The Terry Pratchett Thread

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Had a long gap between Sourcery and Pyramids, but I'm reading again and am well into Guards! Guards! at this point.

It is shaping up to be a favourite already, I've just passed the Librarian desperately using charades to communicate a book title to Carrot which will stay with me for a long time. 

Oook!

 

 

[little che]

I found last week that my very small town has a warehouse full of secondhand books ( there are tens of thousands !) including tons of both paperback and hardback Disworld. The quality of the books is topnotch and they all appear to be £2 , so it anyone wants any to complete their collection then I'll be happy to acquire.

[MDY]

All 40 novels are to get new audio book adaptations.. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/16/bill-nighy-narrate-terry-pratchett-footnotes-new-discworld-recordings

 

[MikeBeaver]

6 hours ago, MDY said:

All 40 novels are to get new audio book adaptations.. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/16/bill-nighy-narrate-terry-pratchett-footnotes-new-discworld-recordings

 

There are 41

[Scribblor]

Okay, Picard!

[Nick R]

Video about making the new audiobooks. No news yet on who's been cast to do the Watch or Moist books.

 

 

I can't say I ever imagined Brutha and Om having the accents that Andy Serkis is heard using at 10:38!

 

 

I like the fact that the voice Indira Varma uses to play Magrat (at 14:15) sounds closer to Jane Horrocks's real [little] voice than it does to the accent that Jane Horrocks put on when she played Magrat in the animated Wyrd Sisters adaptation.

 

That Wyrd Sisters cartoon gave all three witches West Country accents. But here, Magrat is northern (which makes sense if you think of Lancre = Lancashire), Nanny is still West Country (I can't imagine reading her voice any other way), and Granny - as Varma puts it in the video - a sort of semi-Cockney but not really(?).

[MikeBeaver]

47 minutes ago, Nick R said:

Video about making the new audiobooks. No news yet on who's been cast to do the Watch or Moist books.

 

 

I can't say I ever imagined Brutha and Om having the accents that Andy Serkis is heard using at 10:38!

 

 

I like the fact that the voice Indira Varma uses to play Magrat (at 14:15) sounds closer to Jane Horrocks's real [little] voice than it does to the accent that Jane Horrocks put on when she played Magrat in the animated Wyrd Sisters adaptation.

 

That Wyrd Sisters cartoon gave all three witches West Country accents. But here, Magrat is northern (which makes sense if you think of Lancre = Lancashire), Nanny is still West Country (I can't imagine reading her voice any other way), and Granny - as Varma puts it in the video - a sort of semi-Cockney but not really(?).

Watched it all the way through, can’t say I’m impressed tbh, Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs nailed on the voices for me, anything else is going to need to be something magnificent to change my mind.

[Ran]

The read continues.. I am up to Lords and Ladies now (halfway through). It's already one of my favourite books of all time and has had me laughing at regular intervals, Granny and Nanny are such a perfect double act. I haven't felt this entertained by a piece of media/literature for ages.

Looking forward to the next guards book coming up too.

[Delargey]

Lords and Ladies is great, though Witches Abroad is the witches book that makes me laugh the most. Granny and Nanny on the road is great.

[MikeBeaver]

55 minutes ago, Delargey said:

Lords and Ladies is great, though Witches Abroad is the witches book that makes me laugh the most. Granny and Nanny on the road is great.

Maskarade has to be right up there with Witch’s Abroad though…

[Chindie]

Lords and Ladies is one of my favourites. It's one of the most... cinematic?... of his books. I can picture exactly how a film version of that book would go, and it would be brilliant.

[MikeBeaver]

nit sure what I think of the trailer si far, it could be good, but I’m not 100% on the cast so far, possible it’s been dumbed down a bit? 
10/10 will watch though to give it a fair go 😆

[Garwoofoo]

I've been reading Discworld in order for a few years now, a book every few months in between other stuff. I don't think I'd previously read more than the first dozen or so and I'm well into new stuff (for me) now.

 

Reading Hogfather at the moment and to be honest I'm struggling with it. There's a good plot in here but I'm finding the way it's written is really off-putting. It's constantly pinging around between lots of groups of characters (wizards, Susan, Death, assassins and others) and everything is written as a mystery to be solved later. So you get a paragraph where Susan is doing something and you don't know why and it's not resolved. Then you get a paragraph where the wizards are doing something and it's not resolved. Then you get a... well, you get the idea. Ten pages later it loops back round to Susan and you've forgotten what she was doing in the first place.

 

Plus Pratchett doesn't appear to believe in chapters so the whole thing is like a stream of consciousness. I wish someone had just edited this to read like a normal book because what's in there is good, it just feels like someone threw all the pieces up in the air and assembled the book in a random order.

 

Is it just me? I thought this was supposed to be one of the really good ones. Or perhaps Pratchett has a troubled middle period - I loved everything up to about Men at Arms but much less so with a couple of the more recent ones.

[Plissken]

I never really got along with Hogfather and yes, although it has some great moments, it's because it didn't quite feel like it flowed coherently.

[Danster]

I'd definitely not rate Hogfather as one of the best.

 

 

[Garwoofoo]

Ah, phew. Not just me then. Maybe it's because they did that TV adaptation of it that I had it in my mind as one of the classics.

 

I was just a bit concerned, after Interesting Times (which was shit, and quite racist) that maybe I wasn't going to enjoy these as much any more. Then again Feet of Clay was excellent. So it's probably just Pratchett being a bit more experimental and trying out different styles at this point in his career.

[PK]

The ones about Death are all a bit stream of consciousness and disjointed, aren't they? I seem to remember Reaper Man sort of disintegrates into a swirl of ideas in the same way that Hogfather does (although it's been a while since I read either).

[MikeBeaver]

4 hours ago, Garwoofoo said:

I've been reading Discworld in order for a few years now, a book every few months in between other stuff. I don't think I'd previously read more than the first dozen or so and I'm well into new stuff (for me) now.

 

Reading Hogfather at the moment and to be honest I'm struggling with it. There's a good plot in here but I'm finding the way it's written is really off-putting. It's constantly pinging around between lots of groups of characters (wizards, Susan, Death, assassins and others) and everything is written as a mystery to be solved later. So you get a paragraph where Susan is doing something and you don't know why and it's not resolved. Then you get a paragraph where the wizards are doing something and it's not resolved. Then you get a... well, you get the idea. Ten pages later it loops back round to Susan and you've forgotten what she was doing in the first place.

 

Plus Pratchett doesn't appear to believe in chapters so the whole thing is like a stream of consciousness. I wish someone had just edited this to read like a normal book because what's in there is good, it just feels like someone threw all the pieces up in the air and assembled the book in a random order.

 

Is it just me? I thought this was supposed to be one of the really good ones. Or perhaps Pratchett has a troubled middle period - I loved everything up to about Men at Arms but much less so with a couple of the more recent ones.

As others have said, Hogfather is not one of the better ones, it's still good, but there are soooo many better, on my countless listens, I tend to skip it , that and "Soul Music " are the least listened two out of the whole series.

[HarryBizzle]

Thanks to @Stopharage I've just bought The Last Continent. I think I've probably read about 25 of the Discworld books.

 

I haven't read The Shepherd's Crown and sort of don't want to.

 

Are any of them particularly good in audio book format? I kind of don't want to listen to them in case the voices mess with my own interpretation of the characters.

[MikeBeaver]

Just now, HarryBizzle said:

Thanks to @Stopharage I've just bought The Last Continent. I think I've probably read about 25 of the Discworld books.

 

I haven't read The Shepherd's Crown and sort of don't want to.

 

Are any of them particularly good in audio book format? I kind of don't want to listen to them in case the voices mess with my own interpretation of the characters.

The audio books are great, Last Continent is one of my favourites, and Yes, Shepherds Crown is a tear jerker.

Went to the book launch at Waterstones in London, cried in a room full of strangers whilst certain passages were read out from it, collected the first book of the signing, left and then went home and read the entire thing that night.

[Danster]

Audiobooks are all really good, buuuuut... They are currently rerecording then with new voice actors for some of the main characters. So might be worth waiting for them.

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Danster said:

Audiobooks are all really good, buuuuut... They are currently rerecording then with new voice actors for some of the main characters. So might be worth waiting for them.

Going to hold judgement on the new ones till they are out, Stephen Briggs / Nigel Planner do such a good job ( Stephen being my personal choice as best ) that I am going to be either enthralled or thoroughly disspointed by them.

[PK]

1 hour ago, HarryBizzle said:

Are any of them particularly good in audio book format? I kind of don't want to listen to them in case the voices mess with my own interpretation of the characters.

 

Having read and re-read my Discworld books almost to the point of disintegration during my teens, I find the Briggs & Planer audiobooks almost unlistenable. The voices are so wrong.

[HarryBizzle]

Just finished The Last Continent. Very good, I thought. I haven’t always enjoyed Rincewind’s stories - mostly because they’re quite early on and the Discworld feels less fully formed than in later iterations, but thought this was really good. 

[MikeBeaver]

6 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

Just finished The Last Continent. Very good, I thought. I haven’t always enjoyed Rincewind’s stories - mostly because they’re quite early on and the Discworld feels less fully formed than in later iterations, but thought this was really good. 

It's excellent, I think , once I've finished listening to Carpe Jugulem again, that will be next on the list  

[HarryBizzle]

That’s next on my list. I think I’ve owned it for ages and possibly read it in my early teens, but can’t remember a thing about it. 

[MikeBeaver]

22 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

That’s next on my list. I think I’ve owned it for ages and possibly read it in my early teens, but can’t remember a thing about it. 

It's another Witches one, and not half bad, I tend to stick a TP audio book on every night, unless I have a podcast to catch up on.

[HarryBizzle]

I think it might be the only witches one I’ve not read (apart from the final one which is an Aching one so not quite the same thing). 

[Delargey]

CJ is really good, some wonderful Granny dialogue. 

[HarryBizzle]

I finished it a few weeks ago and I think I mentioned in another thread that it might be my favourite Discworld novel apart from maybe Witches Abroad.

 

I'm reading Equal Rites at the moment. Apparently I bought it in 2011 and gave up not very long into it. It's a bit of a slog. Nowhere near as sharp or as funny as later Discworld but it's surprising how fully formed most of it is. Nothing enormous that I can see that gets retconned or similar.