories to lampoon such conceptions of witchcraft), and act as herbalists, adjudicators and wise women. That is not to say that witches on the Disc cannot use magic; they simply prefer not to, finding simple but cunningly applied psychology (often referred to as "headology", or sometimes "boffo") far more effective.

The principal witch in the series is Granny Weatherwax, who at first glance seems to be a taciturn, bitter old crone, from the small mountain country of Lancre. She largely despises people but takes on the role of their healer and protector because no one else can do the job as well as she can. Her closest friend is Nanny Ogg, a jolly, personable witch with the "common touch" who enjoys a smoke and a pint of beer, often leading to her singing bawdy folk songs including the notorious "Hedgehog Song". The two take on apprentice witches, initially Magrat Garlick, then Agnes Nitt, and then Tiffany Aching, who in turn go on to become accomplished witches in their own right, and, in Magrat's case, Queen of Lancre.

Other characters in the Witches series include: King Verence II of Lancre, a onetime Fool; Jason Ogg, Nanny Ogg's eldest son and local blacksmith; Shawn Ogg, Nanny's youngest son who serves as his country's entire army and civil service; and Nanny's murderous cat Greebo. The witches have appeared in numerous Discworld books, but have featured as protagonists in seven. They have also appeared in the short story "The Sea and Little Fishes". Their stories frequently draw on ancient European folklore and fairy tales, as well as parody famous works of literature, particularly by Shakespeare.

City Watch:

The stories featuring the Ankh-Morpork City Watch are urban-set, and frequently show the clashes that result when a traditional, magically run fantasy world such as the Disc comes into contact with modern technology and civilization. They revolve around the growth of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch from a hopeless gang of three to a fully equipped and efficient police force. The stories are largely police procedurals, featuring crimes that have heavy political or societal overtones.

The main character is Sam Vimes, a haggard, cynical, working-class street copper who, when we first meet him in Guards! Guards!, is the drunken/alcoholic Captain of the 2-person Night Watch: lazy, cowardly, and none-too-bright Sergeant Fred Colon, and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, a petty thief in his own right. Then Carrot Ironfoundersson, a 6-foot-6-inch-tall (1.98 m) dwarf-by-adoption, comes down from the mountains to join the Watch and do real policing. The Night Watch manages to save the city from a dragon, we learn that Carrot is possibly the rightful heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, and the Patrician decides to allow Vimes to create a real police force.

Other main characters include Angua, a werewolf; Detritus, a troll; Reg Shoe, a zombie and Dead Rights campaigner; Cuddy, a Dwarf who appears in Men at Arms; Golem Constable Dorfl; Cheery Littlebottom, the Watch's forensics expert, who is one of the first dwarves to be openly female (and who tried to rename herself "Cheri", but without success); Sam's wife, Lady Sybil Vimes (née Ramkin); Constable Visit-the-infidel-with-explanatory-pamphlets, and Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. The City Watch have starred in eight Discworld stories, and have cameoed in a number of others, including Making Money, the children's book Where's My Cow?, and the short story "Theatre of Cruelty".

Pratchett has stated on numerous occasions that the presence of the City Watch makes Ankh-Morpork stories 'problematic', as stories set in the city that do not directly involve Vimes and the Watch often require a Watch presence to maintain the story—at which point, it becomes a Watch story by default.

Wizards:

The Wizards of the Unseen University (UU) have represented a strong thread through many of the Discworld novels, although the only books that they star in exclusively are The Science of the Discworld series and the novels Unseen Academicals and The Last Continent. In the early books, the faculty of UU changed frequently, as rising to the top usually involved assassination. However, with the ascension of the bombastic Mustrum Ridcully to the position of Archchancellor, the hierarchy has settled and characters have been given the chance to develop. The earlier books featuring the wizards also frequently dealt with the possible invasion of the Discworld by the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions, Lovecraftian monsters that hunger for the magic and potential of the Discworld.

The wizards of UU employ the traditional "whizz-bang" type of magic seen in Dungeons & Dragons games, but also investigate the rules and structure of magic in terms highly reminiscent of particle physics. Prominent members include Ponder Stibbons, a geeky young wizard; Hex, the Disc's first computer/semi-sentient thinking engine; the Librarian, who was turned into an orangutan by magical accident; the Dean; the Bursar; the Chair of Indefinite Studies; the Lecturer in Recent Runes; and the Senior Wrangler. In later novels, Rincewind also joins their group, while the Dean leaves to become the Archchancellor of Brazeneck College in the nearby city of Pseudopolis.

The Wizards have featured prominently in nine Discworld books as well as starred in The Science of Discworld series and the short story "A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices".

Tiffany Aching:

Tiffany Aching is a young apprentice witch and star of a series of Discworld books aimed at young adults. Her stories often parallel mythic heroes' quests, but also deal with Tiffany's difficulties as a young girl maturing into a responsible woman. She is aided in her task by the Nac Mac Feegle, a gang of blue-tattooed, 6-inch tall, hard-drinking, loud-mouthed pictsie creatures also called "The Wee Free Men" who serve as her guardians. Both Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have also appeared in her stories. She has appeared in five novels (The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, and The Shepherd's Crown). Major characters in this series include Miss Tick, who discovered Tiffany, Annagramma Hawkin, Petulia Gristle, and Nac Mac Feegle chieftain Rob Anybody.

Moist von Lipwig:

Moist von Lipwig is a professional criminal and con man to whom Havelock Vetinari gives a "second chance" after staging his execution, recognising the advantages his jack-of-all-trades abilities would have to the development of the city. After setting him in charge of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office in Going Postal, to good result, Vetinari ordered him to clear up the city's corrupt financial sector in Making Money. A third book, Raising Steam published on 7 November 2013 features Lipwig's further exploits as a pioneer to the newly invented locomotive. Other characters in this series include Adora Belle Dearheart, Lipwig's acerbic, chain-smoking wife; Gladys, a golem who develops a strange crush on Lipwig, Stanley Howler, a mildly autistic young man who was raised by peas and becomes the Disc's first stamp collector, and the very old Junior Postman Groat, who never got promoted to Senior Postman because there was never a Postmaster alive long enough to do so.

Discworld cultures:

Several other books can be grouped together as "Other cultures of Discworld" books. They may contain characters or locations from other arcs, typically not as protagonist or antagonist but as a supporting character or even a throwaway reference. These include Pyramids (Djelibeybi), Small Gods (Omnia), and Monstrous Regiment (Zlobenia and Borogravia).

I read a couple but fI've forgotten which ones

I'm going to try to read them all soon.

01 The Colour of Magic - Rincewind
02 The Light Fantastic - Rincewind
03 Equal Rites – Witches and Wizards
04 Mort - Death
05 Sourcery – Rincewind, Wizards
06 Wyrd Sisters - Witches
07 Pyramids – DWC - Djelibeybi
08 Guards! Guards! - Watch
09 Eric - Rincewind
10 Moving Pictures - Wizards
11 Reaper Man – Death, Wizards
12 Witches Abroad - Witches
13 Small Gods – History Monks
14 Lords and Ladies – Witches, Wizards
15 Men at Arms - Watch
16 Soul Music – Death, Suzan, Wizards
17 Interesting Times – Rincewinds , Wizards
18 Maskerade - Witches
19 Feet of Clay - Watch
20 Hogfather – Death, Susan, Wizards
21 Jingo - Watch
22 The Last Continent – Rincewind, Wizards
23 Carpe Jugulum - Witches
24 The Fifth Elephant - Watch
25 The Truth - Watch
26 Thief of Time – Death, Susan, History Monks
27 The Last Hero – Rincewind, Wizards, Watch
28 The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Uberwald
29 Night Watch – Watch, History Monks
30 The Wee Free Men – Tiffany Aching
31 Monstrous Regiment - Watch
32 A Hat Full of Sky – Tiffany Aching, Witches
33 Going Postal – Moist von Lipwig
34 Thud! - Watch
35 Where’s My Cow?^
36 Wintersmith – Tiffany Aching, Witches
37 Making Money – Moist von Lipwig
38 Unseen Academicals – Wizards, Rincewind
39 I Shall Wear Midnight – Tiffany Aching, Witches
40 Snuff - Watch
41 A Blink of the Screen : collected short fiction
42 World of Poo
43 Raising Steam – Moist von Lipwig, Watch
44 The Shepherd’s Crown – Tiffany Aching, Witches

Brotoro has 26 audio books of this series here - 26/43

60% ain't too bad. It would have been nice to have them all, but at those prices - yikes!

It's worth mentioning here that if you've read this thread you now know as much as you need to know to dive into any of the novels and enjoy them fully. Each is a standalone and as long as you know that Granny Weather wax, say, is a grumpy, no nonsense witch you are up to speed on her character.

And the plots are almost incidental anyway. The main joys are the characters and Pratchett's consistently funny prose voice, which is one of the wonders of modern fiction to me, for all that he was quite disparaging of the idea of his writing as 'art'. (For understandable reasons)

I started with the Colour of Magic and really enjoyed it, but then read Wyrd Sisters without any problems at all and found it much better (and then Equal Rites was less good for reasons mentioned above. But even "less good" is still brilliantly funny.)

You guys who haven't tried him, remember how everyone was telling you to read Game of Thrones and watch Breaking Bad, and you didn't but them you did and thought, "Wow why didn't I do this before?!" This is like that. Read him.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

On the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.”

I started at the beginning and plowed thru in order, eating them up like candy. I need to go back and more quietly read them, perhaps not from the beginning. I tried to reread Colour of Magic and had trouble getting into it. Reading the others kind of spoils the first two.

My favorites are without doubt the Witches. And Tiffany Aching, who is a witch, but a chalk one. And the Wee Free Men. And the Watch. Dammit. I pretty much love them all. Trolls, dwarves, vampires, gods, monstrous regiments and all.

I had resisted even starting the series as it sounded twee - unicorns and rainbows. A magical world on a disc riding on the backs of elephants and a turtle? Twee. It is anything but, however.

The sarcastic side of Fantasy - humorous quips on a well made world. Love it.

I discovered another movie of the DiscWorld series I had not known about before. Going Postal.

I liked the book, of course, but, sadly, of the few movies they've made and I've seen, this one was the least enjoyable, IMO. It wasn't badly acted, but departures and changes from the written word seemed wrong, unnecessary, or not as good as the book. When and if other movies departed from the written word, they did so in minor, inconsequential, or unnoticeable ways. Here, they just seemed wrong and large enough to take me out of the moment and say, hey, that didn't happen that way. If you hadn't read the book, that probably wouldn't be a problem, but I don't think the changes were as good, either. For one thing, the post office has only been closed for like 4 years, and not decades. Why?

Anyway . . .

The Color of Magic and Hogfather were pretty decent.

The animated ones, Wyrds Sisters and Soul Music were good, too.

The books are always more detailed and better, naturally, but for movies, those 4 are well worth watching. Going Postal is O.K. if you can watch it for free or a little money, but I wouldn't recommend buying it for current full price.

I don't think they've made any other movies that were major DiscWorld books or stories.

Or, brilliantly, as in the case where (in the Soul Music animated film) Buddy tells the Mayor of Quirm "We're more popular than cheeses".