This was the very first Terry Pratchett book I ever bought. I was working in a remote village in North Norfolk where entertainment was in short supply, and the local shop had a minimal rack of paperbacks. I saw this, thought it would be a good bet, and that was it. Hooked.
I loved it and after finishing, went back to the start and began again. That is the thing with Pratchett. On a second read, more small fine points of detail emerge. Not just the Shakespeare reference and the fact the book is a shout-out to the play behind The Scottish Trope, but the embedded stealth one to Annie Get Your Gun, and the "Shakespeare" of that world being a misfit Dwarf who thinks there are better things to do than mining... just utter genius all round. Every successive re-reading delivered more gems. I'm sure if, twenty-nine years on, I pull that battered paperback off the shelf and read it - there will be more still. That's the magic of Pratchett.
After this, I got as many more Pratchett books as were in print. Eight, at the time, including two non-Discworld ones. Loved them all.
Literature The entry drug to addiction
This was the very first Terry Pratchett book I ever bought. I was working in a remote village in North Norfolk where entertainment was in short supply, and the local shop had a minimal rack of paperbacks. I saw this, thought it would be a good bet, and that was it. Hooked.
I loved it and after finishing, went back to the start and began again. That is the thing with Pratchett. On a second read, more small fine points of detail emerge. Not just the Shakespeare reference and the fact the book is a shout-out to the play behind The Scottish Trope, but the embedded stealth one to Annie Get Your Gun, and the "Shakespeare" of that world being a misfit Dwarf who thinks there are better things to do than mining... just utter genius all round. Every successive re-reading delivered more gems. I'm sure if, twenty-nine years on, I pull that battered paperback off the shelf and read it - there will be more still. That's the magic of Pratchett.
After this, I got as many more Pratchett books as were in print. Eight, at the time, including two non-Discworld ones. Loved them all.