People who don't like Discworld!

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Aug 3, 2009
66
2,150
England
#1
Hello there. I know some people dismiss Discworld books before they read them, but I always assumed that if they tried them they would like them.
Then I recommended them to a family member who read some and didn't like them. Just wondered if people you have recommended PTerry to have enjoyed them or not?
I really thought they'd have something for everyone!
o_O
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#2
I've given up trying to get people to read them to be honest. The few I've tried have claimed they don't like fantasy and it's a waste iof time trying to make them realise that the books are parodies and satirical.

I once agreed to read a book someone I knew was raving about in return for them reading a Pratchett. I kept my side of the deal and thought their book was crap - they returned the Pratchett unread and made an excuse that it wasn't their sort of thing. :rolleyes:

However - Sharlene and I did get the reading group we are in at one of the Tucson libraries to read Going Postal and although a few of them didn't get it at all - one or two were determined to read more. ;)
 
Aug 3, 2009
66
2,150
England
#4
So far I've had 1 like them and 2 not.

And yes, Cheery, the Swiss do have good taste - it's one of the loveliest, cleanest, prettiest places I've ever been to. (The chocolate shops especially...)
 
Jul 20, 2009
4,945
2,600
Lelystad, The Netherlands
#5
Well I usually tell people how great the novels are and how funny and I quote something quite funny or if I have the book with me I show something or let them read a part of it and they all think it's good but nobody ask me if he/she can lent one :eek: Most say they don't really like fantasy and I try to tell them that it's so much more than just fantasy and if they would just try it they could see for themselves. Only one person started reading Pratchett after this :(
and I gave Interesting Times to my brother in law and he liked it but he didn't read another Pratchett novel since :devil:
 

Dotsie

Sergeant-at-Arms
Jul 28, 2008
9,068
2,850
#6
When the boys in my office (all early twenties - what a nightmare) discovered I liked Pratchett (screensaver, mouse mat etc), they were quick to pour scorn. And no, they haven't read any. Me being me, I was desperate to learn their secret - how do you know what a book's about without reading it? That's amaaazing!! Can you let me in on it? Cos here's a pile of textbooks that I really can't be bothered to read... cue much confusion on their part :rolleyes: But i just said, don't worry about it lads, not everyone's cut out to read books, just stick to TV. They haven't taken the piss since. ;)

Tonyblack said:
I once agreed to read a book someone I knew was raving about in return for them reading a Pratchett. I kept my side of the deal and thought their book was crap - they returned the Pratchett unread and made an excuse that it wasn't their sort of thing. :rolleyes:
Sounds like he didn't really have good taste tho, so he was probably right, it wasn't his thing. We save our pity for people like these.
 

Dotsie

Sergeant-at-Arms
Jul 28, 2008
9,068
2,850
#7
Oops forgot to say, every now & then I say something these boys think is hysterically funny, but when I tell them that was really Terry Pratchett, they get that confused look again. I dunno :rolleyes:
 

Tristan

Lance-Corporal
Aug 16, 2009
122
1,775
#8
Hm, a few months ago in a book shop a group of girls laughed at me for buying Pratchett. "You should read something more mature, something with many deep themes etc. Try TWILIGHT - it's the story of true love, bla bla bla bla bla, it showed me what life is about, bla bla bla, don't read children novels about witches and wizards."

Well, I just had to laugh :laugh: I guess I am not so intelligent, as to understand what REAL literature is about... I'll stick to the children novels about witches and wizards. :laugh:

Normally people think it's fantasy, or childish (based on the covers o_O ) and they don't want to read a single page... However, I gave a friend of mine Mort and Reaper Man as a preasent and he got really hooked up. :mrgreen:
 

Batty

Sergeant
Feb 17, 2009
4,154
2,600
East Anglia
#9
I got my mother reading Discworld and she loves it.
I also got all the hair stylists in the local hairdressers reading the Tiffany books and they loved them so much that they asked me to recommend more books to them.
I've yet to find out what they thought of Truckers, Diggers, Wings.
 
Jul 25, 2008
505
2,425
Newport
#10
A girl I worked with saw my screen wallpaper and asked about it (At'uin)
I let her borrow Mort and she loved it. I should point out that she is Czech and read it in English and she got the humour and wanted to borrow more....but then she went on Maternity leave and I never saw her again.

My mum calls them 'those odd books of yours' so she's never going to read them....there is hope for my sister though.
 
Aug 3, 2009
66
2,150
England
#11
I thought my Mam would love them- she loves sci fi (star trek, asimov etc) and lord of the rings type stuff. I was so surprised she didn't enjoy them!
There's just no accounting for taste!
 

Jan Van Quirm

Sergeant-at-Arms
Nov 7, 2008
8,524
2,800
Dunheved, Kernow
www.janhawke.me.uk
#12
I've been thinking about this and realise I hardly ever recommend books or indeed most stuff I really, really love to people unless they actually ask me about it first? I think it's a combination of factors that are mostly selfish... Like I'd feel a little insulted if they didn't agree with my taste perhaps? Or if they did that they might like it too much :oops: A kind of 'chocolate tastes better when you're on your own' - very, very silly and greedy person me.

I think with Terry's book it does perhaps centre on the humour/satire aspect and with his associations with SF&F and how it doesn't always 'sit' well with the purists? In recent interviews he's compared Discworld with LotR (and with Minas Tirith in fact as the great metropolis of Endor) '500 years on' because, I think, that's the only nearest populist genre in terms of timeframes and indigenous species and also the 'not doing magic' that can describe his writing to people who aren't reading him :rolleyes:

Except Discworld is nothing like LotR in the fundamentals and I know for a fact that most avid LotR fans look down on Discworld because it's funny and because sends Terry sends up everything that's serious. There's very little powerplay that's 'noble' or 'evil' or even 'right' in Terry's writing in comparison with the pretentiously earnest concerns of Star Trek or, much as I love him, Tolkien (I'd rather have my eyes poked out with sharp sticks than contemplate reading the Silmarillion cover to cover ever again). My housemate appreciates Discworld, especially Witches Abroad (he was a travel agent) but he's not a book reader and he's never actually read it all the way through or any other Discworld book either. Like me, my sister adores Tolkien, Asimov, Jane Austen and Monty Python but she can't stand Discworld - she's the only person I've ever really raved about it too and she just doesn't like them at all.

I think it's almost certainly the satire and how good you are at interpreting it. Housemate's not terribly intuitive/sensitive but he loves stuff like Red Dwarf and (showing my age now) Hoards of the Things an obscure LotR parody on BBC Radio 4 way back in the early '80's and as we're on parodies Bored of the Rings too. Maybe it's that? People don't like having 'their' type of books 'ridiculed' or disrespected - which is certainly not what Terry does at all, but they just don't get that he's actually holding up deeper traits and ideas for examination in an analytically ironic fashion on the platform of fantasy.

So I don't recommend him much except in general terms and with the big disclaimer - he's not everyone's cup of tea... :)
 

Dotsie

Sergeant-at-Arms
Jul 28, 2008
9,068
2,850
#13
Be honest though, if a book was recommended on this site would any of you read it? If anyone here raves about a book I order it from the library, & I know Chris has read books I've recommended, but is there anyone else?

That might sound a bit judgemental, but it's not meant to be. I just think it's human nature that if we don't know what it is, we probably won't make the effort to find out about it unless we feel something's missing from our lives. For example, I haven't read any Bernard Cornwell yet :oops:
 

Cheery

Sergeant
Jun 22, 2009
1,280
2,650
30
Switzerland
jellymish-art.tumblr.com
#14
If it comes to me, it's Harry Potter. Everyone I know loves them, but I've just read the first book and stopped. I just don't seem to get into them, and there just are some people who don't get into Terry Pratchett books .... Different people, different tastes. If it comes to books, it's like food. Some practically eat 'em, some never touch a bite. :laugh:
 
Dec 31, 2008
1,289
2,100
Japan
#15
Dotsie said:
Be honest though, if a book was recommended on this site would any of you read it?
To be honest, who actually "reads" all the posts on this site, especially the long ones? People might scan them, but very rarely does anyone actually read them and try to understand what the writer is trying to say.

Anyhow Dotsie, if you want, you tell me your bestest favourite book in the whole wide world ever, and I'll read it!

Don't forget, that the book you name will say an awful lot about the person you are, so are you ready to reveal that much about yourself to a perfect stranger?
 
Jul 27, 2008
19,425
3,400
Stirlingshire, Scotland
#16
raspberry said:
I thought my Mam would love them- she loves sci fi (star trek, asimov etc) and lord of the rings type stuff. I was so surprised she didn't enjoy them!
There's just no accounting for taste!
Some people can't cross over from science fiction to fantasy my mam surprised me when I used to go home for a visit and I would play a fantasy dvd which I had rented or a film would come on and she liked them. :)
 
#17
As for me, I LOVE Sci-fi/Fantasy, but cannot digest pure hard SF that the hardcore peeps love. If I cannot laugh out loud once per book, it drains me. Not sure why. My counselor would probaby agree that I USE the process of reading and digesting the books to escape the very, very, scary real world that exists outside of the door and in the tv screen.

I like faeries, and Empowered women and Thanks to all the gods I find that in the books I chose. Mercedes Lackey, Josepha Sherman, Elizabeth Moon, Anne McCaffery, Andre Norton and on, and on. Marion Zimmer Bradley opened up an entire genre of openings for women in literature.

I Thank Them With All My Heart and Soul. I would not have been able to survive without it. And to think it all started because my Dad told my mother to let me order books from Scholastic book company in school... Woot WTG Dad. Dad read ALL the time. He traveled during the week and did the weekend dad thing to save his sanity and make more money. I am just glad he found a way to do it without killing all of us. LOL I know that sounds bad, by my mom is a nut-job and was doing her best to make us fit into her extremely twisted "This is what life will be like or you will be beaten to death" syndrome.
 
Jul 20, 2009
4,945
2,600
Lelystad, The Netherlands
#18
poohbcarrot said:
Dotsie said:
Be honest though, if a book was recommended on this site would any of you read it?
To be honest, who actually "reads" all the posts on this site, especially the long ones? People might scan them, but very rarely does anyone actually read them and try to understand what the writer is trying to say.

Anyhow Dotsie, if you want, you tell me your bestest favourite book in the whole wide world ever, and I'll read it!

Don't forget, that the book you name will say an awful lot about the person you are, so are you ready to reveal that much about yourself to a perfect stranger?
Well if I may recomend books too ;) 3 books I think are just epic and not Discworld:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov(features a very cool cat)
The People's Act of Love by James Meek
 

MattK

Lance-Corporal
Jul 2, 2009
132
1,775
Lancaster, PA
blog.mattkeen.com
#19
Sjoerd3000 said:
poohbcarrot said:
Dotsie said:
Be honest though, if a book was recommended on this site would any of you read it?
To be honest, who actually "reads" all the posts on this site, especially the long ones? People might scan them, but very rarely does anyone actually read them and try to understand what the writer is trying to say.

Anyhow Dotsie, if you want, you tell me your bestest favourite book in the whole wide world ever, and I'll read it!

Don't forget, that the book you name will say an awful lot about the person you are, so are you ready to reveal that much about yourself to a perfect stranger?
Well if I may recomend books too ;) 3 books I think are just epic and not Discworld:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov(features a very cool cat)
The People's Act of Love by James Meek
I actually liked Neverwhere more than American Gods. I could go recommending books too, but a lot of what I read is non-fiction, so sometimes it can get pretty dry. But The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a good read. Of course, that might be the dietitian in me talking. :)
 

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