Wonders what the heck people are going on about the last several posts about this Vetinari (almost said Vetinary) dude.
Well, it
was a joke on the name "Medici", originally, though dedicated Pratchetteers (if you'll exclude the unwarrented neologism) might consider Vetinari to be far more three-dimensional (and potentially threatening) than any of the members of the historical family of circa 13th/14th centuries.
(There's also an in-joke, recently in the series, regarding the Young Vetinari's nickname. So the people of the Disc, at least the upper-crust types educated in his guild, were obviously not unfamiliar with the concept of vets.)
I've heard about Diskworld (not to be confused with Larry Nivens Ringworld), but not read the books.
I'd heartily suggest you make yourself known to them. Or vice-versa. (Dis
cworld, BTW, with a 'c'...) Some people would say "Start at the beginning" (I did, but then it
was more or less only the first two or three books available when I started reading, not counting Strata), others would push you at one or other of the books that start a particular 'arc', or otherwise are easy to read stand-alone. See one or other
reading order guides for a rough representation of what 'arcs' are what, and which books start them (then get someone who knows both you and PTerry's works to work out if it's you're more suited to the Guards, Witches, Death or whatever class of books). But even without much information at hand, Guards Guards is one of the popular books that both starts a recognisable arc and heralds the development of Discworld from Intelligent Parody into
Very Intelligent Parody. Later on in the bibliography you will even get added Philosophy And Thoughtfulness from the series, perhaps some Morality and Life Lessons. Though that depends on what you want and are able derive from the works (may take a couple of readings). They're still funny. Even the 'darker' books like Night Watch.
Potted nutshell (the Pine Nut version, as it were) is: do read Pratchett's works. Discworld and otherwise (the Johnny Maxwell books, the Nome ones, Nation, maybe later getting to Strata/DSOTS). There's a lot of people who highly recommend him. And if you just want to sample his works, a library that does not feature him is (excepting dedicated non-fiction ones, though Small Gods might well sit nicely in a Theological one) not worth the card its indexes are catalogued on. IMO.
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Topic: Disc Fortress (Read 17374 times)