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I always tell people to start with Guards! Guards! because I'm a huge City Watch fanboy. But depending on the person I might recommend Small Gods or Monstrous Regiment instead.

After reddit's hostility towards users became clear, I started reading Discworld books again. I think my all time favourite will always be Thud!

Soul Music is a personal fave.

The line I'd use to sell anyone on it:

   Death has a mid-life crisis and goes off to join a foreign legion.

Soul Music was the first of the books I read and was a wonderful introduction to the series.

> After reddit's hostility towards users became clear

You mean the API thing? For me it was a month earlier when they put my 13-year account into a Kafkaesque shadow-hell.

(TLDR: Randomly shadowbanned as if a spambot, all content removed, appealed, appeal GRANTED with an "oops" apology, but nothing was actually fixed, can't use appeals-page to contact them because it falsely claims my account is normal, I can't private message anybody, weeks of modmail to admins with no reply, etc.)

just create a new account and move on?

How unhelpfully dismissive. Even if I was willing to let 13 years of content/memberships/friend-links/etc. be destroyed, do you honestly think I didn't try that?

I resurrected a 6-year-old account I had used as a throwaway, since it already had some qualifying age and karma, allowing me to to actually post in relevant help-subreddits. (For example, I posted a bug-report in /r/bugs.)

Yet within couple weeks, IT HAPPENED AGAIN: Totally vanilla usage leading to the exact same series of events, plunging the other account into the same inexplicable bugged state.

Do you have roommates or other people sharing your Internet connection?

It really, really sucks that reddit messed up your account. I've grown incredibly attached to some of my online personas and I'd be devastated if they were taken from me.

It's like my bewilderment when talking to people who think your comment history should be private. I want people to see who I am, and how I respond to different situations. Even those times when I've made mistakes and jumped to bad conclusions.

It says a lot about the state of the reddit codebase when they can't even edit post titles. Likewise the recent deletion of private messages points to a serious lack of talent and really terrible code.

Makes me think that the API works were almost completely due to an inability of reddit's engineers to write anything but the most basic code. And modifying more complex code is right out.

If you want Pratchett and also Gaiman, then both Good Omens the book and Good Omens the TV version are fucking fantastic.

The Pratchett/Gaiman collab is one of my absolute favourites, I like it a lot more than Gaiman and Moore on Watchmen.

Yes, they really are. And if you like them Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' is also really good.

Good omens TV show really carried the tone of the book really well (except for the heaven and hell scenes).

So if you need a lower barrier of entry to Pratchett books, the series might be a good start.

Season 2 has just come out! It's really fun :)

I have to pitch in and also recommend Unsong[1] by Scott Alexander, of Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten fame. If you always wished to read a Pratchett book, but with jokes about technology and where the protagonist is a DRM breaker, this is that book. Genuinely one of the best things I've ever read.

[1] https://unsongbook.com

I thought that had a really promising start then lost the plot and the finish had very little relation to the premise of the start

It's good (great, even, for a free book) but it needs an editor.

I'm (slightly) disappointed they missed the opportunity of http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

(I made a bot to reply emails, and I added that header.)

GNU Terry Pratchett.

Small Gods was one of my favorites though I recommend people just start at the beginning. The earlier books are great too , you just have to read them more like goofy fantasy novels from the 80s. They set up a lot of the general attitudes about magic and the Discworld in general that mostly carry through as the books continue.

I started with The City Watch series, and it felt like a great introduction.

Small Gods will always be my favourite (not least because I got mine signed by the man himself, many years ago in Dorchester. Though isn't the joke that he signed so many books that it's the unsigned ones that are more valuable?). For starters though, I'd pitch Wyrd Sisters or Guards! Guards! Both are wonderfully constructed, early, but late enough that he's stopped satirising fantasy novels and has started satirising the world.

> since it is generally agreed that the early books weren't the best

They're fine in their own right, but the first two are much more straight parody fantasy epics, and jarringly different from the rest of the series (a few later ones also fall into this category, particularly Eric). I'd say from book 3 on (Equal Rites), though, you're largely into the series proper.

Small Gods and Good Omens are the best starts; then, I'd hit up the Granny Weatherwax books, eg, Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, etc.

Been watching the 2nd season of Good Omens, was thrilled to see a reference to C.M.O.T. Dibbler in it.

I think it varies for people; if you're at all into "cop thrillers/mysteries" than I think starting with the Watch books is a great introduction.

Honestly, the only thing NOT to do is read them in order of publication - his earliest works are good, but they're better read when you already know Discworld (imho).

The first in the “witches” series is “Equal Rites”, but is, IIUC, considered a very weak entry. The rest of the witches series don’t really acknowledge the events in it, and they start off the next book with a blank slate, not assuming that you have read the first one. If you really just want to read the witches series, I’d suggest that you instead start with the second book, “Wyrd Sisters”.

My personal favourite: Equal Rites (I found the balance between humour and message just perfect, and the message is incredibly humane).

The funniest: Pyramids (The groan-inducing punchline about the brothers alone is worth the price of admission, and it's basically stand-alone!)

The best: Night Watch (Sam Vimes' moral anger in full glory).

Weakest: Either Monstruous Regiment or Carpe Jugulum.

I think Monstrous Regiment was supposed to be a young adult entry? But I'm surprised you included Carpe Jugulum, when for me "making money" was by far the worst. it seemed so derivative, as if it had been generated with an LLM trained on his previous work (or maybe a ghost writer helping out a very sick pratchett..)

I admit there are a couple I've never read (they're sitting on the shelf next to me - Raising Steam, Unseen Academicals, Making Money). That way I'll always have another Terry Pratchett novel to read.

I felt that Carpe Jugulum was a retread of Lords & Ladies, and the formula was getting stale by that point.

If Monstrous Regiment is YA, it has to go up against Tiffany Aching, and it definitely loses there.

I’ve recently started rereading the series in publication order. At the moment, I think my favorite is “Reaper Man.”

It has a fantastic story and humor, of course, but also some really wonderful lines. I feel like that title is where he really found his voice.

My wife and I are both starting with Hogfather, which seemed as good as any and worked as an easy gift (I can't recall if I bought it for Christmas or Father's Day)

Recommended "Making Money", I was ordered not to read it in bed because (1) I can't stop and (2) I couldn't stop laughing.

i loved The Death of Rats growing up. SQUEAK.

I like to start with Mort and the Death books then move on to the Witches books