Discworld is fantastic in many ways. Wandering pun encounters, playing with and subverting tropes, some very elegant ways of describing/demonstrating ways of understanding the world, life, and people...
I'm a person who has only read a little discworld but always means to get into it. I just get... lost in any series that has multiple chrono-tracks.
I've read a few Discworld books, but I haven't read all of them by far. Having a group of people to talk to about the different plot tracks could be helpful, too, since then you'd have more than one person helping to keep track of events.
There are two ways to go about it, really. Read them in publishing order, which gives you the overall chronology, or read each 'series' by itself, which means you bounce around some but maintain the characters a bit more. Both work well, depending. But I dunno if series are right for a book club or not, I suppose it depends on a lot of other things. There are one-shot books in the series, though, that might be worth the look?
I haven't read all of Discworld either, but I've read a lot of them. If we wanted to go for that, we could choose one of the ones that's more or less a stand-alone (or one of the shorter sub-series) for a group read and then I know if people wanted to read more there'd certainly be several of us around to discuss it. Monstrous Regiment might be a good jumping off point? Small Gods? I haven't read Pyramids, yet, but I think that's another one that's supposed to be relatively disconnected. (Given the demographics of our group I'd recommend Monstrous Regiment because a: genders & presentation and b: I have a really hard time talking about MR without spoiling it and I can vouch for the fact that it's worth going into unspoiled so y'all should read it and spare me the temptation)
Gathering up all of the things that've been recommended. There are a few other disconnected-enough-to-recommend ones in Discworld, but I'd recommend Monstrous Regiment (gender presentation w/ main character as central concept) or Small Gods (religion as central concept) first as they're two of the better Discworld books in general, too. If we wanted to do three books... Ringworld, The Amulet of Samarkand, and Monstrous Regiment would get my vote. I think only the OP or a mod can add a poll to this, or maybe it's too late now, unsure. But any of these seem good (though Animorphs might be one the long side for me, since I'm reading through the Disc right now already).
i agree with bramble on both points here - i was actually going to recommend mr based on point a alone.
I usually recommend Mort as a jumping-off point for plebes, but the crowd here probably wouldn't need to be eased into the more innovative and subversive stuff. Seconding Small Gods and Monstrous Regiment, and I'd like to add The Amazing Maurice and Wee Free Men as possible starters. His children's books are extremely underrated.
About fanfic: Probably, although it looks like a lot of folks have some fandoms in common. I don't have a lot of thoughts about fic, just wanted to be clear that fic recommendations wouldn't be dismissed out of hand if anyone had thoughts. A major advantage is that they're available to everybody, and don't cost money. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to add polls when editing the original post; we'll probably need to make a new thread. Thanks for gathering everything up! Please feel free to make a new thread for First Bookclub Planning, I'm still waking up and am running a little slow. (Ski trips are TIRING.) To be quite honest, you can get most of the context for Animorphs from the first few books; the beginning and end are quite good, but some of the middle books were ghostwritten and always felt to me like filler/lower quality. I think some may also be out of print now, and hard to find? Not sure.
Going Postal might be another fun one to start on. (Moist and Vetinari are my faves so I might be biased)
I JUST FINISHED READING THE SILM LAST MONTH :DDDDDDD i'm doing a read through of all the main legendarium books - i'm about 2/3 of the way through the hobbit, and then on to lotr. and then either a break, or maybe i'll jump right into lost tales or children of hurin? idk but SILMARILLION EEEEEEEEE i read them as a kid and liked them a lot. they'd certainly be worth rereading, i'd just need to get my copies down from the attic. that's another series i read as a kid and need to reread. i'd also be up for an arbitrary discworld book. well - unless it's one that'd spoil earlier stuff i haven't gotten to? i've been gradually working my way through in published order.
Monstrous Regiment has some very minor spoilers for the City Watch books - not even, like, plot event spoilers, more like career arc spoilers for some of the characters? A couple of them show up occasionally as minor background characters, but the plot is very much focused on characters that don't appear in any other books in locations not shown in other books. IMO it shouldn't negatively effect your read of the earlier books. Small Gods is actually set well before most of the rest of the series (it's hard to say just how long before, because history is weird and broken on the Disc) and gives context for the Reformed Omnism religion that appears in a lot of the other books. So far as I can remember, it doesn't have any other connection to other books in the series.
Could I suggest Good Omens? It's not discworld (in fact it's not in a series al all), but Terry Pratchett And Neil Gaiman wrote it together and it's basically delightful It's a comedy about the biblical apocalypse. There is a witch. She's great
Definitely. Good Omens is awesome. Might want to wait until next time, since we're voting already, but there will definitely be more chances for books later. :D And general squee threads.
That'll be on the next one for sure, I think. Sooo good. Also, I should link things. So over here is the First Bookclub Poll, you get up to three votes on the ten options. (Sorry if me adding Man Who Folded Himself was ungoodly, but it's an excellent bit of sci-fi and we had 6+ Discworld options and I wanted to promote a little variety with something I didn't think everyone would have read already.) Actually, thinking of "not everyone will have read already", Strata might be a good choice. Sci-Fi from Pratchett back when it looked like he'd be doing Sci-Fi. EDIT: Because the color is a bit similar, just in case: CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK
