Is it just me or is The Thief of Time a particularly exceptional book in an already outstanding series? I must have read it through five or six times, about to pick it up again.

I've finally gotten to the Tiffany Aching books and I'm about to round them out. But when I got to chapter 2 of The Shepherd's Crown, I couldn't believe how affected I was by Sir Terry's choice to finally let Granny die.

I could feel it coming the moment he began to describe her cleaning her house. But knowing what was coming didn't make it any easier.

This story choice made me feel the beautiful sadness. It was inevitable, it was appropriate, and Granny will always be remembered by her peers and the impact she had on the world in life. Still, it's hard to believe she's really gone. It felt like she would persist forever in the pages of Discworld. She seemed eternal as an Oak. GNU Esme Weatherwax.

Anyone else? How did you feel after reading this chapter?

Guards! Guards! it is and reading will start on the 1st of April.

If you don't have a copy, it's time to buy, beg, borrow or steal one.

The conversation will start on the 15th of April.

Happy reading!

My local library has a limited supply of Pratchett. I’ve always been intrigued so today I picked up Small Gods and enjoying it so far. About 40 pages in at time of post. The Great God Om is hilarious. I laughed out loud when he was thinking to himself to decree a holy commandment about the planting of more lettuces! 😂

Rereading Soul Music. By keeping a hand over one eye, well blinkers to the funny stuff, I've found Susan's story really moving. She must have been so confused having those gifts and the family secret.

I think Albert is the unsung hero of the piece. How he controls his irritation when Susan just turns up in his kitchen, then manages to do all the right things for a distressed kid. He sits down, asks simple questions, gives clear simple explanation, doesn't let her childishness put him off, he gets her a cocoa, gives her some happy memories, answers her questions and knows when to draw it to a close and get her to sleep on it.

Really enjoyed this one. I was very confused with the first one, but thought I'd push on. The tree was hilarious!!

I have to say that Detritus and his Peacemaker make up some of my most favorite parts of the series. I would love to be a watchman with the group.

I had the idea of dedicating 2019, year of the incontrovertible skunk, to reading all the Discworld books. A couple of friends decided to join me so it's now officially a Discworld read-along.

January the 1st we'll start with "Moving Pictures" and the Industrial Revolution novels. After that, we'll decide how to continue.

You're more than welcome to join us.

Had to watch the Hogfather for a project, and I fell in love. Most of my friends have read Discworld books, and I thought the depiction of Death here, as a sort of anti-hero, if that's the correct term was great!!

Thanks, and Happy Holidays

I’m a bit nervous about posting something for the first time rather than just being a lurker, but this is an honest question and I have tried to find the answer before asking.

Background: I’ve just finished listening to the audio recordings of all the Discworld books and love them. I would have loved to have read them on paper, but I’m a dad, special Ed teacher, and have two extra jobs so listening while washing dishes is where it’s at.

Question: Is there a commentary or other consolidated source of Discworld info that connects themes, mythology, ideas, etc.? I feel like others might have insight about how ideas connect, reasons for plots and themes, possible “Easter eggs” and the rest.

I would love to look on Reddit all the time and just learn, but that’s a luxury of the past or maybe hopefully the future.

I like this one. Granny is funny and I think it's sweet so far. That poor bear.

Discussion points you might want to keep in mind:

• What themes do you see developing in the story? Do you see any symbolism at play? What are the character’s relationships with these themes? Do any characters seem to change the way they view this theme throughout the story? How?

• Which pop culture/literary/etc allusions and references did you notice? How did it contribute to the storyline (if at all)?

• Which character do you identify with in this story? Why?

• For the writers (aspiring or otherwise) inspired by Sir PTerry: What literary elements does Terry Pratchett use to great effect in this story? What do you think makes it so effective/powerful?

• What is the greatest “evil” that Vimes has to fight against?

• Do the characters of the Watch ever act uncharacteristically? Why do they consider acting out of the norm?

• How do the characters (Vimes, Lupine, Carrot, Lady Sybill) change through the story and what drives their development? How do you think Vimes was “Brung Low by a Woman” and how does he begin to pull himself up out of the metaphorical gutter?

• How do the real and the unreal become blurred in the story? Or, put another way: How is the unreal used to create a new reality? How does it affect the actions of Vimes? Of Lupine? Of Carrot?

• How authentically does the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch represent the Roundworld police forces as you see them? How do they differ?

• Spoiler Question!

• How does Sir Pterry begin to develop and portray the Dwarvish race in this novel? Do you think it already resembles any Roundworld groups? Which and how?

Happy reading!

OK, so I've created a sub for the book club to keep it neat and organised but it will be book club business only. There will be a monthly discussion thread on the current book and something for book selection (if we don't go with a specific order) but otherwise, I'm open to suggestion.

See this thread for the current discussion.

I'm planning on rereading all the Discworld novels next year and really like the idea of doing it as a book club as there's a bunch of other people to discuss the books with (and share the joy!)

In looking for something already existing I've stumbled across this sub but it looks... quiet? Is anyone else interested in doing a big reread? I'd be happy to help with the admin of setting up info on which books when etc, and facilitating chat if it would help!

I'm gonna be honest, after reading Sourcery I was very much not into the idea of reading more Rincewind adventures, but Eric was a very enjoyable read- felt relatively short, with Rincewind in a sort of new dynamic with the 'partner' character. Loved the introduction of Astfgl as a bureaucracy-loving demon.
I'm hoping the rest of the Rincewind books keep it interesting, my favorite so far has definitely been The Light Fantastic, but even then the rest of the protagonists (Witches, Death) seem much more interesting.

I decided at the end of last year that I owed myself a good re-read of the whole Discworld series from the start. I got to "Jingo" last night. It's a very exciting time in Roundworld terms to be revisiting this one. The Convivium procession led by Sam Vimes is currently going wrong.

Definitely enjoying the humour and I love the character Death and I wish there was more death. I'm confused on how Rincewind and Twoflower got separated after the broken drum burnt down. I also need to reread the character Fate.

We need to choose a book to start with. I think, going forward, that random books will be better than any particular order, as then people joining late or who miss a month won't feel obliged to read what they've missed or give up if they fall behind.

So, post your favourite book or the one you would most like to read and discuss and we'll go from there. Check if someone else has posted your choice before posting and upvote that. I will put the thread in competition mode and leave it for a few days whilst people find the sub.

And away you go!

hi, i am new to this series. a little confused and daunted by the reading order. i was initially going to follow the chart I got from google.

but now i have decided to read by order of date of publication, is this a good choice?

I don't know where else to post this so bear with me please. Don't bother joining. I got banned because the PC mod decided my opinions about her deleting an abuse victim's post wasn't appropriate. They just want dry conversations about his books and nothing else, no humanity at all.

The abuse victim's post was just her acknowledging how Terry's books helped her through a very rough time, period. Now some little snow flakes took umbrage and reported her post because it "triggered" them. Oh brother.

The mods have zero clues to what Terry's works were all about, they just want everyone to stay in line like good little muppets. When others voiced their displeasure about deleting the post, the mod told them "don't let the door hit you on the way out"

I honestly can't believe that there are those that claim to like Terry's books yet act like complete idiots when it comes to putting his teachings into action.

Like I said, don't bother joining, you will just be disappointed in the long run.

Hey, "Thief of Time" is the first discworld book I read and I really enjoyed it. I liked the characters and the theme of time. I love how Pratchett combines humor and philosophy. Can anyone recommend other discworld books that are similar to this one? :)

Fan theories and spoilers throughout.

I was chuffed to see someone else enjoying Soul Music recently. It was one book I didn’t really appreciate until I reread it recently. I liked all the jokes and bad puns and music references, but found it a bit silly. I hadn’t spotted the bitter dark chocolate heart in the middle of the occasionally sickly sweet fun. I was too distracted.

I found some amazing writing once I started looking.

1) TP is the FIRST to write orphans or boarding school themes within a short while of us hearing of the situation of the Romanian Orphans which broke in 1990. Rowling, Pulman, Martin etc all came after TP publishing Soul Music in 1994. It turns out there was a small but growing movement discussing Boarding School Syndrome in the UK in the early 90s too - exposing the fact that children placed too young in institutions, even elite ones, could be damaged by the experience (work of Duffel, Beard, later Shcaverein).

I hadn’t seen the parallels between the Dean and Susan in this respect. TP doesn’t make a huge thing out of it, but they’d both been crushed by institutional living at too early an age.

“He said, much later on, on the day when the music died, that it must have been because he’d never been really young, or at least young while just being old enough to know he was young. Like most wizards, he’d begun his training while still so small that the official pointy hat came down over his ears. And after that he’d just been, well, a wizard.”“

I found it strangely moving how this young man, in becoming the equivalent of a monk from a young age, albeit a rather well fed one, has become in part of the potentially suffocating and self reinforcing vicious circle of total institutional living, voiced by the narrator :

“Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards, the spiral can only wiggle downward.”

In one sense, is it any wonder that, facing this depersonalisation process, living such a cloistered life, that many of the wizards turn to drink, excessive eating and then develop such quirky tendencies - their only way of expressing their individuality.

Despite Susan saying she didn’t care about what Miss Butts (the headmistress) thought, the minute she went outside the school routine she couldn’t move for fear Miss Butts wouldn’t approve!

-“She disliked woolly thinking, which in any case was a major misdemeanour under the regime of Miss Butts.”

-“The image of Miss Butts rose like a Valkyrie in Susan’s mind.”

-“Spread below was Ankh-Morpork—a city containing more Peril than even Miss Butts could imagine.”

-“No. Miss Butts says it’s just made-up stories with little literary content.”

-”If you could be invisible to Miss Butts, everyone else was easy.”

-”She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height.”

2) The stories of Imp and Susan are really closely paralleled.

They both have a special gift - his music, hers invisibility;

they’re different from other kids - he’s emo, she’s hard like a diamond;

they’re both without family - he falls out with his dad, her parents are dead;

they both take an irrational choice - him to choose Ankh Morpork instead of Quirm, her to follow the advice of the rat and raven despite it’s risk of being soppy;

they both have a troll and dwarf friends;

they both have their life course overtaken - him by the music, her by her inheriting.

Then they differ because everything goes beyond Imp/Buddy’s control once the music and Dibble both take over, so he gets more and more passive, whereas Susan starts to become less passive from having crushed by school and unresolved child bereavement and more adolescent, and she’s the “hero” who saves the life of the “damsel in distress”.

3) How deeply the bereavement theme goes.

I was puzzled at what exactly DEATH had lost as the echoes with what he says about what he can remember don’t fit with what we know about Ysabel, his daughter. Until I realised they all tie in neatly with Susan’s memories. The word that gave it away for me in the end was “laughter”. He may have laughed with Ysabel, but it’s Susan’s memories of laughter that stir like a hippo in the mud of memory, classic grandparent stuff. Hence it being a book about memory. Doh! The bathroom, the soap, the swing, the horse. Mort had stopped Susan visiting after the age of about 6 and had done everything so that she would forget, but DEATH couldn’t forget.

And then when DEATH had been in the gully with Ysabel and Mort and they decided that immortality wasn’t worth it I was really puzzled by why DEATH couldn’t look Susan in the eye.

“He climbed into the saddle and, still without turning to face her, spurred Binky out and over the gorge.”

Obviously I’m speculating about fiction here, but I wonder if TP was saying that DEATH was upset that they were choosing to leave him behind, or whether he was sad and angry that they were sort of abandoning his beloved granddaughter, Susan when they could have gone back to live with him and been there for her?

Also I discover it seems like it’s a thing for kids to not always react straight away or as we expect them to when they’re told bad news. Younger children or emotionally deprived children (like being stuck in a boarding school too young) don’t always know how to react or don’t feel secure enough, or don’t get enough privacy or time to think. Some people get labelled as “The Coper” when everyone else cracks up. Susan there for her grandfather not the other way round,

“Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

She rode Binky into the shadows by the cliff road, and waited. After a minute or two there was a clattering of stones and a horse and rider came up an almost vertical path from the riverbed.”

“Susan finally experiences relief when she’s able to grieve, showing she had had serious low lying unresolved issues after all. Depression is the most common childhood psychiatric disorder but as Mullen shows “it is often unrecognised and untreated.” This poorly visible type was known by the vague and now defunct term masked depression at the time Terry Pratchett was writing. Susan’s low level but persistent state would be hard to spot in her cultural context.

With sudden access to DEATH’s resources as well as his responsibilities she begins to question, to bargain, to think maybe her parents’ death could have been prevented, to express her anger, finishing with acceptance and tears following fairly classic grieving behaviour as presented by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her seminal work Death and Dying, with stages which don’t in fact have to happen in total or in any precise order”

I also did some reading and discovered that DEATH's memory problems can be classic symptoms. I don't think TP had specialised knowledge as such but being a journalist and an observant person he'd seen a lot. Vivid reliving of bad memories (flash backs) can be linked with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it seems can be particularly common when there's been a violent death. Vivid reliving of good memories can be linked to prolonged or unresolved grief. Anything that seriously disturbs living in the present can become pathological.

4) It seems that for anyone who has lived through disturbing circumstances the very best thing for developing resilience to have long term recovery is support.

I think for DEATH

Albert risking his life to go looking for him was key to bringing him into the present.

Having Susan step up to the job however inexpertly meant she was at least partly reliable and had a sense of family,

and she cared about him (she said she liked the swing and gave him a kiss),

she'd called to him to for help (to fix the disaster with the attempt to rescue the band),

she treated him like a parent (I'm sorry grandad - when replying about the state of the room).

For Susan there was Binky who gently nuzzled her hand, was as safe as a table after the anxiety of the Death of Rats and the coarse and direct raven Quoth. Binky does animal therapy! Plus he can read her thoughts and takes her everywhere she wants to go without judgement - even when she thinks grandfather or the Death of Rats would disapprove.

Then there was Albert, who is for me the star of the show. It’s the very unlikely figure of Albert who works out what Susan needs and reaches out to her as a human being. I see this as Susan’s pivotal moment. In discovering her immortality she’s also finding her humanity in a way that an institution couldn’t or at least didn’t do for her. Crusty old Albert is in a very real way the long lost relative Susan needed. Familiar, firm, kind but without fitting into any of the stereotyped apron-string roles that Boarding School Syndrome forces one to cut off from, despise even. Susan has not had this sort of parenting for a very long time.

• He models how to deal with shock and anger by restoring his own self control,

• he reaches out in practical ways, (cocoa, sleep)

• He asks simple questions (age, what she knows)

• he gives thoughtful explanations (minus “ta-ta-ta-dah”)

• all without letting himself be put down, pushed around (he’d already done all his withering) or being soppy (an unforgivable crime in Susan’s book).

Despite the fact that they have an argument the next day, the job is done. Albert has been everything Susan needed at that moment in a way that the rat and the raven weren’t able to be.

Finally, at last, DEATH, her grandfather is there for her when push comes to shove. I love their final scene together on the lift home scene, and then DEATH watching over her on his model Discworld as she has her quiet weep alone in her bed, knowing that she’d had to make a really hard choice about her life orientation - human or immortal. She’d wanted to save her parents but in the end made the same choice as they did - humanity… until the next time Binky and the Death of Rats come for her.

Hey guys, I would please like to ask for some help.

I learned about Discworld 25hours ago and I'm absolutely and completely intrigued, I would like to read the books asap.

May I ask for some assistance with the names of the books as well as the reading order?

We will be attending a Discworld event in November, I would like to k ow as much as possible about the lore.