RIP Terry Pratchett

Although I’m a pretty voracious reader, I can only think of six authors who have inspired me to read through their entire bodies of work; Terry Pratchett was my fourth.

I found my way to his work through Good Omens, co-written by Neil Gaiman (being the third author I’ve taken that journey with in my life) and absolutely loved the humour and adventure of that book. Quickly finding many of my friends had read a Discworld novel here or there, I decided to go back to his first book, The Carpet People (written at 18) and after finding it a fun read (with an even better “about the author” section*) I decided to read a Pratchett book a month until I caught up with his current work.

This took me from June, 2005 to July, 2008 - afterwards I waited, like all his other fans for each new book to come out and take to me some pretty great places.

Each month I was more and more stunned by how he could build a world from something as simple as a parody of Larry Niven’s Ringworld into something that started talking to me about my world, my life as a friend, husband, parent, and reader.

At the moment I’ve got all of his books sitting on my shelves from The Carpet People to last years The Long Mars and I can honestly say they are some of my favourites in genre fiction I’ve ever come across.

Kirk "Bookmonkey" MacLeod


*a section which stated in many of his books that “…started work as a journalist in 1965 and saw his first corpse three hours later, work experience meaning something in those days”**

**have I mentioned how much I loved his use of footnotes?