Comment by namanyayg
6 days ago
I love when this comes up and also I see it play out in my life, where my GF prefers fast fashion whereas I buy something from brands I like and I wear it for long (some of the clothes in my wardrobe have been there for 12+ years.. I feel old.)
Also Sir Terry Pratchett is a gem of an author and you should read all of his books. I have read through maybe 25% of Discworld and it's the funniest fantasy series ever.
This has stuck with me for years.
“Yes, yes,” said Bethan, sitting down glumly. “I know you don’t. Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?”
“Yeah,” said Rincewind, picking up a knife and testing its blade thoughtfully. “Luters, I expect.”
Excerpt From The Light Fantastic
Great author.
I do the same (wear clothing for a long time) but I only buy the cheap stuff. I bought 1 replacement shirt in the last 5 years and 1 bag of replacement socks in the same time frame.
I wanted to like Discworld and read a couple of the books but they're frankly not funny.
He definitely grew significantly as a writer over time, and I would agree that some of his early work isn't particularly strong (The Light Fantastic, for example, is relatively bog-standard comic fantasy without any of the depth his later work showed).
If you start reading at the very beginning of the Discworld, you're slogging through the weaker stuff, and it's easy to get discouraged. A smoother path is to pick one of the defined sub-series (the guards are very popular, but my vote goes to the witches) and start along just that track; you'll get to the strong stuff much faster.
My advice has always been to start with Small Gods. It is a standalone book that references but does not rely on any others, and is far enough into his career that it’s fair to say that if you don’t like it, you won’t like his work in general.
You must have had a very good surgeon then! Congrats!