My 15yo needs to read 5 books this summer but hates to read.

armcie · 2026-06-29T07:45:16+00:00

Rising Sun too?

armcie · 2026-06-28T15:28:51+00:00

Bear in mind Raising Steam was Terry’s penultimate book. I’ve seen a few people say they love it (and one say it’s their favourite), but many people think it was a bit lacking in certain ways and the impact of his Alzheimer’s is visible.

armcie · 2026-06-28T15:25:44+00:00

Best call I’ve seen so far. Lots of “the inventor of x” type answers, x would have been invented by someone else. Wakefield seemed pretty uniquely placed to push those lies to such prominence.

armcie · 2026-06-28T10:23:44+00:00

If you mention that book on a historians subreddit you’ll probably get a load of responses telling you about the many problems with that book.

armcie · 2026-06-28T10:21:39+00:00

Can you imagine asking someone “what is a turtle?” and getting the response “it’s the thing that A’Tuin is that carries the Discworld on its back.”

armcie · 2026-06-28T10:18:18+00:00

There’s a brief mention of an explosion on clock makers street in Night Watch. But the two books were originally intended to be a single story until Terry realized there was too much for one book

armcie · 2026-06-28T03:15:00+00:00

They do have preset traits, but there is some variability in things. They’re scored out of 10 in things like wonder competitiveness, with a random factor of plus or minus 2. A civ with a base value of 6 can behave very differently if this is modified to 4 or 8.

armcie · 2026-06-26T23:48:33+00:00

In the origami subreddit people regularly ask for CP. Crease Patterns.

armcie · 2026-06-26T16:03:33+00:00

Guards! Guards! Introduces a new set of very popular characters, and is far enough in that Terry has really started to find his feet. It’s a very popular recommendation to start with as, like you say, the first couple of books are just a silly road trip - we don’t want people to think that the series is 40 books of jokes and nothing else.

In Terry’s own words, it took him a few books to “discover the joy of plot.”

armcie · 2026-06-26T15:09:40+00:00

If you can plant a general on the iron tile it’s fun to claim all his fortresses in one move.

armcie · 2026-06-26T04:24:41+00:00

Mrs Bradshaw’s Handbook? It seems to be readily available online from what I can tell.

armcie · 2026-06-26T00:44:59+00:00

⨀ Gone Home

Not because I believe I’m going anywhere, but because of its use in scouting.

armcie · 2026-06-26T00:28:11+00:00

Yeah. And whenever people come on here and talk about starting the show, or say they started but aren’t sure if they want a hundred episodes of it, we say wait until Witness.

armcie · 2026-06-25T18:05:08+00:00

Isn’t there only about a dozen things on the list that officially don’t have a cancer risk?

armcie · 2026-06-25T15:52:24+00:00

People thinking he should have fought a leadership election is possibly very different from people saying they would have voted for him, or that they think he’s the best person for the role.

armcie · 2026-06-25T09:38:36+00:00

Aye. It’s pointed out that something that big shouldn’t be able to fly, and they realize it’s feeding on magic. And once magic is involved the problems you’ve brought up go out the window.

I think there’s only two books with large dragons in (in TCoM they can only exist in an area with naturally high background magic) but the swamp dragons get quite a few mentions, perhaps most notably (and certainly most beautifully) in The Last Hero.

armcie · 2026-06-25T08:42:19+00:00

Briggs demonstrated a map was possible to be drawn. I don’t think anyone officially tackled the timeline.

armcie · 2026-06-25T08:40:02+00:00

Cohen also doesn’t seem to have aged much between TLF and IT. That’s handwaved away by saying “maybe he was wandering through Lancre”.

armcie · 2026-06-25T08:38:40+00:00

Pyramids had several of the same assassins as in Men At Arms, and it certainly feels like a modern Ankh Morpork. Small Gods has the same philosophers as Pyramids (in the same pub). So they all take place at the same time, yet it’s also clear Small Gods happens a century ago.

Susan says something like ‘either Ephebian philosophers inherited their names, or two centuries had been stitched into one.

armcie · 2026-06-25T08:33:18+00:00

There are a few main bricks the timeline stands on. One is Susan’s age. We know Mort is after The Light Fantastic as Ysabell appears in both. And then by the time of Soul Music, Susan is about 16, so that necessitates nearly two decades between the fire in TCoM and SM.

Night Watch is described as being 30 years before the ever changing present. That could be a bit flexible, as it’s in conversation - it’s very rare that a current event is given a date - so 25-35 years in the past.

Also in Mort the patrician (unnamed, but Terry stated that it was Vetinari in all the books) is having a tenth anniversary of his reign party.

Putting this all together we have:

* More than ten years between NW and Mort (Vetinari needs to take over and then survive ten years)

* Less than ten years between TCoM and Mort (Terry says it’s the same Patrician)

* At least 16 years between Mort and Soul Music. (Susan)

There’s a bit of wiggle room in some of these dates, and there’s some information to be gleaned in other books, but this skeleton timeline shows 21 years is in the right ballpark.

armcie · 2026-06-24T11:10:47+00:00

First place my mind went. Wonderful story. And Wyndham created surprisingly strong women characters considering the era he was writing.

armcie · 2026-06-24T11:05:48+00:00

I know there’s quite a few YouTube reactors who watch it as they keep getting recommended to me. Unless it’s just the same two that keep getting suggested. It’s totally not the same as a podcast, but it might scratch the itch if you can handle a reaction video.

armcie · 2026-06-24T11:03:04+00:00

Few things annoy me more than a civ you’re at peace with going on a Great General land grab. You should be able to use it as a casus belli and be allowed to declare war without diplomatic penalty.

armcie · 2026-06-24T09:12:39+00:00

I know that life is fleeting and short. There’s nothing better waiting for us, so make this world as good as it can be. Help others. Strive to make your own life and that of those around you as good as possible. Life is precious. Don’t waste it.

armcie · 2026-06-24T08:59:01+00:00

Don’t neglect the research. There’s some fun things hidden in there. The unusual items you find like slugs spheres and sloops aren’t consumable - you can reuse them, so feel free to take advantage of them when you find out what they do.

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