So I know there's at least one other Discworld fan on here (one of our newest members, Moist von Lipwig, has the same name as a Discworld character) so I thought a Discworld thread would be fun.
For those of you who don't know, Discworld is a world created by Terry Pratchett. It's, surprise, surprise, a disc! It is a disc balanced on the back of four elephants (although legend has it there was originally a fifth elephant) who are standing on the back of Great A'Tuin. Great A'Tuin is a giant turtle swimming through space.
There are 39 novels so far, plus quite a lot of short stories and several companion books.
The books can all be read by themselves with no prior knowledge of Discworld. I'm not sure how to word the next bit so bear with me. Within the series there are certain books which can be lumped together. In so much as they follow the same character(s).
Oh you know what? Here we go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld That will probably explain it better than I can!
Basically, they are brilliant books! If anybody is interested in reading them, you don't need to read them in publication order. So you don't need to start with The Colour of Magic if you don't want to. I've only read CoM once, years ago when I was about 9 and I didn't really like it or understand it. It was only when my brother persuaded me to read Wyrd Sisters (he realised that was probably more my cup of tea) that I changed my mind about Discworld.
So my advice would be to have a look at the different story lines and the books, and pick one that sounds interesting and then read it.
Anyway, my favourite ones are the Witches ones (including the Tiffany Aching ones) although my favourite standalone is Monstrous Regiment. I love the City Watch ones too and the Death ones, and the Moist von Lipwig ones.
Apart from Colour of Magic, I haven't read any other Rincewind or wizards ones though. The reason being I was originally reading my brother's book collection and they got stolen when he moved out so I've been slowly re-building the collection buy finding them in second-hand and charity book shops. As I don't have that much money, I can only really buy one at a time and if there was a witches book or a city watch book I would buy that over a Rincewind book.
But now that I am looking for the Rincewind and wizards books none of the shops appear to have them!
