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Hear the words.
Day 3
In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I've joked there are two scenarios where it's acceptable to begin reading the Discworld series with The Color of Magic: it's 1983 and it's the most recently published Terry Pratchett novel, or it's the late 1990s/early 2000s and you've just come off a decade of reading Dragonlance, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, et al, etc.
As 1983 is well past and nobody starts their fantasy reading with those books anymore, it's now unacceptable to begin there. But at the time I started reading Discworld, I was in that latter camp, and not knowing any better, enjoyed myself without thinking too much about what was going on. I got The Light Fantastic next, and then went to the bookstore, wanting more of the wizard cycle. So I went for Interesting Times.
I'd basically gotten couple of beginner's swimming lessons and then went running off the high dive.
As a novel, it's not Pratchett's best. It's not his most clever, most insightful, or most heartbreaking. I reread it a while ago and there's parts of it that show he had a ways to go to really become himself. And in rereading it, I saw how he harnessed his anger and fury at the petty human injustices in the world, and the ways in which he knew it could be better. I remembered reading the scenes illustrating the sheer magnitude of the gulf in between the people leading the wars and the people the wars were being fought for, and thinking about the pointlessness of martyrdom when there's work to be done to make the world as it needed to be. Things that I'd never read before and shook something deep inside that I knew I had to pay attention to. Ideas that were important.
The world isn't perfect. Don't stop trying to make it better.
Tikkun olam as filtered through a silly fantasy series that suddenly wasn't quite so silly anymore.
So it's not The Color of Magic that I hold tenderly for my fond memories of it, though I do think of that one with genuine affection. It's Interesting Times, because though there were a couple before it, that was the first proper Discworld book I ever read. And that's why I love picked it for today.
In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I've joked there are two scenarios where it's acceptable to begin reading the Discworld series with The Color of Magic: it's 1983 and it's the most recently published Terry Pratchett novel, or it's the late 1990s/early 2000s and you've just come off a decade of reading Dragonlance, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, et al, etc.
As 1983 is well past and nobody starts their fantasy reading with those books anymore, it's now unacceptable to begin there. But at the time I started reading Discworld, I was in that latter camp, and not knowing any better, enjoyed myself without thinking too much about what was going on. I got The Light Fantastic next, and then went to the bookstore, wanting more of the wizard cycle. So I went for Interesting Times.
I'd basically gotten couple of beginner's swimming lessons and then went running off the high dive.
As a novel, it's not Pratchett's best. It's not his most clever, most insightful, or most heartbreaking. I reread it a while ago and there's parts of it that show he had a ways to go to really become himself. And in rereading it, I saw how he harnessed his anger and fury at the petty human injustices in the world, and the ways in which he knew it could be better. I remembered reading the scenes illustrating the sheer magnitude of the gulf in between the people leading the wars and the people the wars were being fought for, and thinking about the pointlessness of martyrdom when there's work to be done to make the world as it needed to be. Things that I'd never read before and shook something deep inside that I knew I had to pay attention to. Ideas that were important.
The world isn't perfect. Don't stop trying to make it better.
Tikkun olam as filtered through a silly fantasy series that suddenly wasn't quite so silly anymore.
So it's not The Color of Magic that I hold tenderly for my fond memories of it, though I do think of that one with genuine affection. It's Interesting Times, because though there were a couple before it, that was the first proper Discworld book I ever read. And that's why I love picked it for today.
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Although, the other half of me just wants to send them directly to Night Watch to experience the genius first thing.
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The first one I remember sinking in past the level of "That was clearly referencing a whole lot of stories I haven't read" was Reaper Man.
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Lots of people deeply dislike Rincewind. I can't say I really understand why. I kind of miss him sometimes. And the luggage. I really like that luggage!
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I started with Wyrd Sisters in 1995, because it happened to be in the new arrivals shelf at my local library (it was the first DW book translated into Finnish), followed by Mort, Reaper Man and Hogfather, as they were translated into Finnish, and then moved to reading the books in English in whatever order I happend to get them into my hands. I caught up with the publishing order sometime in the early 00's, but I didn't do a completele in-order reread until 2012-2013.
That reread was very interesting because you could see the progress in writing but also how some of Pratchett's main themes really were present from supriringly early. And I don't think I probably would have appreciated it so much had I read them in the correct order right from the start.
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