Haven't read this one as well but I've watched the TV adaptation!

"No practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."

Just for the record: I'm trying to do this year's Disctober cockatiel-themed. I owe them the inspiration to participate this year, so why not an entire series :)

Day 18. Flightless

The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.

Total whittle Vimes thought. He wasn't sure of the precise
meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought.
Total whittles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life.

Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

#inkoctober2026 #inktober #terrypratchett #discworld

​

Just a reminder, we're making a definitive list of the Discworld books in order from best to worst.. Top rated comment gets added to the list next. Also, before you make a top level comment suggesting a book, check to see if it's already been suggested. If it is, you're better off upvoting it and, if you want, replying to it with your reasoning for voting for it. But making a second (or third, or fourth) top level comment with a book that's already been suggested means your vote won't get counted!

1. Night Watch

2. Small Gods

3. Monstrous Regiment

Remaining books:

The Colour of Magic

The Light Fantastic

Equal Rites

Mort

Sourcery

Wyrd Sisters

Pyramids

Guards! Guards!

Eric

Moving Pictures

Reaper Man

Witches Abroad

Small Gods

Lords and Ladies

Men at Arms

Soul Music

Interesting Times

Maskerade

Feet of Clay

Hogfather

Jingo

The Last Continent

Carpe Jugulum

The Fifth Elephant

The Truth

Thief of Time

The Last Hero

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Night Watch

The Wee Free Men

Monstrous Regiment

A Hat Full of Sky

Going Postal

Thud!

Wintersmith

Making Money

Unseen Academicals

I Shall Wear Midnight

Snuff

Raising Steam

The Shepherd's Crown

Was thinking about Pyramids and it occurred to me that I can't recall the kingdom ever being mentioned again in the series. We get mentions of Fourecks and Agatean Empire, but not Djelibeybi. Is there ever a reference that I am forgetting?

Hi again,

Another line I don't get:

The dwarf nodded again, still looking into a bundle of arrows bigger than his head.

'Capital. See how we get on when we simply talk? And now I suggest that you arrest me.'

'You want me to arrest you?'

'Yes. And Lady Sybil. We place ourselves under your personal jurisdiction.'

'That's right,' said Sybil. 'I demand to be arrested.' > She drew herself up and out, righteous indignation radiating like a bonfire, causing the dwarfs to back away from what was clearly an unexploded bosom.

What does the last sentence mean please?

I'm rereading Nightwatch and it just hit me. When Sweeper takes a key from around his neck and inserts it into a small door, leaving Vimes behind in the Inner City Garden of Tranquility and through a time portal to 700,000 years before? Who is he going to see? James Bond fans will appreciate that he's going to see Q (Qu) and frankly I don't know why I never realized it before. 🤦

"It's not like there's any intention of never delivering it, sir."

I think the colours got away from me a bit on this one.

#disctober #disctober2026

*I did not find a suitable flair, this one was neutral enough

A few years back I was sitting in my bathtub and looking for the next book to read.

By that time I have already read classics like the Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy and many others.

I don’t remember how I came upon Terry Pratchett, it might have been some top fantasy list or a Reddit thread, but I do know I’ve seen the Discworld novels recommended several times before but always felt like, based on the cover art, they’d be rather shallow (yes, this was incorrect).

Well this time I decided to check them out and I downloaded a sample of Colour of magic.

And I still remember, very vividly, the moment I read this paragraph:

-

An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

-

and positively burst out laughing!

And I said to myself, yes, I think I have found something to read for the next few years.

It was not so straightforward though. I read and loved Colour of Magic. I had to push myself through the Light Fantastic and I liked a couple of next books ending somewhere around book 6.

Frankly, a lot of it went over my head. I’m not a native English speaker, and although my English was a certified C2 level even then, I just didn’t get a lot of what went on and sometimes had to even re read sentences to make them make sense for me. Of course, now I know Terry wrote layers of meaning into a single paragraph and included deep cultural and historical references - source of many famous Dammit Pterry! moments.

At that point I told myself there is no point in forcing it and I switched to reading other book. Among those I read in that break was the Song of Ice and Fire, all of Joe Abercrombie, the Guns of August and others.

Until I found myself in another reading slump and after some deliberation and especially after reading posts in this subreddit (it actually became my favourite subreddit of all time, you are all great people!) I have decided to give Discworld another shot, but selectively.

I read Small Gods and that was such an experience that I returned to the point where I stopped before, between Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids, and read chronologically from then on until I completed the series just this week and one of these books, Going Postal, have also become one of my absolute favourite stories of all time and had already been re-read and re-listened to many times since then, even between the other, chronological reads.

Somewhere in the middle of that run, I also decided I want to hear these books, not just read them. So I started listening to the audiobooks of the whole series from the start, and while the listening run is still ongoing (Currently listening to Wee Free Men), the reading run has completed and I decided to write this appreciation post, for review is something I would rather leave to others. I think I will now pick up another non fiction book as a palette cleanser and at some point in the future I will return to Terry’s other works.

I can say confidently now that Terry Pratchett was a genius, to paraphrase what Neil Gaiman wrote about Douglas Adams, not in the casual way people use it, but a real giant like an Albert Einstein of fantasy and I also must say, in contradiction to his own words, he did commit the crime of literature. And if somebody asks why or how was he genius, the answer is in the books - he wrote about dwarfs, trolls, humans, witches and yes, even policemen, but mainly he wrote about them as people being people with all that comes with that. A true exploration of the human condition, in the most literary sense.

The experience of reading Pratchett, and I am not the first one to make this remark, is like this:

- hey, this is really acute observation about human nature
- oh, this is really deep insight into this fundamental social concept
- hey, this is really cool and rather unique fantasy element
- ah, this is a reference to an obscure medieval book
- oh, I always throught this thing is just author's invention, and 10 years later I realised it actually exists in the round world.
- hm, is he talking here about the Tibetan tradition or is he referring to this paper in physics published in the 70s?
- oh, this is a d-k joke

Thank you Pterry for making me laugh while teaching me to think better about what it means to be a human. Thank you, the people of this community, for acting as a guide into the World of the Disc.

The Turtle Moves!

1. Nanny Ogg
2. Scumble
3. ...Well, mostly apples.

Is the part that isn't apples another intoxicant or entheogen, or is it just the yeast and maybe spices?

I was recently perusing the reading order guide infographic: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Discworld_Reading_Order_Guide_3.0.jpg and theres a minor connection between Faust Eric and Moving Pictures.

Does anyone know what the connection is?

Not a direct reference, but these pugs reminded me of Lords Venturi and Selacchii in Night Watch.

Also a bit of Lord Rust when they become belligerent.

Day 17. Contraption

Leonard of Quirm knew about inspirations. One of his earliest inventions was an earthed metal nightcap, worn in the hope that the damned things would stop leaving their white-hot trails across his tortured imagination. It seldom worked.

He knew the shame of waking up to find the sheets covered with nocturnal sketches of seige engines for apple-peeling machines.

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

#inkoctober2026 #inktober #terrypratchett #discworld

Hi all, I am trying to complete a book bingo challenge. The prompt I am hoping to complete is Time Manipulation. Im thinking thief of time just by the name. But the end of the year is near and I also want to read a TPratchett book since its been a few months so im hoping to hit two birds with one stone.

But what i technically require is a book containing Time Manipulation and some form of romance (the book bingo is fantasy romances 2026 challenge). I'm pretty open to the barest hint of romance but do any of the discworld books stand out as fitting?

I read Night Watch last year so cant use that one

Any suitable ideas?

​

Just a reminder, we're making a definitive list of the Discworld books in order from best to worst.. Top rated comment gets added to the list next. Also, before you make a top level comment suggesting a book, check to see if it's already been suggested. If it is, you're better off upvoting it and, if you want, replying to it with your reasoning for voting for it. But making a second (or third, or fourth) top level comment with a book that's already been suggested means your vote won't get counted!

1. Night Watch

2. Small Gods

Remaining books:

The Colour of Magic

The Light Fantastic

Equal Rites

Mort

Sourcery

Wyrd Sisters

Pyramids

Guards! Guards!

Eric

Moving Pictures

Reaper Man

Witches Abroad

Small Gods

Lords and Ladies

Men at Arms

Soul Music

Interesting Times

Maskerade

Feet of Clay

Hogfather

Jingo

The Last Continent

Carpe Jugulum

The Fifth Elephant

The Truth

Thief of Time

The Last Hero

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Night Watch

The Wee Free Men

Monstrous Regiment

A Hat Full of Sky

Going Postal

Thud!

Wintersmith

Making Money

Unseen Academicals

I Shall Wear Midnight

Snuff

Raising Steam

The Shepherd's Crown

After driving in Chicago yesterday, I'm going to nominate Anoia to be the Goddess of Decent Parking Spaces. She shone her blessing on me twice, and I rattled my drawers when I got home in gratitude.

Thing is, I haven't read this book (yet. I know. Right?) but I know some of the main plot. I've seen comments around the fandom. And I wanted to participate in this day. I hope I've got something right!

Just for the record: I'm trying to do this year's Disctober cockatiel-themed. I owe them the inspiration to participate this year, so why not an entire series :)

'Is it not written, "I have only one pair of hands"?' said Lu-Tze.

#disctober #disctober2026

Truth! Justice! Freedom!

Reasonably Priced Love!

And a Hard-Boiled Egg!

#disctober #disctober2026

Thought this might amuse here. Doing inktober, and word 'Gangly' immediately reminded me of character Mort, and his employer, so here they are, discussing the fineties of the apprenticeship. :)

After rereading Small Gods for my notes, I caught something that I had missed for years.

Orange Crates. That is all.