Quoted PostQuoted PostMight be anachronistic now, considering he wrote from the period 1900-1972, and largely about the British upper classes, but he took the p out of them well.Quoted PostIMO the best comedic writer there has been.Never read Pratchett, but I’ll run with P G Wodehouse.
I’ve never read Wodehouse. Will give it a run.
Some of the dialogue still stands up.
Quoted PostQuoted PostQuoted PostMight be anachronistic now, considering he wrote from the period 1900-1972, and largely about the British upper classes, but he took the p out of them well.Quoted PostIMO the best comedic writer there has been.Never read Pratchett, but I’ll run with P G Wodehouse.
I’ve never read Wodehouse. Will give it a run.Some of the dialogue still stands up.
Sebastian Faulks wrote another Jeeves Wooster novel a couple of years back. He did a remarkably good job, together with updating the sensibilities a touch. It wasn’t too bad at all.
John Alderton and Pauline Collins did a series of short shows 20 or so years back, mainly Mr Mulliner and Oldest Member stories, some of which are hilariously portrayed. Wodehouse’s cynicism for Hollywood shines through, having spent 2 or 3 exorbitantly paid years there in the 30s, and not getting used.
And Fry and Laurie did a good series of Jeeves and Wooster. Timothy Spall as Lord Emsworth in Blandings didn’t ring my bells, not like Ralph Richardson and Derek Nimmo eons back. They’re probably gone forever as are the Ian Carmichael/Dennis Price Jeeves series.
Douglas Adams and now Pratchett 
Just catching up on the Adams passing?
The post-Adams HGTTG, And Another Thing…is very good.
Quoted PostQuoted PostQuoted PostMight be anachronistic now, considering he wrote from the period 1900-1972, and largely about the British upper classes, but he took the p out of them well.Quoted PostIMO the best comedic writer there has been.Never read Pratchett, but I’ll run with P G Wodehouse.
I’ve never read Wodehouse. Will give it a run.I like him already
I read heaps of Pratchett as a pre-teen and young teen, but none as an adult, and frankly, cannot remember which books I read or what happened.
I should get back into it… but not sure where to start.
I don’t know how old you are, so don’t know how far you got…
While it was Mort and Pyramids that got me into him first, I don’t think time has served them well (but they’re masterpieces compared to the first two books).
I think you could start at Moving Pictures and go back if you’re interested.
You’ve got Gaspode, named after the famous Gaspode, and the Unseen University (first book to feature Ridcully), CMOTD.
The next five are the guts of Discworld, imo.
Good place to start. Others may disagree.
The first two Discworld books are very skippable, and you can very easily ignore Equal Rites and Sourcery too.
Start with Mort, Wyrd Sisters, or Guards Guards. They’re generally where the major sequences start - the Death/Susan books, the witches books, and the Watch books, and they’re more when he started veering away from the ‘parody-of-epic-fantasy’ shtick towards the more established and in-depth Discworld setting. Or if the sheer number of Discworld books is too daunting, give Good Omens a try, standalone book not set in Discworld, but it’s Pratchett’s style and humour to the nth degree and it’ll give you a good idea whether you’re going to like his stuff more generally.
I’ve given The Truth to a few people as a good introduction to the Discworld. I think it’s a pretty good example of “mature” Pratchett overall. The only issue is you don’t get to see the evolution of Ankh Morpork under Vetinari. But it also doesn’t rely on intimately knowing any of the characters history from other books.
By “mature” I mean as opposed to The Colour Of Magic which I loved at the time but as others have said is really not up to the standard of later books.
I felt that by the time the industrial revolution came to Ankh Morpork Terry was past his best.
I dunno. Men at Arms was the first ‘Industrial Revolution’ book, and I though that one was right up there with the best. Ditto Feet of Clay, Thud!, Night Watch (which is only partially set after the AM IR, I guess!), Fifth Elephant, and Going Postal. I wasn’t a huge fan of The Truth, but it was ok.
He did tail off later in his career, a few too many ‘downtrodden fantasy race X integrates into Ankh-Morpork society!’ books, and he was a bit of a prisoner of the success of the Watch - it started to be hard to actually THREATEN Ankh-Morpork in any meaningful way. Making Money was just a Going Postal retread, plus Snuff, Unseen Academicals, and Raising Steam were basically the same book and the bad guys were just … lacking. Still, at this same time he was putting out stuff like Night Watch and Thud, which are among the best Discworld books he wrote. I ust think he lost evenness later on in his career, he was still perfectly capable of some excellent stuff though.
I’d have given up the last seven ‘Adult’ Discworld novels for one final Civil War novel.
Alright, perhaps two novels, parts one and two.
THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS JUST ME.