Have you ever considered spending the summer with witches and wizards, dwarfs and trolls, a vampire photographer or even a walking piece of Luggage?  Care to visit a Post Office literally overflowing with mail, or to stroll beside the river Ankh?  (Actually, I wouldn’t recommend that last one during the warmer months; it’s a bit, shall we say, odorous!)

Come explore the Discworld (a disc carried on the back of four elephants, on top of a turtle) and add some hilarity to your summer by joining us for a Terry Pratchett Reading Challenge!

The “Challenge”

Pratchett is consistently responsible for the funniest books I read each year, and I wanted to share the laughs.  This is a challenge only in the loose sense–all you have to do to participate is read any book from Pratchett’s sprawling 40-book Discworld series between June 1st and August 31st, and tell us about it.  I’m putting up a separate post where you can link to your reviews or share your thoughts in a comment.

Feel free grab the image above if you’d like to share about the challenge on your blog.  Maybe some of your friends will want to join in too.  If you need suggestions on where to begin reading, check out my earlier post on favorite Discworld books, or explore the comments to see what other people are planning.

For those new to Discworld, there are three rules to keep in mind:

1) You don’t have to read the books in order.

2) Don’t start at the beginning (the first few are funny, but weaker than later books).

3) Don’t read them somewhere where it will be awkward to laugh out loud!

Group Read

I’m also holding a Group Read of Going Postal during July (not a requirement of the challenge, just a fun bonus).  Going Postal won the group read poll, and is a great place for people to start out with Discworld.

Chapter One begins: “They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.”

The plot: conman and criminal Moist von Lipwig inexplicably survives a hanging, only to find the Patrician offering him a goverment job, as Ankh-Morpork’s new Postmaster General.  Moist uncertainly accepts, becoming master of a Post Office overflowing with old mail (some of which seems to be talking to him), leading a troop of mad postmen.  And then there’s the business competition with the telegraph service to think about…

I’ve divided the book roughly into quarters to cover four weeks.  I’ll send out discussion questions early each week, and reviews should be planned for the following Tuesday.  Here’s the schedule:

Week 1, from “The Nine Thousand Year Prologue” through “Chapter 4: A Sign” – reviews on July 10

Week 2, from “Chapter 5: Lost in the Post” through “Chapter 7: Tomb of Words” – reviews on July 17

Week 3, from “Chapter 7A: Post Haste” through “Chapter 11: Mission Statement” – reviews on July 24

Week 4, from “Chapter 12: The Woodpecker” to the end! – reviews on July 31

Book Your Ticket to Discworld

Sign up for the “challenge” with MisterLinky below, and feel free to share in a comment what you’re thinking about reading.  Let me know also if you’d like to join the group read.

I look forward to visiting Discworld with you!