Be Excellent To Each Other

I must start by saying that I adore The Hogfather, and it's one of my bestest Christmas films.

I didn't, however, like The Colour of Magic, and just couldn't get into that at all.

Which brings me to Going Postal, which I got around to watching yesterday, and I thought it was quite brilliant. Wonderful cast, great story, just top stuff all round.

So what did everyone else think?

I thought it was 7/10 good. Absurdly better than the Colour of Magic adaptation. Decent lead actor (not, for example, a massively miscast David Jason), good casting all-round apart, good visual design, better 'feel' for the tone of the Discworld novels than the previous TV adaptations, but admittedly not spot-on as it could be.

Thought the second part was a bit rambling, stop-start, episodic, until the at the finale.

Appreciated some of the 'social conscience' additions to the script. Now, they were too obvious and unsubtle, but, hey, this was aired on Sky 1 after all.

Ooh, I forgot I had this saved on my Sky+. I'll have to watch it, awesome!

This was the only Pratchett book that I didn't enjoy so I doubt I will enjoy the TV adaptation but as I am a devoted fan I will give it a try anyway.

I thought Hogfather was mediocre. I haven't seen Colour of Magic. I'll give this a shot but have my doubts..

I've got a lot of time for Pratchett, but must confess to never having got around to actually attempting the books! It's something I intend to sort one day, possibly, maybe, etc.

I like the cameos he does in these film adaptations.

The books are fantastic! The only books apart from Adam's works that have made me laugh out loud. He is a genius and you really need to start straight away.

I agree! I'm appreciating his books more as an adult than I did back in 1995 when I first attempted to read some of them as a kid.

I do actually own Hogfather (as I say above, I love the film), and also Mort. I should read them!

Mort first. It's in his top 3 in my opinion and there are a hell of a lot now, I lost count but I do have them all.

He doesn't remember them, either.

Damn that was good, better than Colour of Magic (oh and Light Fantastic which was essentially part 2). Pretty well cast and certainly worth watching again.

Wasn't he just. He did fairly well in The Hogfather, but a Rincewind David Jason is not. I've always wanted to see Eric Idle cast as Rincewind, given he did a brilliant job in the video game, but it's not going to happen.

The TV adaptation of The Colour of Magic was awful. David Jason sucked.

This, however, was by far my favourite. Might have helped that it's one of the few books I haven't read.

Much better cast than usual, with people who seemed to want to be in it.

Very enjoyable.

I can remember nodding off during this, to be honest. I wanted to like it since I'd previously enjoyed Hogfather so much, but it made no sense to me at all.

I can still remember the point Colour Of Magic completely, utterly lost me. David Jason galloping away on a horse, all 'tee hee, what hijinks!' and his hat flying around on his head in a comedy fashion. Augh, it was awful.

I quite liked Hogfather, but this was definitely the best yet. Do a City Watch one already, powers that be.

Indeed, don't waste a moment. The vast majority are superb books (I must have read most of them at least 3 or 4 times each).

To anyone starting out with them I would personally skip the first two (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic - both are fairly insipid and are really just random small adventures with Rincewind) - Equal Rites is the third one and the first 'proper' story, although not everyone likes it.

A 'safe' starting point is the fourth book, 'Mort' - reading them sequentially after that you really can't go wrong (except for 'Moving Pictures' and 'Eric' which are pretty uninspiring).

Here's a complete list of the Discworld books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld#Bibliography

My favourites? Hard to say - the Death books (except for Soul Music), the Witches books (except for Witches Abroad) and all of the City Watch books. Also all of the Tiffany Aching books, Small Gods ....... oh, what the heck, most of them.

Discworld books I don't like:

The Colour of Magic
Light Fantastic
Equal Rites
Carpe Jugulum
Making Money

And thats about it. Everything else is worth a read.

Oh and for the love of all that is holy/satanic, read Good Omens. Its not a Discworld book, however it is a collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and is every bit as good as the pairing suggests.

I reckon the Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are important scene-setting books. They set up a fair bit of plot and characters that are referenced later on.

David Jason fucked them up proper, though. Rick Moranis should have been Rincewind.

I must have read it ten times, pure genius!

I really enjoyed Carpe Jugulum. I thought the idea was particularly strong and is one of the darker books. Especially

Carpe Jugulum is easily one of my favourite Discworld books - as you say, it's one of the darker books. Granny Weatherwax is also excellent in it. Also loved the interaction between .

Speaking of 'dark' books, Thud! also deserves a mention - a book that I didn't fully appreciate on the first reading but now really love. The ideas of the Summoning Dark, the Following Dark, etc are highly intriguing and, yes, dark ................. Also loved all of the interwoven plot strands and characters, along with the political machinations. An excellent and very well written Discworld book, Thud! gets a 9.99/10 from me.

A good point, but the characters as depicted in these do change a fair bit when they appear in later books (except for Rincewind and The Luggage). For example, the character of Death is VERY different in those early books and, if memory serves, is there to KILL living things, as opposed to his later role of simply being there to sometimes make a brief appearance when someone dies (BTW, Reaper Man is a wonderful 'Death' book).

I'd still say that the first two books aren't an essential read, but they are a fairly entertaining in a way that won't exactly challenge the old grey matter. To me they are just depicting a series of heavily satirised yet small fantasy adventures and aren't even particulalrly well written (they're not badly written, but they're not great either). New readers shouldn't judge Terry's Discworld books by the first two, just view them as early, tentative steps in the development of Discworld and in Terry's ability to write a coherent story.

Oh, and I hated Sean Astin as Twoflower. Also, I don't like him in anything.

I like Pyraminds, and The Colour Of Magic. And the one with death, the one where he sharpened his scythe on the sunlight.
I've read some of the others (the Guards! Guards! books and one about a witch). I'm not hugely into him, to be honest.

Bah humbug! 'Moving Pictures' is one of my all-time favourites.

'Small Gods' is the best one, though.

Theoretically, I have access to the now-sun-faded Discworld paperbacks that my brother bought with his pocket money between 1995 and 1998. I will have to see! Perhaps I'll get round to reading Small Gods this time round.

I love pretty much all the discworld books that I have read.

Pyramids is fantastic. What's the one that is all about newpapers, that was great too.

I have read every single Discworld book, and the only one that I actively didn't like was Unseen Academicals. It actually read like it had been written by someone trying to write like Pratchett and failing miserably. Possibly a result of the Mad Cow, I guess.

I always thought of The Tourist as Japanese, not American. Between that, David Jason and the shitty effects, I didn't like the Colour of Magic adaptation at all.

He was definitely Oriental. There's enough plot in the other books to make clear that the Agatean Empire is pretty much China.

The ricepaper walls, the terracotta army and the sumo wrestlers are a bit of a giveaway.

Heh.

At which point did Japan stop coming under the catch-all of "Oriental"?

'The Truth'.

WTF Goonies WTF

When Craster said China?

I can't be held responsible for Craster's grenade-jumping moronitude.

I think you'll find I said "pretty much China". It'd not a direct equivalent of either China or Japan.

In "Interesting Times" it seemed to be much more China than Japan to me.

There are inconsistencies though - like the Sumo Kissyfur mentions above.

Do you think being vague about it was a bad Korea move?

It's just a Sino the times.

It's nepalling if you ask me.

Also,Heh.

I remember on here a good 18 months or so back (to be honest, may even have been on WoS), there was a thread about Pratchett's books, and someone posted a link to a really excellent "reading guide", which was like a flowchart or something, and showed where certain books were linked or could be read in isolation, or what.

I watched this and liked it a lot.

The problem with converting Pratchett stuff to the screen is the the way he adds notes and stuff in his books to explain unorthodox concepts. These are usually done by putting in skits to the adaptations to try to explain these ideas. For someone like me (who usually takes half a film to remember the character names, and to whom Saw 5 was an utter mystery as I could not tell the difference the good guy and the bad guy) these subtle explanations are lost.

I found Pratchett's last couple of books to be his most focused and his best work, despite his current syndrome. I noticed Going Postal was his first Discworld book to my knowledge to have chapters, and, to me, it helped the structure of the book a lot.

I liked The Hogfather but thought that if you had never read one of the Discworld series and not known about the concept of belief effecting the strength of a deity it would be hard to understand what the hell happened near the end.

This has been my favourite of the adaptations so far and I feel they are learning how to "do" Pratchett now. It still needs a bit of work i.e. the whole brother thing not being explained as well as it should have been, but I am looking forward to making money which will surely be next.

That be it! Thanks.