Amusement value

I do like my Terry Pratchett. I've recently been trying to achieve something that any true Pratchett fan would tell you is meaningless - trying to read the Discworld books in order.

The thing about Pratchett is he doesn't have an order as such - different books often take place in different parts of the discworld, with different sets of characters. Only in the last 10 or so books (there's over 30) have any of these sets of characters met. Plus there's 3 children's books he's written, set on Discworld, that don't strictly fit in anywhere. And one adult picture-book (The last hero - very pretty pictures, I particularly liked the interpretation of Michelangelo's The creation of man, titled Hand of God). So my point is, the order isn't really linear. But I read them in order anyway - mostly by the order they were written in, except where I thought that order really needed to get mixed up.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was how much I enjoy laughing while being challenged about important philosophical concepts. Which is pretty much the greatness of Terry Pratchett. You laugh your way through but still somehow manage to absorb some interest ideas about the nature of humanity. Brilliant.

So that's why I read so much Pratchett. Of course, I like Robert Jordan too, who is very rarely funny. So I turn to my high fantasy (in the form of RJ or sometimes the great JRR Tolkien) when I'm getting tired of laughing so much - and vice-versa. It works pretty well really, except when I get tired of both and turn to children's literature (Roald Dahl or J.K. Rowling) or sci-fi (so many authors, maybe I'll write a post on who I think are good sci-fi authors sometime).