Discworld

[JustKate]

Witches Abroad is one of my favorites, and I also just love Lords and Ladies. I agree that the plots of the witch-centered books aren't always Prachett's best, but I love Nanny Ogg and she's heavily featured in those two.

Both of the Moist Von Vipwig books have been great - partly because of Moist, but also because any book that features Vetinari is a wonderful thing - he's my favorite part of the Nightwatch books.

Two of my other favorites are Soul Music and Moving Pictures.

And I love Death. And the Luggage. I'm pretty fond of Rincewind and Ridcully, too.

But the more I think, the more characters I remember that I love, so, with some difficulty, I'm going to stop there.

 

[Mick of Time]

Does anybody else think that Moist von Lipwig is being set up as Vetinari's replacement as Patrician? I can't point to any specific evidence in the books for this, it's more of a suspicion. I can't seem to get it out of my head, though.

 

[HappyDayRiot]

Really? That's an interesting one. Obviously it's set up for him to do taxes next. But post office-Royal Mint-taxes-Patrician? I think it would be a very long time until Vetinari wanted to step down (surely he'd be the first Patrician of Ankh-Morpork to ever step down from the position?). Certainly not until his Undertaking is complete and he has the city as he wants it.

I'd say I doubt Moist would even want to be Patrician... but 'want' is pretty irrelevant really haha!

 

[Deckerd]

The Watch start to get surprisingly efficient as the series progresses, which is probably why Pratchett has stopped writing about them. Still, the best of the bunch is IMO 'Nightwatch', surprisingly the least "funny", unless you count dark humour.

Night Watch is arguably one of the best books written in the English language in the 20th century.

Some books were better than others but overall they are a very high standard. Speculating about what might have happened is a bit futile unless he can get someone like Neil Gaiman to take over...

 

[ITL]

The Watch start to get surprisingly efficient as the series progresses, which is probably why Pratchett has stopped writing about them. Still, the best of the bunch is IMO 'Nightwatch', surprisingly the least "funny", unless you count dark humour.

Night Watch is arguably one of the best books written in the English language in the 20th century.

This is truth. It really is. I've read it many times and it always blows me away.

When Terry occasionally makes an appearance on breakfast/daytime TV to talk about his books, the befuddled interviewers don't quite know what to make of it all.

They have that "Oooo...err...it's that fantasy-dragonny-elves-and-stuff bloke with a lisp and a big hat...I bet his fans are all weirdos like them Star Trekkers...." look on their face* as they interview him.

They should read Night Watch. Then, they would hold him in awe as we do.

* Highly subjective interpretations of facial expressions brought to you by ITL's damn fool brain. So there.

 

[captcalhoun]

i hate mainstream press interviewing genre stars. they always ask such stupid questions. like when they had Tim Kring on Breakfast the other week and they spent more time asking stupid questions about the FX than talking the stories and didn't even bother talking about upcoming season 4 AT ALL.

the only interesting tidbit was they thought of doing a person with a super-powered sense of smell but rejected it because they had no clue how to visualise it.*


*other than some poor sod sniffing a lot, i guess.

 

[M'Sharak]

I've read Feet of Clay, Guards! Guards!, Thief of Time and Hogfather, and enjoyed them all very much.

 

[Pingfah]

I really like the Discworld novels, although there's a lot I have not read yet. I've read about half of them. It's an impressively huge body of work.

Sky One are preparing another Discworld miniseries for Christmas, the last one was pretty good. God knows why Pratchett is not filmed a hell of a lot more than he is, the material is ripe for it.

On another topic I discovered a Pratchett adaptation called Johnny and the Bomb the other day, it's just a CBBC show from a few years back, but it is actually really good. Has anyone seen it?

 

[JustKate]

I read the book and enjoyed it. Not sure that's helpful, but it's all I've got.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I really like the Discworld novels, although there's a lot I have not read yet. I've read about half of them. It's an impressively huge body of work.

Sky One are preparing another Discworld miniseries for Christmas, the last one was pretty good. God knows why Pratchett is not filmed a hell of a lot more than he is, the material is ripe for it.

On another topic I discovered a Pratchett adaptation called Johnny and the Bomb the other day, it's just a CBBC show from a few years back, but it is actually really good. Has anyone seen it?

I think there was rumours that he wasn't happy with changes a lot of people wanted to make, but he's been fairly happy with the changes Sky have made. But I don't know if that's true.

I saw Johnny and the Bomb and I remember thinking it was quite good, and it was funny how BBC Wales seem to be making so many good Sci-Fi & Fantasy type series lately.

 

[ITL]

The main drawback with Pratchett adaptations is that the narrative voice of the books doesn't translate, IMO. Some of the best parts of the books are when a character is being described - their life and thought processes viewed from that intimate perspective that really does work best in print.

Yes, it is possible to convert some of this into the visual or verbal - but more often than not it's ignored altogether.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

The main drawback with Pratchett adaptations is that the narrative voice of the books doesn't translate, IMO. Some of the best parts of the books are when a character is being described - their life and thought processes viewed from that intimate perspective that really does work best in print.

Yes, it is possible to convert some of this into the visual or verbal - but more often than not it's ignored altogether.

Internal monologues, descriptive passages and footnotes, they're the real things missing. I know the same can be said for most book adaptations though.

 

[JustKate]

A lot of Pratchett's humor is just so...word-based. (I mean, he even has jokes about punctuation! Really funny ones, too.) I've never seen any of the adaptations, but I find it hard to believe that they capture a lot of what I love about the books.

I'd still like to see one, though. I hear Amazon has some available.

 

[ITL]

The main drawback with Pratchett adaptations is that the narrative voice of the books doesn't translate, IMO. Some of the best parts of the books are when a character is being described - their life and thought processes viewed from that intimate perspective that really does work best in print.

Yes, it is possible to convert some of this into the visual or verbal - but more often than not it's ignored altogether.

Internal monologues, descriptive passages and footnotes, they're the real things missing. I know the same can be said for most book adaptations though.

Yup, true. But Pratchett adaptations really suffer because of it.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

A lot of Pratchett's humor is just so...word-based. (I mean, he even has jokes about punctuation! Really funny ones, too.) I've never seen any of the adaptations, but I find it hard to believe that they capture a lot of what I love about the books.

I'd still like to see one, though. I hear Amazon has some available.

I think there are some animated ones done for Channel 4 Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music (I think) and Sky did live action adaptations of Colour of Magic/The Light Fantastic and The Hogfather.

The main drawback with Pratchett adaptations is that the narrative voice of the books doesn't translate, IMO. Some of the best parts of the books are when a character is being described - their life and thought processes viewed from that intimate perspective that really does work best in print.

Yes, it is possible to convert some of this into the visual or verbal - but more often than not it's ignored altogether.

Internal monologues, descriptive passages and footnotes, they're the real things missing. I know the same can be said for most book adaptations though.

Yup, true. But Pratchett adaptations really suffer because of it.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was trying to say, but lost my way somewhere.

 

[captcalhoun]

reputedly there was to be a Hollywood adap of Mort. said Hollywood types said 'we love it. but... could we take death out?'

Mort is about Death. it'd be like saying 'We love Lord of the Rings, but can we lose the flaming eye?'

 

[Deckerd]

Some of the books have been turned into plays. We've seen some at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the years.

 

[Australis]

Night Watch is arguably one of the best books written in the English language in the 20th century.

This is truth. It really is. I've read it many times and it always blows me away.

Absolutely agree. Every now and then I reread it for simple pleasure. If they got it right, 'Night Watch' would be a truly great miniseries, though they'd have to show the other Guards stories first.

The Guards are my favourites, but I love the Witches. Especially Granny Weatherwax. 'Lords and Ladies' is a stunning book, when he takes characters you've grown used to and reveals hidden depths to them.

I can't praise the series, especially after 'L&L', highly enough. Really.

The series starts off okay, kicks up a notch with 'Mort', kicks up another notch with 'Wyrd Sisters', and then again with 'Guards! Guards!', each of which are the first of their 'series-within-series'. Then from 'Lords and Ladies' on the books get deeper as well. I've never seen a series so well and consistently developed over such a long time (25 years).

And while Rincewind isn't top of my list of DW favourites, 'Interesting Times' is great because of Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde, the elderly barbarians that seize a great treasure, and 'The Last Continent', for his depiction of the Aussie analog, Fourecks.

As for the adaptations, I lower my expectations and they're okay. The cartoon ones (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music) had some great moments, especially Music With Rocks In songs.

Hogfather was okay, I haven't watched it for a while. The Colour of Magic/Light Fantastic is slightly flawed because David Jason is a little old to play Rincewind, but as he was acting as producer, I'm pleased he got it off the ground. And it really is worth watching for Jeremy Irons as Vetinari, especially just to hear him utter the line, "What are we going to do with you, you little scamp?"

I'm sue I read somewhere that Pratchett was in talks with the BBC, but the Beeb was determined they wanted final edit of the scripts or final cut, which Pratchett was reluctant to let go of, and I can't blame him. Which is a damn shame.

The Johnny Maxwell trilogy are pretty good for kids, but I enjoyed them. And the Tiffany Aching series-within--series are even better - I rate them above Harry Potter, hands down, no question. That's right, I went there.

 

[Idoliside]

Some of the books have been turned into plays. We've seen some at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the years.

Correction, MOST of his books have been made into plays. Open up Making Money and look at the huge list of play adaptations.

I went and saw Mort the play, it was good.

 

[TheGodBen]

I'm a huge fan of them, they got me into reading as a teenager, a habit which has unfortunately lapsed over the last five years. One of my biggest shames is that I stopped reading Nation after only three chapters because of general apathy when it comes to reading these days. I really hope that I can get back to it some day soon because I've read all his other books and I don't feel complete not having read it.

My favourite sub-series is the City Watch because Vimes is a brilliant character, and partly because those novels defined Vetinari beyond the tyrant he was depicted as in the early novels. My favourite novel of them all is Men at Arms because it is the one time I can think of where Vetinari messed up and ended up being shot in the leg for it (and he still walks with a cane to this day). I love Death too, so I'm not a big fan of how his character's prominence was replaced with Susan after Soul Music. Susan is a fine character in her own right, but in Hogfather and Thief of Time Susan had the main story while Death was used as a comic side-plot that had little bearing upon events. I miss the Death of Mort, that was easily the best of the Death sub-series.

The only two I don't like that much are TCOM and Pyramids, but there are still things I enjoy in those books.