#new discworld audiobooks

[britcision]

Alright I went through more of the new Discworld audiobooks last night so an uncomprehensive review list:

Maskerade: fucking EXCELLENT, they did Agnes’s audition in such a cool fucking way this alone makes it all worth while. Even having a 5 second pause, sparkle music, and then a Different Fucking Person reading every footnote. And DILF Death. Will try the rest of the Witches and see if their “Magrat” is one or two words when used more. Indira Varma crushed it

Death/Susan books: good narrator, sounds interesting, gonna start with Soul Music because again, sonically interesting 👀 Sian Clifford (I assume) does a very good Susan voice and shows aging from Soul Music to Hogfather

Watch books: Nope. Nope. 0/10 completely misunderstood the assignment. His different voices for characters are SPECTACULAR Jon Culshaw is an excellent voice actor! But every other thing is just. Wrong.

His inflections are off, the pacing is wrong for the excerpts in the sample, the tone of the narration swings from “reading to small children” with over-exaggerated emotion and surprise at things like the first description of a golem in Feet Of Clay to “gritty noir novel” for the other books and all Vimes scenes and Neither Of Those Are Right

The Watch books are not gritty noir novels. Vimes is pretty blatantly a satirical deconstruction of a gritty noir detective - by The End Of The First Book he’d be fired from gritty noir for finding love and quitting drinking

The Watch books are police procedurals, detective thrillers, mysteries, sure, all distinct from the other series. They’re not the best for young kids. They’re not fucking noir. The noir elements like the descriptions of the city, the rainy nights, Vimes’ cynicism, are immediately undercut by jokes

Carrot, good mountain dwarf by way of Lancre, has a fucking posh city accent???? By Men At Arms?????

(Did like that Edward d’Eath is de-ath not de-eth like Nigel Planar’s)

On the whole, sounds like they used the old Artemis Fowls for a template and nailed that tone, which is absolutely wrong for Vimes

Moist von Lipwigs books: minor Rise of the Guardians Jack Frost vibes, I was not expecting that low of a voice from the narrator but Richard Coyle also does great voices

Moist is… a little weirdly emotive in his first cell like he’s got no real mask between his actual feelings and talking to the warders but that might improve. Will try

Rincewind books: interesting accent on the main narration, more distinct than any of the other narrators, with interesting inflections. I like it. I predict it making The Last Continent very interesting. Colin Morgan’s got a good clear voice, will try

[grimviolin]

I commend my soul to any god who can find it

[verdigrispatina]

I've mostly experienced Discworld through the audiobooks but recently I've been buying print copies of my favorites to have for referencing and loaning to friends and WOW, there's a lot of textual and visual quirks that don't carry over to the audiobooks!

The biggest ones I think are when characters' accents are written into the text and Death's dialogue being in a gothic font, but I'm skimming through Soul Music right now and just shouted because I noticed that Imp's dialogue always has extra L's because he's from Llamedos. That's such a funny small touch, I love it

If anybody has any favorite visual gags/quirks in the Discworld books, or just jokes that may not work in an audio format, please share!

[cosmicrhetoric]

REVENGE IS NOT REDRESS. REVENGE IS A WHEEL AND IT TURNS BACKWARDS. THE DEAD ARE NOT YOUR MASTERS

[xserpx]

Started listening to the Colour of Magic audiobook read by Colin Morgan and it's sooo Merlin-y I love it! It's also been an age since I reread CoM/LF, and having just finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for this month's book club it's quite fun to compare Adams' and Pratchett's similar and yet so different styles.

[keendaanmaa]

That lovely moment of accidentally catching a spoiler for the book you are currently reading by way of an only tangentially related post from a mutual :/

[rosemariecawkwell]

TBR Audiobook Reviews: The Wizard/Rincewind - Discworld books, by Terry Pratchett - New Penguin Audio editions

[krowbby]

my current discworld audiobook is going postal and. i’m feeling emotional about grandad. he’s twenty six and he’s so much more experienced than the teens around him they call him grandad. i’m turning 23 at the end of this week, and sure, who in their 20s hasn’t made a joke about how ancient they feel. but this less reminds me of that joke and more reminds me of people in their 30s being called queer elders because we don’t HAVE many community members who are our grandparents age. later in the book, mad al says that one man has died for every three towers standing. how many of his peers has grandad lost? how many kids younger than himself has he lost? and he always has something to be doing in the tower when princess is there, so that this 13 year old girl isn’t alone with older boys. and then, during the big race:

And she wondered what Grandad most feared: that dead clacks-men could send messages to the living, or that they couldn’t.

i mean, fucking brutal, right? pterry has this knack for introducing characters with a tiny part in the story— i think across the whole book there’s maybe 3 pages about this clacks tower? — and making them feel so real that i’m over here tearing up about this guy. so of course, it’s fitting that one of the most meaningful quotes and moments for the whole fandom comes from this character:

It was Grandad who spoke next, after a long pause broken only by the squeaking of the new shutter bars. When he did speak, it was as if something was on his mind. ‘We keep that name moving in the Overhead,’ he said, and it seemed to Princess that the wind in the shutter arrays above her blew more forlornly, and the everlasting clicking of the shutters grew more urgent. ‘He’d never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying “A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken”?’

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

The into music for the new discworld audiobooks absolutely slaps

[the-forest-library]

Your 10 (ish) Most Read Authors (According to Goodreads or Whatever System You Use)

I was tagged by @bookcub - thanks!

What are your ten most Most Read Authors? And how many books have you read by them? Also tag someone who you would like to do this! (Original Instructions (this option wasn't available for me): Scroll to the bottom of your shelves and most read authors is listed underneath. What I did: Exported my Goodreads library and did some Excel magic.)

Note: I only started tracking my reads in Goodreads in 2020 - these stats reflect that.

Terry Pratchett - 15 (Looks like I've read a lot of Discworld in the last few years.)

2. Martha Wells - 10 (Hello, Murderbot!)

3. Chloe Liese - 9 (This is mostly the Bergman Brothers series, which I highly recommend. Lots of neurodiversity rep.)

4. Megan Whalen Turner - 8 (Attolia, my beloved.)

4. Cat Sebastian - 8 (Lots of historical romance.)

4. K.J. Charles - 8 (More historical romance - I love that Charles and Sebastian are tied. I discovered them around the same time, and I frequently confuse them.)

5. Rainbow Rowell - 7 (Novels and She Hulk graphic novels.)

5. Gail Carriger - 7 (I discovered her books a few years ago and ran through a bunch of them, but haven't read another one in a hot minute.)

6. Sarah Andersen - 6 (Relatable comics. Also, read Fangs if you haven't yet.)

6. Olivia Atwater - 6 (Regency/Victorian faerie tales which I adore.)

6. Alisha Rai - 6 (Including one of my favorite romances: Girl Gone Viral.)

6. T. Kingfisher - 6 (Another new-to-me author I began exploring.)

6. Brigid Kemmerer - 6 (The full Cursebreakers series and a few books from other series.)

6. Holly Jackson - 6 (These are not great books, but they are addictive and twisty.)

6. Jenny Colgan - 6 (Easy, seaside, small town reads. Some of the first audiobooks I tried.)

There are 11 (!) authors tied for fifth place, so I'm not going there, but I do want to shout out Talia Hibbert and Maria V. Snyder from that list because I love them.

Tagging (no pressure, just fun!): @godzilla-reads, @brightbeautifulthings, @emspooky, @dkafterdark, @dauen, @bibliophilecats, and anyone else that would like to give this a go!

[britcision]

GUYS I GOT THE NEW PRATCHETT AUDIOBOOKS AND THEY MADE DEATH’S VOICE SUPREMELY FUCKABLE I DO NOT THINK I WILL SURVIVE

[basilstrawflowers]

I'm starting to invite the kid into my discworld obsession and it's been so interesting to revisit through her eyes.

I tried to start with Tiffany aching but it didn't take. My new recommendation for getting girls started is actually Witches Abroad now. The VA for the new audiobook is fantastic, the theme (twisting fairy tales! Fairy godmothers! Pumpkins! A big mean cat who is a big softy really!) is _so_ in the wheelhouse of every little girls media landscape.

And the dynamic between Granny, Nanny and Magrat is delightful. There's this moral grey area and they bicker and are sometimes petty and do not great things and are *badass* in their own unique ways.

And then she says "wait, Death? He was in the other book! And wait, so was Nobby Nobbs!" And it's like YEAH KID YOU GET IT WELCOME TO MAKING THIS YOUR ENTIRE PERSONALITY

[evilphrog]

All your posts about he who fights with monsters made me want to try reading it, and my library had an audiobook! Which I borrowed! Except it didn't give which book it is in the series (I didn't really realize it was a series, and I didn't notice until I was like two hours in and realized it wasn't just a long intro that would then flashback to the beginning of the story) it's 25 hours long and begins with a 'messenger' waking up to find herself imprisoned but magically un bound from her 'astral king'. Do you have any idea which book in the series this is?

Oh my friend. I am so sorry to tell you that is book 10, the most recent book in the series. They can’t really be read out of order, unlike Discworld. The entire thing is one long story, with new chapters released each week. It was sort of arbitrarily divided up into books for the audiobook releases. Congrats to your library for getting a hold of it though. Last I knew, it was an audible/kindle exclusive, which meant libraries couldn’t get it.

[cosmicrhetoric]

indira varma's carpe jugulum is honestly the best audiobook ive listened to in recent memory. or maybe ever lol. i have never listened to someone read aloud two pages (two very good pages like I remember reading them and going woah) of internal narration and genuinely been like send this shit to the STAGE this should be a monologue this should be performed

[liesmyth]

Happy end of January! here are all the books I read this month

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

Exactly what it says on the tin! Very good pop history book, tremendously well researched; actually very funny. I HIGHKEY recommend the audiobook if you can get it. Favourite book of 2024 so far.

Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly. I've read three of them this month because they're excellent. (A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, Graveyard Dust.)

Historical fiction + murder mystery set in 1830s New Orleans, and I love the atmosphere as much as I do the characters. You know those books where the city is its own character? THAT. Excellent vibes, very thoughtfully researched, and the character dynamics are excellent. (CW for period typical racism all over the place as the main character is a dark-skinned Black man in 1830s New Orleans; no gratuitous edginess)

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

THIS BOOK HAS SPIDERS IN IT. Just putting it out there because I very much missed it, and the spiders are a big deal. Scific, space opera. 10/10 would rec unless you're violently arachnophobic, then proceed with caution.

Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

Second book of the Indian Lake Witch trilogy. Unfortunately not as cool as the first but I'm hype for the third book coming out! If you like poetically described gore, and badass horror ladies, read the first book first. This one isn't quite on that level but there IS death and destruction <3

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

I can't believe I 1) finished a self-help book and 2) I'm really out here recommending it to people, but I really found it useful. Will wonders ever cease?

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica

Horror short stories collection. A couple were bangers, a few were absolute duds.

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Do yourself a favour and don't read this. Allegedly historical fiction; in practice, the "fiction" part is extremely dull and the book doesn't have anything going for it except the ripped-from-the-headline case of the Relf sister. The cover is pretty, I guess.

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn

Tremendous read. Medical misogyny through the ages, with an eye to intersectionality; I have some nitpicks about the tone of the writing but I'm still going to recommend it to everyone. (link goes to my GR & we should be friends)

Vendetta ai Mondiali by Paolo Foschi

This is a prize for a few elects (Italian speakers). Italian sports-themed detective novel except the grizzly detective is gay... I feel like this was written for ME personally.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Unfortunately, I'm running out of new-to-me Discworld novels! This made me very happy but also very emo.

[big-edies-sun-hat]

Listening to one of the new Discworld audiobooks, this one read by Colin Morgan. It’s a fun listen but kind of much. He’s reading Interesting Times and giving almost every character an exaggerated voice, creating the impression that every character except Lord Hong and Lord Vetinari is played by a Muppet.