The main reason for that recommendation is that The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, though fun books and enjoyable fantasy parodies in themselves, are really not representative of what the later Discworld books were to become. When Terry wrote Equal Rites and Mort, he really set out his manifesto for the series as being about this world, reflected in that world, and that theme is what really carries forward.

So with the caveat that you need to understand those first two books aren't representative of what the series becomes, you could definitely start at the beginning. Just know that across so many books, there's bound to be some unevenness. Some books are just plain fun, others have deeper messages, some are, frankly, just not as good. Early highlights like Guards Guards, Pyramids, Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters are the ones where you'll discover the real breadth of what he does. Later books can be less consistently original, but when you get to books like The Truth, Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment, there are some real gems.

But don't let yourself not read any of them. That would be a real shame.

Night Watch was amazing. Moral, moving, exciting. It could stand on it's own as literature without any of the other books.

Apart from his pun-a-thon books, most of his Discworld novels have some sort of moral underpinning. Small Gods on being religious versus being good is an obvious one, Feet of Clay being about slavery and what defines a person is another. But if you take a step back and look at most of his books, you'll find a moral lesson intentionally put in there.

Night Watch is amazing and moving.

Other Discworld stories that surprised me include Lords and Ladies and Thud!, in which Pratchett manages to write genuine horror stories.

I think Night Watch is my favourite too. A little bit dark, and lots of deep questions about morality.

The Discworld novels overlap somewhat, given that they are set in the same universe, but are generally grouped into individual sequences that each should be read chronologically.

For example, the books about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch start with "Guards! Guards!", and the subsequent books in this sequence tell the continuing story of how the Watch evolves into a (slightly) modern police force. If you start in the middle of this sequence, the payoff won't be as good.

Similarly, there's the sequence about the witches ("Equal Rites" etc.), about Rincewind ("The Colour of Magic" etc.), and his last books about the "Ankh-Morpork industrial revolution" (starting with "Going Postal"). Then there are some one-offs, like "Eric", "Small Gods" and "Pyramids".

I tend to recommend "Guards! Guards!" as a starting point, because I find the City Watch stories the most interesting and enjoyable. Together with the later Ankh-Morpork books they read like an insightful origin story of a modern society, and encompass many sociological topics. Several of the Watch books are also highly original detective mysteries.

Question 1: Are you fairly determined to read them all?

YES: start with The Colour of Magic at the beginning and work your way through

NO / Not sure: Don't start at the beginning, as the first few books are weird and will put you off.

Question 2: What sounds more fun to you, reading about Badass Witches, Badass Policemen or Badass Businessmen?

Your respective starting points are Equal Rites, Guards! Guards! and The Truth.

Mort is my go-to suggestion for a starter book. The Death books in general are pretty damn good.

I agree. The Death books are by far my favourite ones of the Discworld series.

Was The Watch for me but now it just might be The Witches.

I liked the character of Granny Weatherwax but the Tiffany Aching series really brought out her essential nature in a way the other books didn't.

Damnit now I feel sad again.

Small Gods is a nice standalone (despite being in the Discworld storyline, it is not really connected to the previous stories) about religion. Mort is another, talking about Death.

+1 for Mort. It is fantastic. And it is about death, so it's highly, should I dare say, appropriate for the occasion.

The Wee Free Men and Dodger are also nice to read. They focus a bit less on humour, being geared a little more towards children. Don't expect to laugh all the time. But the settings of these stories are magical.

Small Gods is a common recommendation from other people, but it is a collaboration with Gaiman. Not that its a bad thing, but it is missing the full Pratchett voice.

My favorites are all Moist_von_Lipwig books. I recommend starting with Going Postal. Its comes much later in chronological order, but is the first Moist_von_Lipwig book and is enjoyable standalone.

Although Going Postal is the first Moist book, The Truth is the first "Industry" book and I think it's best of the lot. Going Postal is still great though (much better than the later industry ones).

Sorry, I was wrong. Good Omens is the collaboration.

I had my copy of Good Omens autographed by Gaiman, whence I remarked that I needed the other half now (this was 2011). Gaiman responded, "You'd better hurry up about it."

Sorry, Sir Terry :(

I don't think Small Gods is a collaboration, that's Good Omens.

Yes.

Extending this comment, Good Omens is an excellent book, but not anything like the Discworld series.

Small Gods is a good discworld book to start on (the best in my opinion, of course everyone will have their own).

Seconding Going Postal. It should be noted it's an especially good fit for the Hacker News demographic, parodying hacker culture and even referencing GNU.

> but it is a collaboration with Gaiman

Unless I'm missing something important, you're thinking of Good Omens, rather than Small Gods.

Moshe makes a good suggestion. Small Gods is a favorite of mine and it stands alone well enough.

I looked and generally agree with that suggested reading order and I started with the Watch series. I'd pick one of those series, give the first book a shot, but if you hate it maybe give one of the other continuities a shot before you throw in the towel. I hated the Rincewind novels and it took me a while to come around to the Witches (now I love them) but I thought the Watch books (starting with Guards! Guards!) to be absolutely fantastic.

He's written a lot of books of varying quality over a lot of time so I always warn people to be prepared to give him a second chance.

I met him once when I was a teenager. He was really kind as well as insightful and funny.

Guards! Guards! is a great starting point, both on it's own merits and as it introduces the Watch series which is terrific. It was also the author's favourite (or one of his favourites).

Be aware that if you start at the beginning with The Colour of Magic the very early books are a quite different style to once he'd got into his stride, so unless you're absolutely determined to read them all I wouldn't start there.

Edit: Btw, Guards! Guards! is early enough in the series that it's still recognisably 'early' Pratchett, so if you're interested in seeing his style develop it's a great place to start for that reason too.

I started with Pyramids half my life ago, back in my early teens. It's the only novel not to have started its own mini series, which I have always felt is a bit of a shame. But it did hook me and made me want to read all of the others. I think by the time of Pyramids TP was really getting in to his stride, so when I went back to The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic and found them less polished I wasn't put off as I knew there was better to come.

I'm a little bit older, so I started at the start with Colour of Magic, and then went back for Truckers etc.

As for Pyramids, for me as someone who's first programming language was an 8-bit BASIC variant, and was amidst calculus and trig etc. in his later high school career the camel's thought processes were totally mindblowing.

For all I know, Terry Pratchett accidentally rigged reality through writing this book in order to turn me into a software developer...

--

"The silence that followed was by way of being a standing ovation.

The landscape began to distort again. This was clearly not a place to linger. You Bastard looked down at his front legs.

Let legs equal four.

He lumbered into a run. Camels apparently have more knees than any other creature and You Bastard ran like a steam engine, with lots of extraneous movement at right angles to the direction of motion accompanied by a thunderous barrage of digestive noises.

'Bloody stupid animal,' muttered Ptraci, as they jolted away from the palace, 'but it looks like it finally got the idea.' "

Yeah, I've read the first half of Pyramids half a dozen times ;)

I only just finished reading The Long Mars a couple of weeks ago - I wonder whether Stephen Baxter will continue solo with the final book (as number 4 is due out later this year[1]).

[1]: http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/the-long-utopia-the-lo...

I’d go with publication order; while the person who introduced me to the series insisted, nearly to the point of violence, on starting with Guards, Guards!, I don’t see where it helped, as the earlier books are quite good if somewhat different from his later style.

Some of the earlier books, particularly The Color of Magic, are parodies of other fantasy literature. If you aren't familiar with the books and genres it's poking fun at, a lot of the jokes will fall kind of flat.

The Color of Magic arc may be a bit boring at first. It took me some time to actually finish it. It worth the reading, but it might repel people who are not yet into Pratchett's writing style.

Good omens co written with gaiman , i've never laughed so hard before reading this book :)

Begin at the beginning. Pratchett's concept of the discworld filled out as the books go on. Read the books in chronological order and you'll see the discworld grow. Things happen in later books that wouldn't make sense in earlier books, and in the later books, the world is much more 'nailed-down'. The first couple of books, as mentioned, are much more lighthearted whimsy, without a formal plot. But they're still a fun read, you get some discworld basics in them, and they're pretty short.

"The Light Fantastic" was my first introduction to Terry Pratchett back around 1989 or so. I was definitely hooked. To me, the first two books are lot more like Douglas Adams' books: vehicles for cool ideas and good humor, but not particularly interesting or insightful stories. The Discworld books would have played out pretty quickly if they'd stayed that way.

But then he got better. Much better. Much, much better.

The early ones are weaker; he gets better, and then maybe tails off towards the end. Most people prefer Vimes to Rincewind. If you want to read them in publication order it's a perfectly good order, but if you're unsure I'd start with one of the more well-regarded ones - maybe just follow the "watch" track on that chart, or others have made suggestions.

Small Gods is what I'd start with.

If you have some time on your hands, I suggest the Watch and the Witches series in chronological order. They are fine examples of the amount of character development Pratchett made happen and also of himself growing more and more mature and witty as a writer.

Read the very short story 'Troll Bridge' - http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/athenia/stories/pterry/troll...

Then buy the lot, you will not regret it. Some are better than others, naturally, but even his worst is like Tom Holt on top form.

I'd read them in order, personally. Though that might just be because that's been my experience of them.

As others have said, the style changes after The Light Fantastic, but the first two books do a lot of scene setting and character building that feed into the later works.

edit - Troll Bridge was published in the anthology 'After the King: Stories In Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien' - http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/After_the_King - buy that too. Is all good.

That Troll Bridge page is a bit difficult to read. Try:

http://markdownshare.com/view/0d9bab9a-065a-4838-adf5-17d507...

Troll Bridge is being produced as a short film...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snowgumfilms/terry-prat...

You could skip the first two books and start with Equal Rites.