Kingdom of Knuffel

You said Knockermen and for some reason I was thinking of Terry Pratchett books ^^;

So people whose job was waking others up? Yep, we could do that.
I know I could now!

Hm.

Okay I need help drawing the connection.

Was there a mention of Knockermen in the Terry Pratchett books? Or did they use it in a different fashion?

Completely unrelated.
I don't remember it very well (awful memory of mine) but I think those were some dwarfs which made some specially dangerous work or something along those lines.

Oh yeah! I remember now! Cheery's brother was a Knockerman, right? They wore a bunch of leather protective clothing and went ahead into dangerous mining tunnels to clear out the pockets of bad air, or something....

*fuzzy memory*

Well, guess it's time to revisit some books and refresh this.

Last year or the one before that I started re-reading Discworld, but then I stopped - I don't remember why, really.

I've read a bunch of books of that series, but I know I haven't read them all, probably about a half or so. My problem is that I don't remember which ones I did and which ones I did not, and even less whether I liked them or not so much.
So I thought that by re-reading them in a proper order I would kinda fill that gap, and since now I use GoodReads I could keep track of the ones I liked better.
But I only read the first 14 in that fashion.
I suppose I could start again from there.

I find it pretty hard to stick with a single series for too many books in a row; usually I get tired of it, if I do so much of a single author.
So I'm impressed you did 14 like that!

I find it more enjoyable to intersperse one series with a few others, alternating books and authors and genres.

(There are a few authors whose writing styles are similar enough I sometimes have trouble keeping track of which one is which. The Nightside series and the Dresden series were two I discovered at the same time and I still mix up characters and plots from them.)

Oh, well, I did not read them all on a row. I just read them in order.
I would read one of these, and then other kind of books, and then return to Discworld.
So, for example, I read the last Discworld (which was #18, I suppose I made a typo last day) on April 2021 and the previous one on November 2020. That's almost half a year between them.

I usually like to have some variation of style, sometimes I feel like grabbing a serious book (maybe an essay, something on education, etc.), sometimes something lighter (short stories, humorous novels, etc.) and sometimes I want a good quality fiction (even if it's not so light).

And now I'm thinking next time I want something light I might go for Discworld and follow the series once again.

That makes a lot of sense!
I was wondering how you managed to keep from feeling like there was a surfeit of one type, and that's the answer, ha ha ha ha

Some of the books I can see a clear order for, and know that oh, this book before that one, but some of the Discworld ones confuse me.

Like the "Small Gods" book. I really have no idea where that falls in relation to, say, "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents".

And after a whole year forgetting about them I may now continue :D

The order I follow is chronographical, just because it's an easily avaliable order.
But it's one of those series in which it does not matter at all.
I never really cared, until I realized I had no idea which ones I had read and which ones not. (But a selected few beloved ones.)

For example, those two books you mention I would say they are completely unrelated - other than the fact that they belong in the same fictional world.

For that kind of doubts I usually check the series on GoodReads:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/40650-discworld
As you can see, all the books are listed there in order, but also you can check some "subseries" which are actually books with the same main character(s).

I used to strictly follow chronographical but then I found an author who I really like (Lois McMaster Bujold) and since she is an author who emphatically does not see why she ought to be locked into writing in chronological order for a universe she made up....
I've started paying more attention to internal-to-the-series chronological order.

Of course, since she's still putting books out, that isn't always strictly the case, but....

She's good enough that I often reread the series up to her latest book in anticipation of its publication, and then continue the series after it comes out.

I feel like every time I reread her works, I pick up on more nuance and gain more insight and so she's one of the few that I can binge-read like that.



But for Terry Pratchett -I agree, it's hard to care which of those two books to read first because they don't really impact your enjoyment of the other at all.
It's why I really don't have a notion of what goes where in his oeuvre.

GoodReads does keep popping up in book conversations, doesn't it? I really ought to go make another (new) account and give it a better trial...
Is there any "beginner's guide to Goodreads" that you know of?