The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

In a way I think Pratchett's YA stuff is his strongest. The three Johnny books (particularly Johnny and the Bomb) are excellent, and when I read Nation a couple months back I thought it was one of his best books in years.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2010 01:00

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:30

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I remember Carrot being Welsh in the first Discworld adventure game. Fits pretty well, in fact dwarves being Welsh in general fits well with Pratchett, what with the mining and all that.

e: Just listened to that Small Gods one. Excellent stuff.

John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jan 24, 2010

# ¿ Jan 24, 2010 13:27

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Vetinari posted:

Moving Pictures and Soul Music were from a weird period where Pratchett cared more about the parody than the characters. Eric and Reaper Man are from this time, too.

They don't really "fit" that well into the entire Discworld storyline.

All of those have one-shot characters who don't seem to really do much or matter overall. Unseen Academicals had a similar flaw, though it was still better than them.

My guess is that he was experimenting different characterizations in those years, because he also came up with Small Gods, often viewed as one of his best.

Aye. I absolutely love the Bill Door side of Reaper Man but the organic supermarket parasites can get to gently caress, ugh.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2010 13:20

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Just listened to Small Gods ep 2. Fantastic stuff - genuinely dramatic climax and it includes some of my favourite passages of philosophising from the book. The stuff about a 'shell' accumulating around gods is one of those things that has stuck in my mind since I first read it.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2010 13:53

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Small Gods Episode 3 and Episode 4 are up.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2010 20:23

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I would wear both.

I agree about the 'one joke' books, though. In a weird way, I'd put Monstrous Regiment in the same category - a throwback to the 'one joke' Discworld books Pratchett occasionally wrote earlier, but unlike those it's lacking in the constant parade of gags and one-liners. Soul Music and Moving Pictures manage to riff off the 'big joke' throughout, even though it's all part of the same broad parody, but Monstrous Regiment is very serious throughout most of it. Which may be why it's a failure for me at least. The other more serious Discworld books aren't based on a joke premise, so the sombre approach and darker tone works better.

Monstrous Regiment does have one of the best Discworld book titles, though.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2010 16:15

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I really love the Johnny books. Only You Can Save Mankind has dated a bit with its numerous references to late-80s computer games, but is still a lovely bit of grounded sci-fi weirdness; Johnny and the Dead is really very funny and sort of like Nation in that it explores a philosophical concept in some detail; and Johnny and the Bomb is poignant and again very funny.

It's a very believable little group of kids/teenagers that he portrays in these books, too.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2010 12:56

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I've not read the cat book but from all the mentions of cats in his other works he comes across as being very fond of cats and all their, well, let's be charitable and call them foibles.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2010 15:37

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Equal Rites also isn't really a witches book, though I liked it well enough when I read it.

Wyrd Sisters is pretty good but is mostly there for the Shakespeare gags so although they're very good Shakespeare gags the characters still haven't coalesced. Witches Abroad, if anything is even more of a gag vehicle but the characters have taken proper shape and I enjoyed it a lot.

Lords and Ladies is my favourite. But then, I'm a complete sucker for fairies-are-actually-bastards stories, because British folkloric fairies are so much better than the modern stereotype.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2010 19:06

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I love almost everything in Jingo except for Colon and Nobby and Vetinari doing their transvestite act in Klatch. That just felt so terribly by-the-numbers and cringeworthy.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2010 00:23

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Jingo also has the only good appearances/use of the Dis-organizer in the several books it turns up in, with the alternate-timeline stuff being surprisingly powerful.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2010 01:01

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Echoing the love for Night Watch. It's up there with Small Gods as one of my favourite Pratchett books and it actually works a lot better as a statement on the futility and tragedy of conflict than Monstrous Regiment does. Ironically.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2010 10:19

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

If Reaper Man didn't have that awful living supermarket parasite stuff, I think it'd be one of my favourite Discworld books. All of the Bill Door bits are fantastic.

# ¿ May 5, 2010 08:47

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

TheVertigoOfBliss posted:

Ive just finished rereading Jingo and im not really sure i get the love for it in this thread. The whole 'chase' part through the middle of the novel seems really drawn out and unnecesary, the Nobby cross dressing plot is irritating.

Feet of Clay which i reread previous to Jingo seems to have a much neater narrative and the whole 'who-dunnit' aspect is better implemented rather than in Jingo where it starts off with a bit of murder mystery then gets swept under the carpet for 200 pages before being quickly wrapped up at the end.

Onto 5th elephant now

I pretty much agree with this, but with the proviso that Jingo has some genuinely great bits (the D'regs, the only good implementation of the Dis-organiser) which redeems it somewhat.

Nation is excellent, everyone in this thread should read it.

# ¿ May 15, 2010 11:45

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

YggiDee posted:

That dwarf was Cuddy, I believe

Cuddy was excellent.

In fact Men at Arms is one of Pratchett's books that's an enduring favourite of mine.

# ¿ May 16, 2010 12:06

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Nilbop posted:

Ank, like ankle or pancreas.

I'm Irish though.

Yeah this is it.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 23:48

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

appropriatemetaphor posted:

It felt like Gaiman like, sketched the plot, and then Pratchett just wrote everything.

Pratchett wrote most of Good Omens but Gaiman still wrote some of it himself. Here's what Pratchett himself said on the subject:

quote:

"Neil and I had known each other since early 1985. Doing it was our idea, not a publisher's deal."

"I think this is an honest account of the process of writing Good Omens. It was fairly easy to keep track of because of the way we sent discs to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of Good Omens. However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's happening?

I did most of the physical writing because:

1) I had to. Neil had to keep Sandman going -- I could take time off from the DW;

2) One person has to be overall editor, and do all the stitching and filling and slicing and, as I've said before, it was me by agreement -- if it had been a graphic novel, it would have been Neil taking the chair for exactly the same reasons it was me for a novel;

3) I'm a selfish bastard and tried to write ahead to get to the good bits before Neil.

Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever -- by the end, large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots. Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock."

"Yes, the maggot reversal was by me, with a gun to Neil's head (although he understood the reasons, it's just that he likes maggots). There couldn't be blood on Adam's hands, even blood spilled by third parties. No-one should die because he was alive."

# ¿ Jun 24, 2010 09:23

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I just started on Unseen Academicals, and the dedication at the start - to the fellow who typed most of the book - made me really sad.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2010 10:41

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

You should definitely read The Light Fantastic after Colour of Magic, since it follows on from it directly.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2010 10:42

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Rosie Palm.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2010 23:28

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

It's been years since I read Light Fantastic but there are several passages in there that I remember very fondly. It's got some of Pratchett's most meta-commentary writing, particularly regarding the mercenaries hired to chase Rincewind and company.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2010 15:02

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Nah, the dwarfs are mentioned as being against 'that sort of thing' several times.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 08:27

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Better if it had more variety of runes instead of just oblong ones.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2010 10:41

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Equal Rites isn't one of my favourites but I remember enjoying it a lot when I read it. It wasn't one of the first I'd read, though, and I'd already read Wyrd Sisters, for instance, so I knew Granny Weatherwax fairly well already.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 23:43

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

LooseChanj posted:

In YA stuff, the sex is less obvious.

With Pratchett's stuff, I think the only real distinction is that in his kids' books/young adult books, there is a bit less swearing.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2010 11:23

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

RobattoJesus posted:

My quest to read all the books consecutively hit a bit of a road-block with Pyramids.

I loved the first part. I've been wanting an Assassins guild story for a while, but then just as it was getting good the book ditches all the interesting characters and goes back to the relatively uninteresting Djelibeybi where Teppic gets bossed around and complains a lot, and does gently caress all about it despite the fact that he's a King-God-Assassin. We're introduced to Dios who is a bit of a jerk, but apart from that isn't really "evil" and seemed to only have power because Teppic let him. Nothing happens for the next 150 pages, and there doesn't really seem to be any real driving force to the plot. Then Djelibeybi suddenly gets thrown into another dimension, which produces "mild-peril" for a bunch of characters I didn't really care about, and seemingly neither did Teppic. Then two countries that are barely introduced threaten to go to war, and then finally everything magically went back to how it was except Dios ended up in a time loop, which is fair enough I guess.

The book had some fantastic jokes, particularly the bit about the riddle of the Sphinx, and there were a lot of clever observations about the real world, but overall I found the book really hard to get through because I think I felt like the book could have ended at any point and things wouldn't really have been that horrific for everyone involved. (Maybe it's just because 90% of Discworld books seem to have some kind of world-ending peril looming overhead).

I'm a little worried because checking the reviews on goodreads, I seem to be fairly alone in my opinion, and a lot of people think that this book was the turning point at which the books got a lot better. Also googling for "Least favorite Discworld book" the few people that mentioned Pyramids also hated Small Gods, and with everyone raving about it for the last few pages I've been really looking forward to that book.

Don't worry about Small Gods. You'll love it.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2011 18:06

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The best bit of Witches Abroad is Nanny Ogg wrestling with foreign languages.

"It means the Old (Male) River. Words have sex in foreign parts."
"I wouldn't be at all surprised."

(or something like that)

# ¿ Apr 8, 2011 10:43

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Nilbop posted:

"What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the reaper man?"

That's such a fantastic line it elevates the book on it's own.

Yep. I really can't stand all the 'living supermarket parasite' stuff in Reaper Man, but the entire Bill Door arc is astonishing.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2011 10:37

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The Dwarves definitely give off more of a religious-fundamentalist-of-any-stripe feeling than specifically Muslim stuff. Hell, what with all the Scottish cultural shibboleths that Pratchett adapted for them (Scone of Stone and all) I couldn't help but get a Free Presbyterian feeling from them.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2011 22:10

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

DontMockMySmock posted:

Am I the only one who prefers the (admittedly terrible) covers of the US paperbacks that The_Doctor just posted to these bizarre mishmashes of inexplicably bulbous body parts?

You're definitely not the only one. Josh Kirby, god rest his soul, made some absolutely terrible covers.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2011 20:37

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I'll tell you what Kirby's art style worked for - the Nome books. Truckers, Diggers, and Wings. They were kids' books (technically) so he couldn't slather them in gigantic breasts, and the bulbous ugliness of his people seemed to fit with the Nomes.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2011 00:34

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

LooseChanj posted:

What irritated me about Moving Pictures was the Flintstone'ish tech. Vimes' personal organizer annoys me for the same reason. Soul Music suffers from the same sort of out of place shoehorned memes. Like trying to do rock stuff in a world without electricity.

Yeah, the Dis Organiser has two things going for it - the rather good pun in the name, and the bit in Jingo where it gives Vimes updates for the parallel world where he made the opposite decision, of all the watchmen dying.

The imp PDA is poo poo every other time.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2011 21:13

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

A. Beaverhausen posted:

So I guess publishing order is the way to go then. Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the advice!

Wait. Mort was published a year after The Light Fantastic. So I read out of publishing order if I want to 'get' that part?

Publishing order is the way to go if you've already started with Colour of Magic. It'll keep up a nice variety of different characters and parts of the world.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 12:57

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Going Postal changes some stuff significantly from the book's version, and the golems are terrible, but I really enjoyed it. Had a great knockabout atmosphere, treating post office logistics like a heist movie.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2011 17:22

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The busiest areas of the map have locations numbered, so you need to look at the legend to figure out which is which.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2011 17:11

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The only problem with them is that they may have dated a bit. Only You Can Save Mankind is especially... 1990.

I mean, I loved them when I read them around 2000 or so, but the references and so on are getting ever further into the past.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 20:10

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Nilbop posted:

I've only read Only You Can Save Mankind (in primary school, in 1994, oh Jesus) and it had some great chapters. It was incredibly dated, being centred around a videogame as it was. And it was invested very well in the world of gamers and to an extent programmers, but the game was Space Invaders in complexity.

More like Space Invaders mixed with TIE Fighter, something like that. It's clear reading it that Pratchett knew/knows his poo poo when it comes to games, it's just that stuff like the fake manual and system requirements for the game in question at the beginning of the book no longer apply at all. And the reams of film references are probably a bit beyond most kids today - even though it's all stuff like Aliens, I'd wager most 10-year-olds nowadays aren't particularly aware of 80s action/sci-fi.

I never saw the TV adaptations of either Johnny and the Dead or Johnny and the Bomb, but both books are excellent. Johnny and the Dead has some of Pratchett's best comic writing, I think.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2012 12:57

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

FactsAreUseless posted:

Read Anansi Boys. It's like American gods but not 200 pages too long, and it has an actual sense of humor. Easily Gaiman's best book.

Anansi Boys is indeed excellent. And much milder than American Gods too - all the sex and swearing and violence is toned right down.

I think Pratchett had most of the actual writing duties for Good Omens, purely due to logistics, but they each re-wrote various bits throughout the novel and had lots of back and forth input on ideas and so on.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2012 20:14

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Dark Side of the Sun and Strata are both very different from his other non-Discworld books (written as they were back in his earliest days of writing). I'd say almost everything non-Discworld is worth reading. Nation in particular.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:29

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:30

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I'd personally recommend the Johnny books - Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, and Johnny and the Bomb. They're excellent portrayals of 1990s British kids/teenagers, and while OYCSM has dated in its portrayal of technology/video games, it's still great (and spot-on for the time it was written).

If you haven't done so, you should read Good Omens too, Pratchett's collaboration with Neil Gaiman. It's one of my favourite Pratchett books.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2012 14:27

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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