My library only has one discworld book (rising steam? I believe is the name) my question is should I start with that one? Or wait until I can get another?

copperbadge:

alovecraft:

thebibliosphere:

Oh no, don’t start with that one. As much as I adore Moist Von Lipwig, you’re catching Terry at the tail end of his Alzheimers and his writing was decreasing rapidly by that point. (Still a fun story, just not the best place to start.)

If I were recommending a starting point, there are several ways you can do this.

I tend to point people in one of five directions, namely:

Do you like dragons, crime and concepts of social justice and righteous rage? Sam Vimes and the City Watch books is your man, start with Guards! Guards!

Those books give you a real feel for the city aspects of the story, which is rather important if one is going to enjoy the Moist Von Lipwig arcs, which start with Going Postal. (Monstrous Regiment also benefits from having read the Watch series first.)

Do you prefer women heavy narratives, social justice, rural settings and raw powerful magic? Then the Witches arc would be a good place to start, either with Equal Rites, or with Wyrd Sisters.

You could also start with the Tiffany Aching series, which starts with The Wee Free Men, but I feel it’s kinda nice to know who the older witches are to better understand the importance of their appearance in the Tiffany books.

Then there’s the Death arcs, which start with Mort, which is the book Terry himself used to tell people to start with cause that was kind of when he started to get the hang of what he wanted Discworld to be.

I find breaking them down into those arcs helps to make the process of reading 41 books more manageable 🙂

Hope this helps!

@copperbadge had a really neat breakdown of where to start first based on interests (nightwatch, witches, wizards/rincewind, death) but I’m on mobile and have a hard time finding crap when I’m on mobile

Here ya go! It’s slightly out of date now, but at the risk of making a real dark joke, it’s not like from here onwards it’s going to get more out of date.