Aside from Project Hail Mary which I assume every /c/sciencefiction subscriber is going to read what have you been reading or plan to read?
Here is last months post. What are you Reading? (August 2023)
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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I'm finally getting into both discworld and culture. I've read a number of other discworld books before, two of the night watch, mort, I think another I don't recall right now. Now I'm reading The Colour or Magic. It's enjoyable but I'm finding I'm going a little slower on it than the others.
I also have the second culture book, Player of Games, ready to go when I finish the discworld book. I really liked how bonkers Consider Phlebas was (felt like a constant stream of chaos for the crew).
The first two Discworld books are VERY different from the rest of the series. There is definitely stuff to enjoy there, but Pratchett had not yet found his voice. I'm in my second read through of the series, and it is interesting to see the concepts mature over time. Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites is almost a different character than Granny Weatherwax in Maskerade.
I had heard that colour of magic was hard to start with, which is why I went with guards guards and mort. I just love the characterization of ankh morpork. I've been mixing other books in-between so I don't burn out on Pratchett's writing style, and it's been good.
Colour of Magic was pretty bad. Just like writing-wise, he he hadn't found his feet yet.
He also hadn't found the line to tread between satiring people and humanity in general, and taking cheap pot-shots at real people...I was a big fan of Anne McCaffrey when I first read Colour of Magic, so him making fun of Lessa and Dragonflight in the book landed poorly on me.
Like, looking back, he was a nobody at the time when that book was published and McCaffrey was Someone, and it probably felt like he was punching upwards at Anne McCaffrey who was a pretty big name in science fiction--but as his own fame/status as a writer grew to equal/surpass hers, it just looks like he's ripping on a fellow author for no good reason. Obviously he did that to Conan too, but the author that created Conan was long dead and not living.
And I think he figured out satiring living authors in the same field as he was a pretty shitty thing to do, because he eventually stopped doing books that had a chance of ripping real living people down.