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Old 07-07-2013, 12:25 AM   #37
eschwartz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine View Post
That is true for the older Pratchet books and especialy for the Rincewind books. But Pratchet moved even in his older books away from beeing overly parodistic. So the Rincewind books would be no good recommendation, but something like "Going Postal" or "Klonk" is okay. And to fully understand the excellent witches books, you have to know fairy tales and Shakespeare not Howard or Leiber

I think nearly nobody gets all the references and jokes, how many depends on your knowledge of the referenced material, with is not just fantasy but science, classical literatur, philosophy, history and many more. So even if you lack in one area, there is plenty to be amused anyway. The special cases being books that focus on some source material, like Rincewind on classic Swords&Sorcery and slapstic-movies, the witches as above etc. But many of the references are so common in our culture that you would get even some of them without having read the original (anybody knows King Kong or Tarzan or Dracula, even without having read it or seen a movie)
I think you mean Thud! not Klonk and I know several people who do not get the references anywhere, but still like his books because they're funny even without the in jokes. Besides for the first few, which as I've said, were not his best.

And I would argue that all the books are still parodistic, but he's moved away from literature and gone into culture instead.

Monstrous Regiment = parody of war.
Unseen Academicals = parody of university.
The Fifth Elephant = parody of politics.
Jingo = parody of nationalism.

Etc. etc.

The Discworld is all about parody. The question is, of what?

Oh yes, and the next book has been confirmed, Raising Steam, out on October 24 of this year. It will be a Moist von Lipwig book, but NOT about taxes, rather, the Undertaking which was hinted at in Making Money.
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