This.

It’s 3600 square feet, which makes it not only bigger than my house but bigger than pretty much any house I can anticipate owning, ever.  Not that I’d want Jay Walker’s library per se (though I do, sort of) but imagine having that much space to dedicate to the kind of book collection you personally love most.  It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?  Of all the libraries on my future world tour, this is the one I feel most attracted to.

I am, as I’ve hinted before, a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.  The natural result of this is that I’m enthusiastic about them when they come up in conversation.  (Okay, it’s not that I just refer to them out of the blue, but if we’re talking about, say, how clowns are scary, that leads naturally to the Ankh-Morpork Fools’ Guild.  Or Pennywise the clown, but he scares me.)  No, I’m not the kind of enthusiastic that has people checking their watches or looking for the nearest exit.  Probably.  It’s just that sometimes, when people talk about things they love, it makes you interested to know more.  That kind of enthusiastic.

So I have often had people ask me which Discworld novel to start with.  “Jane,” they say, “we don’t know where to start.  There are 37 books in the series and that is long even for those of us who have been patiently waiting for all 58 volumes of The Wheel of Time.  Please give us the benefit of your vast knowledge of all things bookish.”

(What they really say is, “So this Pratchett guy is good, huh?  Just give me a book and back away slowly.  Incidentally, did you know you’re foaming at the mouth again?”)

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Ahem.  The point is that Discworld reading order is something even fans who have read the whole series multiple times can argue about.  Partly this is because the Discworld novels can be grouped according to protagonist; partly it’s because Pratchett’s writing style, like any good author’s, has evolved over time.  However, these discussions between fans aren’t necessarily helpful to a new Discworld initiate reader.  When you’re deciding which Discworld novel to start with, it’s more important to choose based on what kind of experience you’re after than on some predefined ideal.

In this post I’m going to set out a number of possible reading orders, in hope that those of you who are new to the Discworld series will find one that appeals to you.  Almost all Discworld novels are available in your local bookstore or library.  (And, of course, Amazon.com, which sells everything.)  No matter where you choose to start, you’ll be able to find the right book.

(Rather than link to each title every time I’ve mentioned it, I’ve put the Wikipedia entry for Pratchett’s bibliography here.  Just click on an individual title to read more about it.  I can’t guarantee that this site contains no spoilers, but if you stick to just the synopsis at the beginning of each entry, you should be fine.)

Order #1: Modified Sub-Series

This is the order I personally prefer.  The advantage is that you have some flexibility in where to start, and you only have five to seven books in a series, which isn’t quite so overwhelming.  The disadvantage is that it’s easy to overlook the books that aren’t part of a sub-series (although I’ve seen lists that create groups for those as well).  Also, if you really enjoy a particular sub-series, you may be dissatisfied with some of the others simply because they’re not that one favorite.  Even so, I think this method is a good introduction to Discworld, particularly if you don’t feel inclined to tackle 37 books at once.

The reason it’s modified is that the very early Pratchett books are very different in tone and content from even the middle novels, let alone the more recent ones. The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic in particular represent a different sort of experiment, in which Pratchett was experimenting heavily with parody and the Discworld was simply a background through which the main characters traveled from one subplot to the next.  The books in parentheses can safely be skipped without ruining the reading experience.  If you do choose to read them, all I ask is that if you don’t like them, please give the next one in the series a chance.

Order #2: Strict Chronological

This reading order—chronological by publication date—is best for people who want to see how the Discworld and Pratchett’s writing style changed over time.  The disadvantage is, as noted above, that the very early novels bear little resemblance to the later ones.  I recommend this method for people who may have read one or two other Pratchett novels at random and already know they like the series.  There is some valuable plot information in the early books that’s better for having seen it first-hand, even though all of it is given out in later books as well.

Order #3: Truncated Chronological

This order arises from some discussions I had with friends on the Diana Wynne Jones email list a while back.  We were talking about how there are places within the chronology where Pratchett’s writing style and novel structure passes some kind of hurdle, making one book markedly different (and improved) from the previous one.  I said there were two places like that; others called for three or more; in any case, it was quite revelatory as to how people perceived the Discworld novels based on where they came in to the series.

Using the above chronology and starting with Reaper Man means passing over most of the overt parody and broad humor of the earlier novels.  At this point Pratchett had established enough material about the Discworld that he could tell stories that referred to his own creation rather than using it as a backdrop for retelling or satirizing other people’s stories.  Reaper Man is also one of the most moving of the novels while retaining the sense of the ridiculous that makes Discworld novels what they are.

If you move a bit further down the list, it’s harder to pick a solid breaking point, but I’d probably go with Feet of Clay (and not just because it’s my favorite).  After Reaper Man, the novels gradually gain a kind of solidity that comes when a book is About Something more than just a story.  At the same time, they’re still enormously funny—which is, I think, the marvel; you don’t really notice the ethical underpinnings as you’re reading.  This movement culminates in Feet of Clay, where you just can’t help realizing that this is a brilliant story about freedom and humanity.  The novels from that point definitely continue this trend.

Finally, you can skip straight to Night Watch, which is the first book in the series that is not intrinsically funny.  Lots of funny moments, sure, but the core of the plot is deadly serious.  After this point, the humor is delivered more in dialogue, character interaction, and situational humor than in a ridiculous plot.  Starting here will give you a very different idea of what the Discworld novels are really about.

If you’re at all interested in giving the Discworld series a try, pick one of these methods and jump right in.  The truth is that anywhere you start is fine; on some level, they’re all stand-alone novels.  Read.  Enjoy.  Come back here and talk about it.  You’re always welcome.

Dune
by Frank Herbert
1965, 541 pp.
Read November 30, 2009

I read Dune for the first time when I was thirteen. I loved it, but I know I didn’t really understand it. What I loved was the depth of worldbuilding and politics, the vivid descriptions of Arrakis and the Fremen, the “magic” (I had no knowledge of the real-world practices behind the Bene Gesserit techniques) and the genetics. The sandworms, even. I remember imagining what it would be like to live in such a dry, desolate place, living off your recaptured body moisture—I was at the time living in upstate New York, which to me seemed a little like Duke Leto’s home world of Caladan, and the idea of leaving such lush beauty for an arid desert let me empathize with Lady Jessica’s longings for that lost home.

(We moved to Texas just a year later. Hah hah neener neener on me.)

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I picked Dune up again this week after I don’t know how many years on a whim. Sometimes I wander around the house muttering about how there’s all these books and nothing to read; in that mood I want something specific, something that evokes a particular emotional or mnemonic response, or something that will occupy a few hours without dragging me in so deeply that I neglect everything else I have to do. I wouldn’t have thought Dune qualified, but the mind wants what it wants, I suppose.

The story is essentially as I remembered it: Duke Leto of Caladan is ordered by the Emperor to take over government of the planet Arrakis, sole source of the spice that is crucial in some undefined way to the Spacing Guild and therefore extremely valuable. Leto’s predecessor and long-time enemy, the Baron Harkonnen (a thoroughly vile and repulsive person, not that we needed this to hate him), had mismanaged the planet and was forced to withdraw. Secretly, though, the Emperor is working with Harkonnen to betray Leto and bring down his House, because he’s too popular in the government. Leto knows it’s a trap, but is going anyway because he’s a noble guy.

All of this seems very important, but the real story centers on Leto’s son Paul. His mother Jessica (Leto’s concubine, and there’s another story there) is Bene Gesserit, which is a sisterhood trained in mind-body discipline and control, body language reading, pitching one’s voice to command another person, and many other fascinating but improbable (at least on the level the Bene Gesserit function) mysterious abilities. The secret goal of the Bene Gesserit is an enormous human breeding program devoted to producing the Kwisatz Haderach, a male Bene Gesserit they intend to control. Jessica was supposed to give Leto a daughter, but loved him so much that she bore him a son instead. Now it looks like Paul might be the one they’ve been waiting for, but there’s something odd about him—something the Bene Gesserit did not anticipate. It turns out Paul’s mind is truly unique—and once he arrives on Arrakis and starts ingesting the spice, which is in absolutely everything on the planet, the strange compound alters his mind to the point where he begins to see all possible futures, including one where he leads the Fremen natives of Arrakis in a jihad that rages across the galaxy. Even as Paul tries to avoid this future, he’s drawn further into a reality where he will have to rule Arrakis…and ultimately the Empire.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my younger self had completely missed the point of what Frank Herbert was doing in this book. For one thing, I must have been totally unaware of how pervasive the influence of Islam was. I don’t even remember picking up on any references to Arab language or culture. This is probably a good thing, because it’s not a book about Muslim people or religion as we understand it. It’s more as if Islam had been a formative force millennia ago and then drifted forward, transformed by cultural shift and migration to hundreds of other worlds. There’s not even a correlation between the Fremen and a lost Muslim race, despite their culture alone still retaining a lot of words and customs we would recognize as Arab/Islamic. (If anything, the revelations about the Fremen being forced from one world to another make them sound more like a lost tribe of Israel—another thing they definitely aren’t.) The point is that Herbert created a universe with Islamic underpinnings that lacks most of the aggressive religiosity I think Westerners expect whenever that faith is brought into a story. It’s a little bit surreal.

But the real weirdness was in seeing the politics with an adult eye. The Dune universe is bleak and vicious, full of political intrigue and plotting, a place where you can never really trust anyone. This forces all the characters to subordinate normal human desires to a coldly logical system where decisions and actions are based on trying to guess what everyone else will do. It is one of the more depressing milieus I’ve ever read. Except…underneath that veneer, almost everyone is acting out of some baser emotion: love, greed, jealousy, hatred, fear. Even when those emotions are negative, it’s still a reminder that men and women will always be free, on some level, as long as they are human. Key to this insight in Dune is the story of the traitor who betrays Duke Leto to the Baron (and no, I’m not saying who it is; Herbert tells you right up front). Like all of Leto’s closest allies, this man seemed incorruptible; and he was, as far as logic went. The Baron suborned him by making use of his emotions—and in return, the traitor struck back at the Baron through his hatred. As the novel progresses, that stark political intrigue never goes away, but it’s increasingly possible to see what lies underneath.

Herbert has done a brilliant job of creating a fully-realized universe and a plausible world. The copy of Dune I have now has several appendices which I know weren’t in the copy I owned years ago, detailing the ecology of Arrakis, how the government of the Empire works, etc. I really wish I’d had the glossary back then; I had no idea which words Herbert invented and which were just obscure English words. (And which were common English words Herbert was using in a bizarre way. “Geriatric” spice? What’s that supposed to mean? The spice is older than other condiments? It makes you old? It’s crotchety in the morning and needs a hip replacement? I eventually figured out that Herbert meant it provides longevity, but that one really had my thirteen-year-old brain spinning.) It’s all this detail that makes the story work, I think. You need to be able to believe in the world before you can believe in the actions that motivate the characters. People do things in this story that are simply too barbaric to credit, until you realize just how valuable spice is to a lot of different people. The way Herbert has set things up, it’s definitely a commodity worth killing or betraying for.

I suppose my unease over the story comes more from my distaste for that kind of universe than anything else. Despite the futuristic setting, the society is practically feudal—in every sense of the word. There’s the beauty of having your word be your bond and the loyalty Leto’s men (and later Paul’s) have to their lord, but there’s also the near-total control the lords have over their people and their lands, the abuses of property, the lack of any impartial court of justice for those who’ve been wronged, and an apparent lack of innovation or growth among the commoners. It’s one thing to look back in time at a period that’s now over, but to see feudalism in the distant future…? I love this book, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Sabriel
by Garth Nix
1996, 292 pp.
Read November 7, 2009

The older I get, the more I find myself drawn to unusual, original fantasy novels over the traditional sword-and-sorcery or high-epic stories that make up 80% of what’s published in the genre these days.  I’d love to call that “maturing as a reader” and use it as an excuse to snub all the books I don’t like as worthless (and the fans thereof as juvenile) because, let’s face it, there’s a part of every one of us that likes feeling superior to others.  But that reaction itself shows emotional immaturity, so I will whip out the rolled-up newspaper of Justice and smack it fiercely until it runs away.  There.

The real point of that statement is not the relative quality of different subgenres of fantasy, but the problem of finding the kind of book you like if what you like isn’t published in great quantity.  It’s unfortunately true that the demands of the adult fantasy market push the oddball books to the margins.  What’s fortunate is that the young adult fantasy market not only doesn’t have these problems (not to the same extent, anyway), but actively welcomes the odd, the unusual, the untried.  If you are looking for something out of the ordinary, this is the place to look.

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So let’s talk about young adult fantasy for a moment.  There is one thing that all adult readers need to know about young adult fantasy (about young adult literature in general, really):

Young adult fiction is ABOUT being a young adult.  It is not solely FOR young adults.

Young adult fiction exists because our society has teenagers—a relatively modern invention.  Children used to go directly to adulthood around 13 or 14 years old, but in the last century or so, western society recognized the benefit to giving “young adults” time to learn and grow before taking on adult responsibilities.  So it would be ridiculous to claim that young adult fiction isn’t intended to help people in that age group grow into adulthood.  But it does this by depicting the challenges and heartbreaks and glories of adolescence as accurately as possible, not by inventing a kind of prose impenetrable to anyone not a teenager.  There is nothing about young adult fiction that prevents an adult from reading and enjoying it except the preferences of the adult herself.  And why shouldn’t we, as adults who used to be teenagers, appreciate a visit to that age as much as we enjoy traveling through time into historical fiction or through space to cities and countries not our own?

Sabriel is one of those books that is both an unusual fantasy and an example of YA fantasy suitable for adults.  It’s also a book that I love primarily for the ambience, the environment the story takes place in—it’s dark and brooding and weird, the magic is unusual and at the same time logical, and there’s a lovely and terrifying cat.  (The audiobook version, which my family listened to last summer on a road trip, is read by Tim Curry, and his voice for Mogget the cat is…it’s like liquid menace.  Brrrrrr.)

The foundation for the story is necromancy—both the evil kind, and a countering magic held by the Abhorsen, who can lay dead spirits to rest and prevent dead spirits from rising again. That right there is enough to set Sabriel apart from other fantasies, because necromancy is generally a Bad Thing…and yet, how logical to create a reality in which that power could be used for good, where death is not something to be feared except when it is twisted by evil.  Death, in this story, is something like an alternate plane of existence, into which those who are trained can step in and out at will.  The magic of death has rules; the “place” of Death has rules and districts and can be traveled (with care); the land is bound by laws drawn up and implanted in its bones that protect the people from the wandering death.  Garth Nix’s land and magic system are intertwined beautifully, and I like how it all fits together.  This is my—fourth? can’t remember—reading of Sabriel, and there are still things I’m picking up on with respect to the plot and the framework.

Sabriel, the title character, is eighteen years old at the start of the story.  She has lived at a young ladies’ boarding school in the country of Ancelstierre since she was five, despite having been born in the Old Kingdom.  Or, perhaps, that’s why she’s lived there; her father is Abhorsen, charged with protecting the Old Kingdom from the restless dead, and even with his powers, it’s a dangerous place for a child.  Abhorsen has visited Sabriel many times over the years, both in person and as a “sending,” and has taught her many things about how to use the power she has inherited from him.  She is the most talented mage in her school (not too difficult, since most of Ancelstierre doesn’t believe in magic, and only near the Border to the Old Kingdom do people not disregard the dangers of the undead) but she is still inexperienced.  So when a messenger from her father brings her his sword and the bells an Abhorsen uses to control the dead, she sets off immediately into the Old Kingdom to find and possibly rescue him.  Almost immediately she is set upon by creatures far more powerful than they should be, and realizes that one of the Greater Dead, Kerrigor, is free of Death and is trying to break the protections over the Old Kingdom—which means killing both the Abhorsen and his heir, Sabriel.

What makes Sabriel a YA fantasy is the age of the protagonist and the fact that the story is about her growth from childhood to adult responsibility.  What makes it an adult novel is that Nix doesn’t pull any punches.  You know the weird thing that I realized this time, that tells me this book is out of the ordinary?  Early on, Sabriel gets hit in the face and ends up with two black eyes.  She goes through the whole book with gradually fading black eyes.  Imagine making a movie with a heroine who looks like a raccoon.  A romantic movie, because Sabriel meets a strapping young man called Touchstone about halfway through the book and they fall in love.  Not to mention that Touchstone is totally naked when they first meet (it makes sense, believe me) and his nudity is described…not in great detail, but without glossing over the fact that all his bits are on display and Sabriel hasn’t ever seen a naked man.  There is death, betrayal, bloodshed, sacrifice.  Good people die; bad people don’t necessarily get the punishment they deserve.  If a reader were at all under the impression that young adult fiction is sanitized and simple, this book would disabuse him of the notion quickly.

There are two sequels to Sabriel:  Lirael and Abhorsen. Technically, they are a single book split into two volumes for publishing reasons.  If you enjoy Sabriel, I recommend having both books on hand before starting Lirael.  And I think Sabriel is well worth reading.