jk rowling: there are only four types of people in the world - smart, brave, evil and miscellaneous. a magic hat tells you which one you are when you are 11 years old, and it will never change
if someone is an odious troll, you just block them. but the ones that strut obliviously to open conflict armed with such weakness on the obvious, you have a little fun with their radioactive cluelessness
@fullfathomfive And/or the works of Ursula K. Le Guin who is a far better role model for female fantasy writer than Rowling will ever be. And was both progressive as heck, AND still open minded enough to evolve ever further over the years.
Pratchett and Le Guin absolutely beat the crud out of Rowling's derivative wizard school (heck, even the name Harry Potter was used before her. In 1986 movie Troll. Which was also about magic & had Harry Potter Sr & Jr).
@zdl I won't try to change your mind, so don't panic! Can you remember which ones you've tried? Perhaps there's a disconnect between you and the contexts, and that would help me (and others) get a handle on why this is the reaction some people have.
@zdl Yeah, it's reasonable to assume Colour of Magic is a good starting place because it's the one that got published "On Merit", but it's really not a good one. It improves once you've read other things by TP and see his "voice" at the beginning.
And I don't much like any of the Witches series ... you might be thinking of "Witches Abroad".
My personal favourite is "Guards! Guards!", but again, it's fairly early. You might get along better with the "Industrial Revolution" series, such as the one where they invent an early version of the internet, or where they revive the Postal Service.
If you fancy giving it another go, you can try this quiz:
@zdl Totally fair enough. I'm attracted to TP because of the range, the play with language, and the cultural cross-references I keep discovering, but life is short, the galaxy of books is large, and choices must be made.
Whatever else happens, I hope you find joy in reading.
@ColinTheMathmo@zdl@fullfathomfive Pratchett books are much like a prog rock band's albums: early books are crammed full of amazing ideas, but it's lacking structure so badly, you have to put effort into just going with the flow. Later books show all the things he learned about structure, but they're building on a relatively small number of ideas. The middle period is excellent.
For thematically the same stuff as the main Witches parts, but a significantly more polished (if childlike)...
@fullfathomfive Heck, Terry Pratchett even knew how to treat luggage like humans, and then apologize because the luggage was sore offended to be so minimized.
(And then of course, there's Granny Weatherwax: "[S]in, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.")
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