markyon's review against another edition
4.0
Are you a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld? Or, indeed, are you a fairly new fan of Discworld?
Despite the author’s death in 2015, it seems that in 2020 the appetite for ‘Pratchett stuff’ remains undiminished, especially in Britain. To be fair, as the realm of the Discworld extends to over 40 novels, there’s a mine of material out there, even if it is said that anything new from Terry will not happen – there’s no collection of unpublished stories, essays or anything else out there waiting to appear, as I understand it. Despite this, every year the number of fans seems to grow.
With this in mind, and with Christmas approaching, it may not be too much of a surprise to see the appearance of old material repackaged into what I call “coffee-table” books – those large tomes on glossy paper filled with the sort of thing that would go nicely as a Yuletide gift for the fan. And for the Discworld fan, this is their present.
Background first. The Discworld Diaries have been a Discworld staple (and a very popular seller) since 1998. Co-written by Pratchett with Stephen Briggs, they not only offered Discworld enthusiasts a means of counting the days through the year until the next novel was published, but also gave new information about Discworld that was not detailed in the novels, often written by or written with the supervision and guidance of Terry himself.
Filled with prose about the background and history of the societies and people of the Discworld universe that fans would appreciate, and copiously illustrated by Paul Kidby, fans would buy them and keep them as addendums to the novels Terry was writing. Since Terry’s demise they have continued to be published by The Discworld Emporium, but are still going strong today.
Which brings us to this tome. This ‘Discworld Anthology’ combines four editions of the now-quite-rare Discworld Diaries into one volume, Volume II of the anthologies. (It was a bit of a surprise to me in that I didn’t know that there was a Volume I.) The four sets of illustrations are in published chronological order, although not in series sequence.
The first part is from the 1999 Diary, featuring Captain Vimes and the Watch. One of Terry’s set of most enduring characters, I suspect that it will be this that most fans will buy the book for. It includes information on the role of the Watch, a History of the City Watch examples of Arrest Reports and Complaints, memos, laws, crime codes, lists of the equipment issued to the Watch and members and regular suspects of the Watch.
The second section shows us The Fool’s Guild of the 2001 Diary, with the ‘not-scary-at-all’ visage of Dr Whiteface looming throughout. (Warning – this is not part of the book for anyone who suffers with coulrophobia!) There’s a guided tour of the Guild’s headquarters, ‘The House of Mirth’, as well as a history of the Guild and such details as a Guild school curriculum and the Guild rules to be followed outside the Guild walls.
Thirdly we have the Reformed Vampyre Club from the 2003 Diary. The book’s cover shows Mr John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith, drinking a beverage that is not blood, and the book gives a welcome to new members of the Guild from him. Again there are details on the rules to follow, the step programme to stop being a vampire, and details of many of the near-immortal characters, each with details of their strange habits.
For Lu-Tse we have “Lu-Tze’s Book of Enlightenment” from the 2008 Diary, a description of the man himself, details of the History Monks a wonderful Floral Clock and words of wisdom from Mrs Cosmopilite, Lu-Tze’s former landlady. The Monks of Discworld are also shown in their various guises.
There’s also a twelve-page Artist’s Archive of various material at the end.
As many of these older diaries (over 20 years old, don’t forget!) are now difficult to get hold of in their original form, this is a satisfactory (and cheaper!) alternative.
The many sketches by Paul Kidby have been upgraded by being added to and digitally remastered, often into a bigger size, to show off the detail. The layout is great, with the pictures given room to breathe. There’s not too many small pictures that you have to squint at to get the details!
However, those expecting drawings in lurid Technicolour may be disappointed. It must be said that most of these images are pencil sketches presented on a beige background, which are lovely and set a uniform tone to the book, but not blazingly outlandish in their use of colour.
The brief details about each character, presumably by Stephen Briggs and Terry, are both amusing and intriguing. Along the way there are little snippets written by Kidby of how the drawings came about. There is an Artist section at the back with various drawings but without comment.
In short, the book does what it is meant to. It’s an attractive-looking book with enough here to entice new readers to the Discworld, and those not totally immersed in the Discworld (yet) will be rushing off to fill the gaps in their knowledge in, but the fans in particular will love it. Even devotees will be given previously unknown details that will have them reaching for their Discworld novels to reread, if not putting away (for safe keeping) their now-archival copies of the original Diaries.
I enjoyed it so much that I went off to find a copy of Volume 1 to go with this one.
Despite the author’s death in 2015, it seems that in 2020 the appetite for ‘Pratchett stuff’ remains undiminished, especially in Britain. To be fair, as the realm of the Discworld extends to over 40 novels, there’s a mine of material out there, even if it is said that anything new from Terry will not happen – there’s no collection of unpublished stories, essays or anything else out there waiting to appear, as I understand it. Despite this, every year the number of fans seems to grow.
With this in mind, and with Christmas approaching, it may not be too much of a surprise to see the appearance of old material repackaged into what I call “coffee-table” books – those large tomes on glossy paper filled with the sort of thing that would go nicely as a Yuletide gift for the fan. And for the Discworld fan, this is their present.
Background first. The Discworld Diaries have been a Discworld staple (and a very popular seller) since 1998. Co-written by Pratchett with Stephen Briggs, they not only offered Discworld enthusiasts a means of counting the days through the year until the next novel was published, but also gave new information about Discworld that was not detailed in the novels, often written by or written with the supervision and guidance of Terry himself.
Filled with prose about the background and history of the societies and people of the Discworld universe that fans would appreciate, and copiously illustrated by Paul Kidby, fans would buy them and keep them as addendums to the novels Terry was writing. Since Terry’s demise they have continued to be published by The Discworld Emporium, but are still going strong today.
Which brings us to this tome. This ‘Discworld Anthology’ combines four editions of the now-quite-rare Discworld Diaries into one volume, Volume II of the anthologies. (It was a bit of a surprise to me in that I didn’t know that there was a Volume I.) The four sets of illustrations are in published chronological order, although not in series sequence.
The first part is from the 1999 Diary, featuring Captain Vimes and the Watch. One of Terry’s set of most enduring characters, I suspect that it will be this that most fans will buy the book for. It includes information on the role of the Watch, a History of the City Watch examples of Arrest Reports and Complaints, memos, laws, crime codes, lists of the equipment issued to the Watch and members and regular suspects of the Watch.
The second section shows us The Fool’s Guild of the 2001 Diary, with the ‘not-scary-at-all’ visage of Dr Whiteface looming throughout. (Warning – this is not part of the book for anyone who suffers with coulrophobia!) There’s a guided tour of the Guild’s headquarters, ‘The House of Mirth’, as well as a history of the Guild and such details as a Guild school curriculum and the Guild rules to be followed outside the Guild walls.
Thirdly we have the Reformed Vampyre Club from the 2003 Diary. The book’s cover shows Mr John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith, drinking a beverage that is not blood, and the book gives a welcome to new members of the Guild from him. Again there are details on the rules to follow, the step programme to stop being a vampire, and details of many of the near-immortal characters, each with details of their strange habits.
For Lu-Tse we have “Lu-Tze’s Book of Enlightenment” from the 2008 Diary, a description of the man himself, details of the History Monks a wonderful Floral Clock and words of wisdom from Mrs Cosmopilite, Lu-Tze’s former landlady. The Monks of Discworld are also shown in their various guises.
There’s also a twelve-page Artist’s Archive of various material at the end.
As many of these older diaries (over 20 years old, don’t forget!) are now difficult to get hold of in their original form, this is a satisfactory (and cheaper!) alternative.
The many sketches by Paul Kidby have been upgraded by being added to and digitally remastered, often into a bigger size, to show off the detail. The layout is great, with the pictures given room to breathe. There’s not too many small pictures that you have to squint at to get the details!
However, those expecting drawings in lurid Technicolour may be disappointed. It must be said that most of these images are pencil sketches presented on a beige background, which are lovely and set a uniform tone to the book, but not blazingly outlandish in their use of colour.
The brief details about each character, presumably by Stephen Briggs and Terry, are both amusing and intriguing. Along the way there are little snippets written by Kidby of how the drawings came about. There is an Artist section at the back with various drawings but without comment.
In short, the book does what it is meant to. It’s an attractive-looking book with enough here to entice new readers to the Discworld, and those not totally immersed in the Discworld (yet) will be rushing off to fill the gaps in their knowledge in, but the fans in particular will love it. Even devotees will be given previously unknown details that will have them reaching for their Discworld novels to reread, if not putting away (for safe keeping) their now-archival copies of the original Diaries.
I enjoyed it so much that I went off to find a copy of Volume 1 to go with this one.
molokov's review against another edition
4.0
It was great to revisit this material from the diaries of the 2000's, and there was quite a bit there which I didn't even remember! It's also good to see Paul Kidby's artwork blown up a little from the small sizes in which it appears in the diaries as you get to see a lot more detail. A good collection for the fan, especially if you missed out on getting the diaries from 1998-2008. (Obviously, this is volume 2, so you may wish to look at volume 1 as well)
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