@luyin

Whichever one you pick up first - read that.

Yes there are some books that you'll get more out of if you have read others, but honestly, don't worry about that, it'll still be brilliant.

@luyin @PetraPhoenix Start somewhere in the middle chronologically - I read his first novel when I was about 14 and didn't think it very good, then in my 50s someone recommended Tiffany Aching for my 10 year old daughter and I got hooked.

I've read most of Discworld since, currently on the Rincewind arc and am finding the early Rincewind ones are not as good as the rest.

So I'd say start with Tiffany, and 'The Wee Free Men'. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Discworld_Reading_Order_Guide_3.0_%28cropped%29.jpg

@csolisr

I've had this thought myself. as he is dead, we'll never know for sure. also, since he is dead we are free to connect with his work that doesn't involve gaiman. IMO, he wasn't involved with the abuse and may not have been aware of it. the ever present casual misogyny people interact with means a lot of times what would, today, be red flags was just tuesday.

@csolisr I think the absence of evidence there is in large part because he died before the public allegations, and after years of battling dementia prior to passing. Abusers tend to constantly test the waters as to who they can include and who they have to hide their abuses from, which is exactly why most men "don't know" any rapists but numbers suggest somewhere over one in twenty are offenders. I doubt Diana Wynne Jones knew what he was up to when she dedicated one of her books to him as a former student, for instance. The man was connected to nearly everyone in genre publishing at the time, and Pratchett was a valuable bridge I doubt he'd have wanted to burn (though iirc they were sending the manuscripts back and forth by mail at the point of collaborating?) Presumably more people would have shunned Gaiman if he wasn't making at least a token effort to hide it from anyone who might actually bring consequences down on him; in his very own words: "writers are liars."

But also, unlike Gaiman, Pratchett can't personally benefit from the books even if he were secretly a similar monster - he's passed away. So the only implicit risk there is if he HAD been some sort of terrible soul (which I personally doubt) that his heirs might benefit from the library fees. Death of the author is literal, in this case, so the work must stand on its own; unlike Gaiman's writing, which occasionally gave me a bit of an off taste years ago, I haven't seen anything in starting Pratchett's recently that had me concerned.

@csolisr the thing about abusive people is, they hide it. there is no reason pratchett would have known.

more than that, they can sometimes be really nice-seeming, helpful people! sometimes this is an attempt to compensate when they know they've done wrong. often, you simply can't tell. at best, you might feel as if something is off, but can't work out what.

i can honestly see why, pre-science, we had a model of demonic possession. it can really seem like that.

@Brett

Because 14 year olds often reject anything their parents suggest.

I was mostly thinking back to my experience where I had to hide the Pratchett books because of the witches. There is no way I would ever have been introduced via my parents