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Discworld! (Terry Pratchett has passed away; world cries a collective "Buggrit.")
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Is he that tall? Both the office and PoC gave me the impression that he is a smaller guy, or at least average height. Of course nobby is decidedly short, but I think that’s one of the least important of his traits.
he's also, what, 100 in Unseen Academicals?
Well, with Wizards, time doesn't always run in a nice straight line.
For Rincewind, that's even more true, much to Death's chagrin.
I always imagined that Nobby was a tallish person, but tended to be hunched over to try and look smaller. And, Discworld being Discworld, everyone else treats him and remembers him as being smaller than he actually is.
So much so that he's played him before
https://www.audible.com/search?keywords=terry+pratchett&ref=a_hp_t1_mobile_header_search
guards guards is a fantastic stand alone story.
I think that the issue with casting somebody to play a character described as being disqualified from the human race for shoving, who carries around written proof of his species, is that you're never going to get it as right as the description without going cartoony. Imagine trying to cast Maris Crane from Frasier from the descriptions given throughout the series.
Clearly the only solution is Andy Serkis in mocap
Mort, Guards! Guards! or, if you like your Shakespeare, Wyrd Sisters. They're essentially the first entries (kinda) in the three main 'series'. Mort is the fourth novel, but IMO the first one that really feels like Discworld.
But what you should really do is read them all in order - the entire series!
EDIT: I can't actually see what's on offer through Audible, so don't know if my suggestions are available.
I held off on suggesting The Colour of Magic to my friend because the style (and in my opinion quality) is so different, and gave her the three you mentioned first, then Equal Rites (my first) and the first two.
She's up to Moving Pictures and still going strong, so I think I did right by her
Small Gods is recommended by some as a good starter, as it's standalone and occasionally veers dangerously close to literature
In terms of 'literature', Small Gods and Night Watch are top of the pile IMO.
Oh definitely. I still think it's the best book in the whole series.
It's still probably in my top three (with Feet of Clay and a third that will change depending on the day), but it's a kind of 'standing on the shoulders of giants' thing
Mort or Small Gods would certainly have my vote for a standalone Discworld novel.
A new main character (specifically to avoid the Watch taking over the plot), and plenty of references to business practices that totally don't have any real world relevance, what are you talking about.
edit: memory works poor this early, had the wrong book listed.
These days, I can't read the passages about Tower 181 without pausing to stare at the wall for a bit
Colour of Magic was a fairly standard fantasy parody, Light Fantastic slightly less so.
After that, he settled down to using this fantasy world to parody everything else in existence.
There's a reason it was included in a hardcover omnibus I have with Small Gods and Hogfather. (Hogfather, of course, replaces the sand with snow slush best not to think about it, really.)
The Guards books are definitely a good way to go.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Small Gods is fantastic but it could pretty much be a complete stand alone book unrelated to the rest of discworld. I mean there are obvious connecting points like Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah but it's sort of in it's own little bubble. So as a starting point to the rest of the series I wouldn't recommend it.
It's actually funny but I read most of the stories completely out of order and began with The Light Fantastic and Colour of Magic right after and frankly it was pretty great reading them that way too.
Its hilarious and so well paced.
When I was first really living on my own with a job, about fifteen years back, I embarked on a project to buy and read them all in more or less chronological order. That was a good year. And I've kept up since.
As GodPratchett intended.
Then again, I started with Men At Arms. It took me years before I read Guards! Guards!, I think?
Personally, I think that's one of the selling points of Small Gods as a starting point with Discworld. The investment in the book is just this one book. There's no characters from other books who show up with the assumption that you know who they are.
Also, it came out during what I think was Pratchett's peak as an author. It was after the early Discworld books where he was still finding his voice and establishing the setting, but it was before the alzheimer diagnosis and (in my opinion) subsequent decline in writing. I'm not saying the later books are bad, but I don't think they were as good as those in the middle of his writing career.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
As far as the audible stuff goes, from what I understand there are 2 different readers. One is apparently really not great. I'm not sure which though and can't offer much insight into that. I've only done Night Watch as an audbile book.
I also just finished up Shepards Crown a bit ago. It certainly was a bit sad.
Night Watch was his last really good one IMO. After that, there were still good books, but one had to forgive an increasing amount of not-so-good in there.
Fuck you, Alzheimers. You go to hell.