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I’ve wanted to read the series for a while, but getting into it seems so intimidating because of just how much Sir Terry wrote. Do you have a good starting recommendation?
Which book to read quiz.
While there are recurring characters, locations, themes and ideas, each book is an independent, self contained story. As the other commenter mentioned, it doesn’t really matter where you start.
Also, there may be a large number of books, but they are all really short and easy/quick to read. I went from being intimidated by the number of books in the series when I picked up The Colour of Magic to crying during the epilogue in The Sheppard’s Crown in an eye blink.
Obligatory, here’s what I got post lol
Wyrd sisters…was not expecting the quiz to so heavily focus me on witches…not sure if thats a feature or a bug of my interpreting, idk much about discworld but maybe there’s only like 5 starter books and that’s why it focused me on witches so much.
It’s doesn’t really matter where you start but realize that it’s a bunch of stories that are told of the same place. So there’s stories about set characters and some of just one story of the characters. The wizards are something that runs through all the stories so it really does make sense to start with The Color of Magic. It will introduce you to the style of story that will fill out the whole thing.
There’s the witches, the wizards, Death, the watch, and books about the other guild’s. The witches are a lot of fun. If you don’t really care for the specific group, you you can jump around in order. Mostly once you understand the groups, you can read anything in whatever order
Discworld as a collection is intimidating. The real secret is that it’s not a series, but a kind of pile. You can really start almost anywhere and read whatever.
That said, there’s kind of short sets with the same characters in groups throughout the books. I’d point people to these ones as reasonable starting points:
I’m sure other people will have various other suggestions or opinions and we’re all likely correct for our own reasons. There’s very little in Discord that isn’t top tier writing.
Those are the first 3 I read (first was GG, second Mort, third ER) because they all seemed recommended starting places. They are all origins of different sets of characters, so there isn’t much back lore for any of those 3, so it gives you a very broad look at life on the Disc.
After finishing those, I knew I’d want to read them all, so then I went and started from the beginning and the rest of the books made much more sense than I think they would skipping about and you’d get light spoilers, seeing maybe some characters being good guys when they weren’t in earlier stories or different groups gaining acceptance due to conflicts being resolved (or not).
When in doubt, start with the Watch: Guards! Guards!. Can’t go wrong.
Not that I’m an expert, but I did create /r/Discworld, so I got to see a lot of opinions.
There’s a couple of main philosophies. The one I agree with less is reading “subseries”. First of all, many books really imho cross thos lines anyway, so you’re going to miss stuff… but… that’s one option.
The thing is, Sir Pratchett himself wasn’t so happy with his first coupld of books. The Colour of Magic is a bit different - he was writing as a parody of fantasy. But as he went along, things kinda took off and it became a thing.
Frankly, my advice: Just suck it up. Colour of Magic isn’t bad. Commit to at least reading through Mort, which is IIRC the 4th novel.
If that makes you nervous, then choose one or more of the traditional starting ones: Mort, Small Gods, Guards! Guards!. If you read all three of those and like it, just go back to Colour of Magic and read in publication order. The world evolves as he writes and it’s a better experience.
But if you get enthralled with the night watch over the witches or whatever, the google “Discworld reading guide” and you’ll find it and can see the “subseries” and do as you please.
If you’re anything like me, though, starting at around Mort and from then on… I always read a novel when it came out and it was pretty good, but when I re-read it almost immediately, I noticed so many more things. That’s how I fell in love with the books. They are not one-time reads.
I’m on around my eighth or so full readthrough of the entire series - on Making Money right now. I don’t think everyone will do that many, but for me, almost all the books are old friends, and I still notice new little details.
His writing is so… compact. So many scenes with more than one subtext going on. He often writes scenes with dialogue happening that’s critical to the story, but something in the background that just adds to the world might be happening at the same time.
I think specifically where a couple of bumbling night watch are talking about something, but as they’re sitting there, they’re watching a man slowly paint the name of his boat on his boat, but instead of painting “PRIDE OF ANKH-MORPORK” he’s painted “PRID”, so they’re talking back and forth, anticipating the painter noticing… and at the end of the scene, he does. And it’s just so… so human, so delightful. The novels truly taught me the beauty of humanity.
There is, however, probably no real wrong way to read them. Someone on r/discworld claimed to be reading them in literally reverse publication order and enjoying them. So that’s probably valid. But I would say: publication order hands down. Or whatever way you’ll actually go out and get started. :)
This here. This is what I recommend to everyone I introduce to Discworld.
I haven’t kept count of how many readthroughs I’ve done, but every few years I do one too. I had my copy of Guards Guards rebound recently because it was literally falling to pieces.
We lost all our books to Hurricane Michael, but for me, this is not so much a problem as I struggle with books these days, but my phone works fine as a reader, so I have them all electronically. :)
There’s no bad onramp to that world. Very few of the books require you to have read the others, and there isn’t much of a strict chronology. Apparently Pratchett recommended that people start with Sourcery, but that’s not set in stone.
On r/discworld, Mort, Guards! Guards!, and Small Gods were the three most recommended ones to start, besides those like me who argue for publication order (with the disclaimer about the first 2-3 or so)