Friday 26 April 2013

Shelf Porn: Discworld Styleeeeeee

This isn't your usual shelf porn. This is your 30 years in the making, most shop lifted author in the UK, one of the longest running book series in the world kind of shelf porn. Yes, this is Discworld shelf porn.



For those of you that don't know what Discworld is, then let me set the scene...

The Discworld is a world...which is a disc...carried on the backs of four elephants
 named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, who in turn stand upon the back 
of the Giant Star Turtle The Great A'Tuin (He may have a brother called A'Froin...)
and the world itself has a dense magical field surrounding it and a permanent waterfall
over its edge. It fell out of the mind of Sir Terry Pratchett and has spawned several 
movie spin offs for Sky and an in production TV series entitled "The Watch"...

A guide to the Disc's largest twin city, Ankh-Morpork

There are 39 books in the Discworld series, plus other works such as maps, a collection of art, additional story books and collections of short stories.

This is mine (@Hulksmash1985) and my fiance's (@lottiejonsey) collection.

Just the books
@lottiejonsey's "Rincewind" wall,
he's her favourite character
This isn't the full collection of Pratchetts work, we are still missing two novels from the main collection and a new one has just been released which we haven't got round to getting yet! The beauty of the Discworld books is that since they follow several different groups of people, The Wizards, the Witches, The City Watch, DEATH and his granddaughter Susan and life long con-artist Moist Von Lipwig, the books tend to differ in genre.



From detective story to magical battles, to cons or political and existential thrillers. There is also no real set way of reading them. People have classified a group specific way of following them, or you could read them chronologically it doesn't particularly matter.

And since there is no set way of reading them, it makes it very easy to get into the series, pick up all the Watch titles (My personal favourites) and read them, then delve into the Wizards or DEATH's story arc. It doesn't particularly matter! My personal favourite book is "Thud!" a story of Dwarves, Trolls, Ancient Demons, The City Watch and a picture book called "Where's My Cow"!

The covers are lavishly illustrated by British artist Paul Kidby, who's discworld work was showcased in "The Art of Discworld", plus there are yearly calendars which also showcase other artists work.

Pratchett has also written a series of books set within the Discworld for younger readers, which means you can get your kids into the series quite easily, as we have done with our kiddies! Pratchett's work has been adapted into film, theatre and radio plays, he even has a town twinned with the Disc's greatest city, Ankh-Morpork (Wincanton in Somerset) and there are Discworld Ales!

If you'd like to know more about Discworld, want to get some cool memorabilia or anything then follow these links:

  • The Terry Pratchett Homepage
  • The Cunning Artificer's Discworld Emporium, Based in Wincanton, Somerset
  • The L-Space website, a site dedicated to everything Discworld
Thanks for reading!









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