I got hooked about ten years ago after noticing that my dad's book collection had quite a lot of these colourfully illustrated covers on paperbacks. Being only 8 I read the first one and kind of didn't read any for a few years :) well, I had other things to do like grow up :). Anyway, I eventually got round to reading the first three in the series, up to Equal Rites, which kind of discouraged me - I haven't read this book since then but might just to reappraise the novel on its own, as I really didn't get into it first time round.

Soon after this, I took up the rest of the series and read every book in turn, in order, in under half a year. I guess partly it was to get to the same point as my dad so that I could nick the new ones in the series before he got to them :) nasty eh? I have kept with them up till the present book which I think reasserts that Pratchett is one of the greatest living writers of fantasy. I appreciate his inventiveness in all his books, but most in those he did mid-series that are self-contained, like 'Small Gods' and 'Moving Pictures', which took a modern feature of daily life in our world and applied it to the Discworld - a theme that he's continued in virtually every Discworld book with the gonne and the procrastinators.

My favourite Discworld novel has to be 'Men At Arms'. I've read it three times now as well as listening to the audiobook by Tony Robinson. I think the character portrayal in this book is especially touching. I won't spoil it for you, but the relationship between Detritus the troll and Cuddy, the dwarf, is especially good and a marked step up from many of Pratchett's characters, which are often too similar to earlier ones to make a lasting impression. Also, 'Men At Arms' has a serious social commentary by the author on completely relevant social problems today, and there is less of the usual 'exasperated liberalism' (Sunday Times) that
tended to be featured in his other books. The story is basically a crime-whodunnit caper with some ingenious
writing that rivals Agatha Christie. The Watch sub-series is a fantastic part of Discworld, and perhaps the easiest to begin with if you've never read Discworld before.