Last night I finished reading The Colour of Magic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but reading isn’t really my bag. If the writing style is too complicated I quickly become lost or bored, or both.
When I started this book it was a bit unnerving because there is a barrage of weird names and the story seems to skip around all over the place. A couple of times I assumed I had missed some pages out, only to find that the huge change in tack was intentional. Quite confusing, but fortunately there were some very funny bits that helped keep my attention.
About half-way through the book I seemed to get used to the writing style and, for want of a better word, relaxed into it. There is some really funny stuff here. I literally put down the first book and started on the second (The Light Fantastic). I have a horrible feeling I’m going to end up reading all 38 of the DiscWorld series…
Cheers
Tim…
If I’d started the Discworld series by reading the Colour of Magic, I’m not sure I’d have bothered with the rest of them. It’s a different style to the rest of the books, and remains my least favourite book of the whole lot.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here…
They are completely addictive, some are brilliant (Thud! is my current favourite), some less so (Eric); but as the series unfolds and progresses you’ll start to see more and more parallels with “real” life (Ponder Stibbons we salute you) and you’ll soon get to the stage of being completely impatient for the next one to come out.
🙂
I’m with Graham – indeed I started reading with The Colour of Magic (in paperback) and continued until around about the time of Weird Sisters I couldn’t wait and bought the hardback. This should be avoided since, like those handy here’s next weeks episode on BBC4 trailers for spooks etc, when you give in to the impulse you find that from now on you always have to watch next weeks episode on BBC4, er I mean buy the hardback at 3 times the price.
None of which explains why I’ve bought the same book in the series, in the same version, several times. Personally I blame L-Space but you haven’t got there yet, sorry.
Niall
The Colour of Magic was the first book, and the bitty nature seems to reflect, to me, someone still getting to grips with the length of a novel.
I’d recommend ‘Moving Pictures’ as a good Discworld starting point as it is very stand-alone and a more accomplished effort. Some of the later ones (Jingo, Monstrous Regiment) I find a bit too preachy (pushing obvious messages like “war/racism is bad”) at the expense of humour