Tessa  0:23  
Welcome to nanny ogs book club a Discworld podcast Join us as we read through all 41 of the fantastical and outrageous Discworld novels. I'm Tessa and joining me today is my friend Nigel. Hello. In this our introduction Episode Episode zero. We discuss Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and the method to our madness when it comes to reading or rereading his books. So this is our first meeting slash episode of the book club. I'm very excited about it. I'm so glad that I finally conned someone into rereading all of the Discworld books with me. So yay, thank you, Nigel, for falling into my trap.

Nigel  1:04  
Yeah, well, it's like, I probably would have done them at some stage or another. It's just like it's been bumped up like this, because it's like, with my friend ness. I was like, I was always going to read the stormlight archives, but she really liked them. So I was like, I'm gonna bump these up my TBR. And then it was like Brendan scientists and was like, I'm releasing book number four. And I was like, Okay, well, now I have to do it in this period. So it's like I unfortunately, we don't have a new Discworld route. Well, there was that news recently that there's a new thing looking at Discworld. I don't remember what it is. Exactly. But yeah, anyway, I have fallen hook line and sinker. So it seems

Tessa  1:41  
and I'm very excited to talk to someone who is excited about them as well. I guess we decided to do this after I came on to your podcast hyper fixations, which is one of my favorite podcasts to discuss my obsession with Terry Pratchett and we had so much fun. We decided to do a whole podcast together. How many podcasts do you have now? Nigel? Is this like four or five? I'm guessing.

Nigel  2:04  
Yeah. So like, if you count, let's be honest, which is kind of like out of commission. We're not really doing that one anymore. That's one and then our COVID Myers on hyper fixations, and this one, so like

Tessa  2:15  
you've earned your title person of many podcasts. I definitely bow before your superior podcasting skills.

Nigel  2:23  
It's Yeah, it's really funny. It's just just people like they're like, Oh, that's the podcast person. Or it's like one of my co hosts on archive and Myers Faust. They were like, oh, as part of our media class, we need to make a podcast and so they were like, oh, I'll just ask Nigel. I don't like any of my friends who have any questions. They're like, Oh, we'll just ask Nigel. I'm like yeah, I know how to do this. And they're like, how do you do remote recording? I'm like, well, there's like several, you know, it's just like, I know all these things. And I have no real experience but I just like taught them myself. Like a very basic understanding of like how audacity and shit works. I love square.

Tessa  3:00  
Why not? Why not? I already have one family friendly podcast. I need a podcast where I can swear. So yeah, I I am really excited to do this podcast, not just because I can swear but because I can talk about one of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett. Nigel, tell us a bit about your relationship with Pratchett's books because you hadn't really read any of the Discworld books before but you had read some of his other series is that correct?

Nigel  3:28  
Yeah, so as I'm sitting here in the disarray of my head, I can see the copies I have of the long earth and the cosmos which he wrote with Stephen Baxter although the long Cosmos was published posthumously, so it was kind of like the main series I guess I read by project I would like I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware of Terry Pratchett and it's not like I'm not saying that it like trying to big up the podcast way it's just like I don't remember in the same way that I don't remember how Stephen King first came on my radar where it's like, I don't know it's just a really big sort of pop culture touchdown. And like with Pratchett I'm King they both kind of like leaked into how pop culture is like created and performed and stuff so I was always I was always aware of Discworld and then I read a few of the like the ones he had written with Tiffany Aching as the protagonist for younger adults, the you know, a handful of sky I shall wear midnight, things like that. The we freemen. That was sort of my main point of contact. I do have an old ish copy of the color of magic. I can see that poking out from behind stacks of books, and I forgot about it. Oh my god, another copy of the library.

Tessa  4:40  
That might be the most pratchet thing you've ever said. Like I had a copy of an old copy of color of magic, and I had to go get a new one from the library. That seems like a very like Pratchett thing about books to hiding in my L space. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm so excited to talk about all space when we get to that

Nigel  4:57  
I that's about Kristen Stab, I think because there's just so many books that this may just be a pocket of L space

Tessa  5:06  
you are recording to us live from the L space in in your shed your your l shed, I feel like

Nigel  5:12  
my L shed my podcast murder al shed.

Tessa  5:16  
So I mean, I really loved what you said about how Terry Pratchett has really infiltrated a lot of the ways in which we talk about fantasy, I feel like he might be more popular, or at least more of a household name over in the UK and in Ireland than he is perhaps in the US. Not that he's not huge here, too. He's just not I think, as well known, I guess, or as well, like talked about, I think a lot of people know of him, but they don't necessarily, they don't really count him in when talking about a lot of fantasy authors over here. So I think it's really interesting to talk also about, and I'm sure we will talk about this as we go on sort of the context of Pratchett and how he is a very British author in a lot of ways. There are definitely jokes in in some of his books that I don't completely get, because I think I don't have the cultural awareness of some of the things that he chokes out. So I'm excited to talk about that too.

Nigel  6:15  
Huh? Well, like I mean, on that, it's kind of it's kind of interesting, because, like I, you know, we mentioned this when we're hyper fixations, how not everyone will have the same sort of cultural touchstones. And Terry Pratchett is a very British author and I get a lot of, but he doesn't well enough that like, I feel like me, like a lot of people can get stuff out of it. Whereas like, like Mulligan, who, who's like, sort of an Irish humorist and poet, he writes these versions of classics, like whatever, according to spike Mulligan, and he did one that was like the Bible, according to spike Mulligan. And it was quite good, I guess. But it was so nearly like arcane Lee wrapped around in very, very specific references to things would like, you know, pertain to Britain and like the 1980s you'd like things to do with the power grid and stuff. And it's like, I don't understand this as a reader in 2020. It's physically like impregnable to me whereas Terry Pratchett is he much more accessible is the point I'm trying to make I realized that ramble a lot

Tessa  7:21  
Oh no, that's what we we are a ramble friendly podcast I feel like that's, that's something we should make very clear up front. If you if you're not into the rambling, maybe this is not the podcast for you. But I promise for nice. So I am kind of the opposite with Patrick I though I'm going to go over some of the information that I talked about in hyper fixations, but I read my first Pratchett book, The thief of time when I was 14, it was given to me by a friend. And I feel like that's a lot of my experience with Pratchett is that like, we would like trade books a lot when I was a teenager like this is the same we were talking about Wheel of Time before the podcast same thing, like we i a friend gave me a copy of the first Wheel of Time book, you know, I gave people copies of Terry Pratchett I sort of became like the Pratchett proselytizer, you know, like have you heard the good news of our Lord and Savior Terry Pratchett? Like I had like probably 39 of like the 41 books at one point they were all like very well loved mass market paperbacks with like the you know, tons and tons of creases in the spine you know, because they were so well well loved and well read and I just like would give them to people and be like, you have to read this book you have to read this and you know, people would come and say like, oh, like do you have you know, this book of his and so we would that's what

Nigel  8:38  
you'd open up your trench coat.

Tessa  8:42  
Here's here Which one do you want? Are you feeling more like a death flavor or more of a witch's flavor? Yeah, that's that's kind of kind of what how I was I was just like peddling Terry Pratchett to people. I when I moved, I had to give a lot of those mass market paperbacks away to a friend who actually teared up when I gave them to him because he knew how long I had had them and how important they were to me although I'm using this podcast I showed you this book already. My new covers I'm getting each one as we read them. I'm getting a new like hardback cover version and they're very, very nice. Very great, great, great cover art. So I'm excited about that. But yeah, I Terry Pratchett has been such a huge part of my personal development both I guess as a person and as you know, someone who loves fantasy and loves the fantastic You know, I think I, I talked about how I was introduced to Neil Gaiman through Terry Pratchett because they very infamously collaborated on good omens. And I think that a lot of people had this experience where they read good omens, which is not part of the Discworld, but has a lot of DNA in common with the Discworld. And you either like you know, Terry Pratchett and you read it and you're introduced to Neil Gaiman or you know, Neil Gaiman You read it and you're introduced to Terry Pratchett? Like, I think that that's like a common nexus point.

Nigel  10:06  
Oh, my copy of good omens earlier on. As we continue talking, I'm just gonna see like and see it.

Tessa  10:13  
Are you using this time as as an excuse to sort through your library? No. Absolutely What's happening?

Nigel  10:23  
Certainly not because I'd have to move too far away from the mic, which is currently on.

Tessa  10:29  
So just I guess a brief introduction to the Discworld. Discworld has 41 novels as I've mentioned, the first novel color of magic was published in 1983. The final novel was published posthumously. It's the Shepherd's Crown, which is one of those tiffy Tiffany Aching books she were talking about, which was published in 2015. They're all set in the same universe, which is really the same world The Discworld, which is a flat earth on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of the giant turtle, the great Tuan, who's swims through space, I would really love a T shirt with the grade two and on it, I just I love like the concept. It's an old concept. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of cultures especially I'm thinking like Indian cultures that have like this idea of the flat earth on top of like a turtle. I just, I find that quite excellent, actually. But basically, these books are fantasies that all take place on this earth, but there's different series of books. The closest thing I can think of, to the way that the Discworld is set up is it's kind of like Star Trek. It's all the same universe, but it's different series and threads within that series. You have the rincewind books, the death books, the city watch books, the witches books, ancient civilizations, industrial revolutions, all these threads kind of exist simultaneously. Some of them are geographically situated, some of them are timeline situated, but they all kind of connect to each other, like different characters will guest star in each other's series. And so that's kind of the best way to describe it, which I think sounds kind of daunting to some people. Do you think that's the reason why some people don't read these books is how many of them there are and how complex? It sort of is sometimes I'm not

Nigel  12:14  
sure because like in the abstract if you said to someone, oh, there's 41 books in a series you know, they kind of glanced at that especially if they're not like big readers. Because that's far more books than are in like the Wheel of Time The Wheel of Time sits at 14 books plus a prequel and a world of book whereas like you know, like a lot of people would be like a trilogy is good maybe five books seven at a push. The Chronicles of Narnia is seven books, but they're very tiny and that's the thing with with Discworld, I think because like you know, none of them are want any longer than 400 pages that say, right,

Tessa  12:51  
yeah, I don't have I think the longest one just this is all me guessing. So please, Discworld fans don't don't write angry letters. To me. This is just my best educated guesses.

Nigel  13:01  
Write them to me. I will. Yeah.

Tessa  13:05  
I want to say the nightwatch is probably the longest book in the series. And yeah, I don't think it's over 400 pages. So I'm like, we'll have time where like, one of those will easily run you into like 1000 pages. I it they are not long at all.

Nigel  13:20  
Yeah, like I mean, I literally read more, which is the first book we're going to be discussing for this, I read like 100 pages of it, I'd go while I was on my lunch break at work, they're really quick reads like you won't be long reading them. And that's not to do like a disservice to sort of, you know, the artistic merit of of the actual books, but I feel like if you give them a chance, you're gonna find them a lot more fulfilling, I guess stimulating is also a word I'd use, you know, then other series of comparative sizes.

Tessa  13:51  
Right? And I guess we could also talk a little bit about like, what the style of these books are, and I know you haven't read as many of them yet. But if you had to characterize Terry Pratchett style based on what you have read so far without getting too in the weeds, because we're going to talk about more next episode. How would you characterize his style?

Nigel  14:12  
Is it a cop out if I say absurd? No, I don't think it's a cop out at all. Yeah, cuz that's kind of like what everyone expects but it is like, cuz when I read the Tiffany Aiken books it was I was like 1514 or 15 or whatever that kind of age and I haven't really read them since like i have i've had no other contact with the disc world since then. But the like when I was when I was rereading more It was like some of the stuff in it was just like ridiculous in the best possible way. Like I won't go into too many things obviously because then that would negate the need for like, you know an episode on more but yeah, that's my answer. absurd.

Tessa  14:51  
absurd. Yeah, no, I think absurd is a really great starting point for talking about this, but it's not like like Waiting for Godot or You know, like absurdist like type of stuff, it's still very plot focused and very character focused. So it's this weird mix of like fantasy and a lot of its traditional fantasy although he starts to get away from that later and this like just like, like you said, absurd narrative voice like it's this mix of like low slapstick humor and like clever satire. There's a lot of puns and wordplay. But there's a lot of character based narrative as well, like the characters are very important and talking about who these people are is very important. My I think the best way I could describe what he's trying to do in the Discworld, and we'll talk about more of the specifics of that as we get to each book is that he really wanted to explore how things worked. But not in like a Brandon Sanderson like systems of magic hard fantasy sort of way. But more in like this is how actual real people would act in a world with magic. Like, it's not like it's a lot of normal people encountering things that are outside their purview, but it's also treating the magic like it's just a part of this world. And here's how people would adapt to having magic be a mundane part of their lives.

Nigel  16:13  
Yeah, that makes sense. Like I mean, they go they go to Angkor more park in more and that's a very kind of like, like we mentioned on a hyper fixations and so I even though it's a different podcast part of me is like Do we need to retry to it but at the same time like you know we need to retry it's it's like a steampunk fun to see city. And it goes in the opposite direction to a lot of like steampunk where it's like, steampunk fantasy seems to be like we've got these supernatural stuff but we're leaning more into the science element and Terry approach it's like what if I do the opposite?

Tessa  16:46  
Yeah, let what if what if this was just like, how how like, yeah, and like I said, just just go listen to hyper fixations, if you want more information but yeah, I I really feel like there's a lot here of the end he said this at one point like the there be dragons, but the dragons are all trying to sell you something right? Like they're, you know, they're there's all these people just trying to live their lives, but they have magic and they're different species. And you know, they're all just trying to interact with each other in these really fantastic ways. But it's all very rooted in like realism in terms of character. So yeah, I find it weird to describe a series as absurdist and realistic at the same time, but that's kind of what I find myself doing when talking about his books.

Nigel  17:33  
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, there's there's very few people I feel like you could do that with

Tessa  17:39  
let's let's talk a little bit about sort of the method to our madness section of this. So we are going to attempt anyway, I can't believe I'm saying this to read all 41 books, I have read them all before, but never like in a systematic way like this. So I'm excited. But I did try to stick to a few guidelines. We're not going to be reading these in publication order. And the main reason for that is because color of magic, the first Discworld book is doing something very specific. Pratchett originally wrote that book as as a parody of sword and sorcery fantasy, which was very, very popular in the 70s and 80s. It's not necessarily the best entry point to the series, unless you're like a super fan of those particular types of stories. And it also tends to lean a little bit more on the parody and less on characterization and plot. So it's not necessarily the best entry point for someone who wants to kind of see the best that Pratchett can do. And that's not a knock against color of magic color of magic is very good for what it is it's just not necessarily what the series became later. It's not a great representation of the series. So we're not doing publication order but I have tried to stick to a few guidelines in my order of books, I have tried my best to keep books together by decades so anything that was written in the 80s I tried to you know group those at the beginning, I tried to group things that were written in the 90s in the 90s etc. I have also for the most part tried to keep this series The different series within the Discworld in order so for example we're starting with the first book from the death series and we will eventually work our way through that series in order so we're gonna read more at first and then Reaper man, etc. The only exception to this is equal rights, which is technically the first witches book. We are actually going to read weird sisters and witches abroad before equal rights for reasons that we will get into when we get there. And I guess the final thing I'll say is that this will be a spoiler filled podcast or as my co host, Andy on, monkey off my backlog likes to say spoilerific It's a spoilerific podcast as it is a book club and when you run a book club, you expect people to you know, read the book and not just come for the scones in the free coffee although, you know, you don't have to read the book. To listen to this podcast, but it is recommended.

Nigel  20:03  
That's the difference between a book club and an English degree with a book club, you can reasonably expect the people who have read the book.

Tessa  20:11  
Yeah, not just like, you know, the cliff notes version.

Nigel  20:14  
Oh, sometimes I just show up to, I really hope none of my lectures. Let's do this because some of them follow me on Twitter. But sometimes they'll just show up to tutorials. And I won't have read the book. And then someone will say a point. And they'll have read the book and I'll build off of that point and be like, Oh, that's really interesting, because I'm there. And then I don't have time to read all these books. I'm reading other stuff for fun. I'm making podcasts Leave me alone.

Tessa  20:38  
You have other priorities? How dare they get in the way of your podcast career?

Nigel  20:42  
How dare the education I'm paying money for get in the way of my hobbies? How

Tessa  20:49  
dare they all right. Do you have anything else you would like to add? Nigel?

Nigel  20:53  
I don't think so. Not really, in terms of like introduction,

Tessa  20:56  
so it's time to start reading. So Nigel, what are we reading for the first installment of the nanny Ogg book club?

Nigel  21:03  
We're reading Mork, the fourth Discworld novel,

Tessa  21:06  
so feel free to read along with us or listen in to get a feel for Pratchett's books, or to remind yourself of why you love Discworld so much in the first place. All right, so that was our episode zero intro episode, Episode One focusing on the first book we're going to read mort should be out on Wednesday, September 29. You can find Nigel you can find Nigel on twitter at spicy Nigel her podcasts at hyper fixations P and at admirers archive. You can find me on Twitter at suela. Tessa Swehla is spelled sw EHL A you can find my other podcast monkey off my backlog at monkey backlog. You can find nanny augs book club on twitter at nannies book club and you can email us at nanny ogs book club@gmail.com. If you're listening to this on the monkey off my backlog feed, please subscribe to us on the nanny Ogg bookclubs feed. If you found us through your love of Terry Pratchett please rate review and subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon podcast, Google podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai