Where to start with Terry Pratchett

British novelist, 1948–2015.

Best Terry Pratchett book to start with: Night Watch (2002), on 2 of the 19 lists it could have made.

The lists put Night Watch first, but begin with Guards! Guards!. It is the first book about the city watch of Ankh-Morpork, it works as a stand-alone, and it shows what the Discworld does best: comedy with a serious heart.

Night Watch is the later, darker book about the same characters, and the lists’ favourite. Read it after you have met them, because it depends on you caring about the people involved. Mort is a self-contained comedy about Death taking on an apprentice, and it is a good choice if you want a single short book. The Colour of Magic is the earliest Discworld novel. It reads as a parody of fantasy and is the loosest of the lot, so it is better as a taste of where the series began than as your first book.

Good Omens, which he wrote with Neil Gaiman, is not set on the Discworld. An angel and a demon try to stop the end of the world. The index also lists the Discworld series as a whole, and the books can mostly be read in any order.