Question for my Wife about Terry Pratchett

[Lyanna Stark]

Well. You should give her "The Longships" by Frans G Bengtsson for some viking fun instead. The poor woman could use that after "The Brothers Karamazov" (also I think I might agree with her on the characters).

[maarsen]

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In the last two years she has choaked down War and Peace (She said the book could be summed up in an one phrase "Napoleon sucks but Alexander is brilliant") and The Brothers Karamazov (She said she hated every single character).  She is very well read but thinks she has some holes where she hasn't read everything she "should" have read.  She did enjoy Germinal so its not all torment

Have you given her your unread Neal Stephenson novel?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Have you given her your unread Neal Stephenson novel?

She doesn't care for Stephenson.  She tried Anathem and didn't like it.  

[Werthead]

Quote

 

(She said the book could be summed up in an one phrase "Napoleon sucks but Alexander is brilliant")

 

As David Mitchell once said, it's a good book but definitely "too much peace and not enough war."

[polishgenius]

Just to make it clear, because it's been sorta implied but not stated: Discworld is 41 books long but it's not a series in the traditional sense we think of it and almost all of the novels are essentially standalone; there are several sub-series that are more connected and do run chronologically (getting moreso as they go along), but even they're individual stories with no hanging plot threads between them. The only exceptions are the first two books, plus the YA Tiffany Aching series.


So your wife won't be hooked into anything, even if the series looks intimidating from the outside.

Me personally, I usually recommend looking up the publication list, looking up the books between 7- Pyramids and 20- Hogfather (that's roughly what I think is the sweet spot of the books getting to their best quality while still being completely free-standing) and grabbing whichever one most catches your eye.

Reaper Man was my first one.


I'm going into all that because Pratchett hasn't got many solo one-shots. If it really needs to be one completely free of Discworld, then it's really down to Nation or the co-written-with-Neil-Gaiman Good Omens, because the other two - Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun- aren't especially good compared to his later work.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

56 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Just to make it clear, because it's been sorta implied but not stated: Discworld is 41 books long but it's not a series in the traditional sense we think of it and almost all of the novels are essentially standalone; there are several sub-series that are more connected and do run chronologically (getting moreso as they go along), but even they're individual stories with no hanging plot threads between them. The only exceptions are the first two books, plus the YA Tiffany Aching series.


So your wife won't be hooked into anything, even if the series looks intimidating from the outside.

Me personally, I usually recommend looking up the publication list, looking up the books between 7- Pyramids and 20- Hogfather (that's roughly what I think is the sweet spot of the books getting to their best quality while still being completely free-standing) and grabbing whichever one most catches your eye.

Reaper Man was my first one.


I'm going into all that because Pratchett hasn't got many solo one-shots. If it really needs to be one completely free of Discworld, then it's really down to Nation or the co-written-with-Neil-Gaiman Good Omens, because the other two - Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun- aren't especially good compared to his later work.

Thank you that's good to know.

[HexMachina]

On 08/06/2017 at 5:49 PM, Seli said:

The Wee Free Men is probably a good option, and a great book.

That's the beginning of a 'series' though I suppose it stands okay on its own. 

[SkynJay]

Even the series within the series hold up fine on their own.  The Light Fantastic is truly the only book that couldn't be read with out its stand alone.  I used to add Night Watch to that list but after rereading i have come to the conclusion that it stands on its own; important characters get their own introduction and while some of the intricacies could be missed nothing about it requires the full guard series in front of it.

At this point I truly recommend staring with what every book sounds interesting.  I read most of the series by grabbing whatever was on the shelf in the mall book store, picking up the next book at during lunch breaks one at a time.

[Gertrude]

I second or third or whatever that most books read pretty good as stand-alones, especially the early ones. Maybe a way to decide is to figure out what character types she might be interested in and pick a book that way. We have a rag-tag city guard, an argumentative and willful trio of witches, DEATH and associates, and the academic wizards. There are other recurring characters, but these groups tend to be the main ones.

As for actual books, I always recommend Small Gods as has been mentioned a thousand times already, but I'd give Reaper Man a solid second place on that list.

[Jo498]

On 9.6.2017 at 0:50 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In the last two years she has choaked down War and Peace (She said the book could be summed up in an one phrase "Napoleon sucks but Alexander is brilliant") and The Brothers Karamazov (She said she hated every single character).

I loved almost very character in the Karamazov Brothers, except the old Karamasov (and he is still funny in a dark way) and Smerdyakov (who is hardly a major character).

Although I admittedly came to hate one of the characters in War and Peace who I am probably supposed to like: Natasha who turns from a charming girl into an insufferably self-righteous person.

And I never finished Anna Karenina because I could not stand the Kitty-Lewin arc.

[Clueless Northman]

On 9 juin 2017 at 0:50 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The Brothers Karamazov (She said she hated every single character). 

I had exactly the same reaction. 2/3 into the book, I was madly hoping that Mitya would just go berserk and kill most of them, and all characters would end up killing each other. Which is funny because I never had this problem with The Demons or with Crime and Punishment, which I liked a lot. Never had a problem with War and Peace, by the way.

As for Pratchett, I concur, Small Gods is just great and I once offered it as a stand-alone gift and introduction to Pratchett - though Good Omens works very well as introduction, too.

[all swedes are racist]

yeah, night watch could be good. obviously reading the rest of the 'watch series' adds to it, but that book nearly brought me to tears

[Jo498]

Night Watch is a very poor choice as a standalone because it is very hard to understand and impossible to appreciate without knowing (at least some of) the preceding Watch books. But the first Watch book (Guards! Guards!) that was mentioned above would be good first Pratchett book despite the Watch series continuing afterwards.

[Enk]

This can't be a coincidence.  I was in the local library today, and i found a hand-written pamphlet inserted into a book i'd just picked up  - titled 'Lady Ellison's List'.  Apart from the lingering aroma of bananas, only one thing was odd about it: every title was crossed out, and replaced with something of TP's.  Also, every book was numbered '1', but "small gods" and "the colour of magic" had arrows pointing to the top ("pyramids" had a slightly smaller arrow).  Make of it what you will :).

There were annotations on some of them, that i find inexplicable - '"IV....you shall not subject thy god to market forces"'...'begin's with a turtle and ends with Scrofula'...'the bullrush incident'.  Go figure.