#terry reading discworld

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Terry reading the introduction to The Colour of Magic ❤❤❤ which is the first Discworld Novel :). If you haven't tried it yet I recommend so so much! :) It's so brilliant and glorious ❤. (I usually recommend to go chronologically to see how he is getting greater and greater but there is also this nice flowchart:)

[chenisthebestkitty]

Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. 

It didn't seem fair.

“Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 

“You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”

“You do? What do you do with all that food?”

“Store it,” said Miss Level. 

“But you-”

“I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. “I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.”

“But that means they'll owe you a favour!”

“Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.”

“I bet some people are too mean to pay-”

“Not pay,” said Miss Level, severely. “A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.”

“And then what happens?"

“What do you mean?”

“You stop helping them, do you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?”

"A Hat full of Sky" - Terry Pratchett

[krowbby]

Vlad looked imploringly at Agnes, and reached out to her.

'You wouldn't let them kill me, would you? You wouldn't let them do this to me? We could have... we might... you wouldn't, would you?'

The crowd hesitated. This sounded like an important plea. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at Agnes.

She took his hand. I suppose we could work on him, said Perdita. But Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or greyly by day on a list...

'Vlad,' she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, 'I'd even hold their coats.'

granny weatherwax was such a buzzkill for not letting her tear him apart <\3

[sassysnowperson]

How Not to Read Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels

With the very exciting fantasy books poll bracket going on Discworld and how to read it is in the zeitgeist again. I figured I would take a crack at adding to this important topic with a guide drawn from my own chaotic mess of a reading journey:

Learn that Terry Pratchett is a fantasy author that several people whose reading taste you admire enjoy. He apparently blends comedy, good plotting, and a world that is both grounded and satirical and you're a big fan of all those things.

Fabulous! Decide to read some of his work.

Go to your local library. Love a good library. You're new to the area, so you're also exploring the library for the first time, too.

You have found Terry Pratchett! Points to you! Pull a book off the shelf at random. It's called The Dark Side of the Sun.

Start reading. Realize that this feels more like sci-fi than fantasy. Sigh in smug superiority about people who get the two confused.

Realize about halfway through that this is not, in fact, a Discworld book.

Nobody warned you the guy wrote other things!

It's still good, tho. Maybe a little rough but this was an older book and the author clearly has potential. Let's try again.

Review his works. The vast majority are Discworld. You are highly unlikely to grab another non-Discworld book. Go back to the Terry Pratchett section of the library.

Oh hey he wrote a book with Neil Gaiman! You've hears of that guy!

Grab Good Omens off the shelf.

Take it home, realize, much sooner, that this is also not a Discworld book. Still enjoy yourself thoroughly. You should read more of this Gaiman dude, too.

But okay. For real this time. Go back to the library and don't leave without *CONFIRMING* you have a Discworld book this time.

Grab a book. Look at the cover. Read the back Discworld! Ha HA! You've done it!

It's called Thud.

You are utterly gripped by a story of a man wrestling with himself, his growing child, the political tensions of a city and extremism that echoes reality beautifully while still being entirely true to itself. It's a story of responsibility and love and building communities and Fantasy Chess. You are driven nearly to tears by the sentence *WHERE IS MY COW?*

You emerge from the book fundamentally changed as a person, and finally understanding what all the fuss is about. You are now a Terry Pratchett reader for life.

You realize Thud was in the middle of a series. That was a part of another series. That explains why there was a feeling that you were supposed to know some of these people already.

You finally find one of those flowcharts and figure out a more sensible reading order.

I always sort of laugh when people ask where to start reading Discworld, because Thud would be first on absolutely nobody's sensible Terry Pratchett reading order. I'm still tempted to recommend it though!

(My actual advice: Going Postal if you love con men being stuck doing the right thing, Wee Free Men if you like YA and smart angry girls owning their own power, Guards! Guards! *and* Men at Arms if you like crime shows with heart and are okay giving earlier work a try (the quality gets better and better, but I think it needs at least two books to get you into it), and Monstrous Regiment if you like gender and queer feelings, anti-war books told in the middle of a war, and/or would prefer a stand alone novel...and, you know, Thud if you want a great read and don't mind some chaos.)

[hawkeyequeerce]

I don't know how Terry managed it. There's just nothing on this earth like a Discworld book. I'll be listening to a book I've read countless times over and suddenly, a single line I've never even really noticed before will tear me open. They just reach right inside me and open my ribcage to expose my very heart.

Tonight, it was Hat Full of Sky and Granny Weatherwax saying, "The world is unfair. Be grateful you have friends." On their own, the words are unremarkable. But juxtaposed together, with the context they are operating in....they had tears flowing down my face before I knew what was happening. The world is unfair; sometimes, the wonderful happens when it shouldn't (and/or when you feel you deserve a divinely wrathful torment) because you have friends. The world is unfair. That doesn't just mean that the horrible happens when it shouldn't. It means that the beautiful does too. Be grateful you have friends. They are the hub on which that beauty spins, turning the theft into gold.

A lot of people I've introduced to these books haven't liked them — they find them too silly, or preachy, or nonsensical, or even puerile. I am never upset or really disappointed when they don't like them. To each their own. But I will never understand it. They are baked into my being in a way that few things are and I am better to myself, to other people, and to the world because of it.

Sir Terry, you were a gift nonpareil. Thank you for your words and for shaping my world.

[syl-stormblessed]

if Hayao Miyazaki wants to come back out of retirement one more time Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett is right there

[the-wine-dark-sea]

I love their dynamic lol

[p4nishers]

[thru tears] yah the fifth elephant was nicq

[strummerjoe]

Okay okay, listen, Night Watch is an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. It’s done so well I want to scream. Not only do we, the readers, know that the revolution will end in tears, the protagonist of the story knows it too! Vimes goes into this with the exact same expectations as the reader of here we go, we know we’re in a tragedy, we’re know we’re doomed by the narrative. AND YET, AND YET as the story goes on, you start to hope that maybe, just maybe, something will be different this time.  Even Vimes starts to entertain the idea, but every time this happens, you get reminded (by the History Monks) that No. This is only going to go one way. This. is. a. Tragedy.  BUT STILL. These are good people and look, some things have gone better this time, maybe it’s enough? Vimes always wins in the end, doesn’t he? And so you HOPE and by hoping, you wilfully forget what you’ve been told again and again, that this is a tragedy.  AND THEN THEY GET SO CLOSE. SO FREAKING CLOSE that when it all goes wrong you feel surprised, even though you were told from the very beginning how it was going to go. It’s insane. It’s Terry Pratchett at his finest. Its’s a goddammed masterpiece.

[sator-the-wanderer]

Sometimes I remember this is canon

[furiouskettle]

Near Rincewind Experience

[wizardsimper]

I love Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series because fat and ugly women are allowed to be loved for their features rather than in spite of them which is just so refreshing for once

[robotbirdhead]

We get, rightfully imo, pretty sad and somber and naval-gazey about Discworld and Sir Terry on the 25th of May but I need everyone who might be discovering this series through this annual outpouring of love and sadness to know that these books are mostly just really fucking funny. Like, they're heart-wrenching and poignant but really they can only pull that off because they're also the funniest books ever written. There's a line near the end of Hogfather that, when I read it, made me feel more deeply connected to, like, the concept of humanity then I ever have before, but the book was only able to deliver that because the rest of it is about what if Santa Claus got kidnapped and a Big Skeleton had to take over his job? It's a patently ridiculous series but that is absolutely also where it's power comes from.

[krowbby]

the thing about jack jackrum. ok let me back up a bit: i reblogged a post a few days ago talking about how there are plenty of cis people who don't have an innate sense of gender connected to their agab, but don't have dysphoria so they just. vibe. the 'i just work here' of gender identity. borogravian society does not really have an idea of being transgender, so they're entirely working off gender = sex = genitals at birth. if jackrum had been born in a world where his beloved never went off to war, and he never decided to follow him, would he have been happy as a woman? if he'd grown up today, in roundworld, would he have been a trans man? there's no way to know. but what we do know is that he's been (for all intents and purposes) a man for possibly 60 years, and doesn't want to give it up at the end of the novel. maybe that's because he loves being a man, maybe that's because he just doesn't feel a strong connection to womanhood and it's easier. either way, he makes his choice, and i want to know who changed the pronouns in his last scene of the american version of the novel so we can have a chat.

[sparkly-angell]

This is my contribution to the fandom

[archers-gauntlet]

Color of Magic by Sir Terry Pratchett