Welcome, welcome, welcome!
I have added you to the list 😊
I would definitely say the Tao Te Ching counts, I don't think we're limited to fiction only! I will include it but just let me know if you want it removed.
I really, really, need to dust off my Pratchett books...
I guess I'm fine with that. And me going over estimate anyway is definitely not the main reason for that. xD
That being said, I finished:
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
I even kinda finished my actual goal without realizing. My actual goal was to read all the books up until the release years of two of the Discworld games I played a while ago. This was mostly because I want to replay them at some point and see what references I missed. ^^"
What can I say about the stories so far? First of all, there's a bunch of different novel series that all play out in the Discworld world. The stories I read so far belong to:
- Rincewind novels
- Witches novels
- Death novels
- Watch (or Night Watch) novels
- some loose novels revolving around ancient civilizations
So far I'd rate them as follows:
Witches > Watch > Death > Rincewind
While they're all interesting to read I find it hard to really get into the Rincewind stories. They may work on some level but didn't exactly catch on. Granted, even Pratchett himself discouraged people from reading the first two novels (The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic). But even those that came afterwards where just kinda ok for me. Rincewind is an interesting character. But I think his setting is just not really my cup of tea.
The Death novels are kind of a hit or miss situation for me. It feels like half of them were a hit while the other half were more of a miss. One thing I noticed because of the order I read the books in: Pratchett seemed to have massive trouble getting that series going. It's as if he didn't know how to handle him as a character. Death is fun as a recurring character who appears in all the books not related to him. But especially in the beginning of his own series he was still quite passive.
The thing I like about the Watch series is that we actually get to see how the city of Ankh-Morpork develops inpart due to how the Watch itself changes from book to book, becoming more competent and actually dealing a lot with topics like racism (well, speciesism) and identity and stuff.
And the Witches series I just really like a lot. The characters are fun and have some really interesting chemistry.
Also, reading order:
I think going by publishing order is a good idea. Every book adds more to the world building in small increments. That way you never feel overwhelmed with stuff. There are some basic explanations just in case you didn't read a previous one (sometimes even within the same series).
The big advantage, however, is that even though the series all play out kinda independent from each other. Having read the previous publications actually gives you more context when certain things happen in a book that belong to a different series.
For example: "Soul Music" (Death) definitely plays after "Guards! Guards!" (Watch) because certain events from the latter were brought up in the former.
So, yeah, the books are good. Definitely recommend!
