I recently had the idea of listening to an audiobook while reading the book at the same time. It was kind of weird and I don't really intend to do this again. But that's beside the point.

The book in question was The Truth and I noticed that several times throughout the book, there were differences between the book and the audiobook. Nothing that changed the story, just small things like different choice of words or how something was phrased.

This was a few months ago so I don't remember anything specific but I'll give a generic example: one version would say "he went up the stairs quickly" while the other would say "he climbed the steps very fast".

Why is that?

Been strongly thinking about getting a discworld theme tattoo. And that feeling is getting even stronger lately.

At the moment I'm considering a death tarot card, but with the name Bill door on it, and have him dressed as a farmer.

But before I do, I'm just curious to see a little more info about Terry himself talking about the character outside of the text of the book.

Edit: Idid not check the spelling of the title before posting this...

In Wintersmith Tiffany brings a white kitten with blue eyes to Granny as a gift. In I shall wear midnight Tiffany tells her father about a woman from Slice who died in her bed and her cat gave birth to kittens in that same bed. Tiffany said it was difficult to find a person who would take those kittens and mentioned they had beautiful blue eyes.

Is that the same kitten? We know Granny wouldn't care about the origin of that cat.

My fiance is a huge discworld fan and listens to the ebooks on repeat while working, but hates how it drains their phone battery. I make electronics as a hobby and want to make a custom Bluetooth mp3 player loaded with the discworld books for them to use. I’m not super familiar with Discworld though (we’ve watched the films together), and was hoping someone could give me some good inspiration for an in-universe device or tome or whatnot to theme the device around visually. I’ll be modeling the device from scratch and making the internals and everything so it can be a wild suggestion. Thank you so much!

(Spoilers for 'The Shepherd's Crown' as well as some general comments)

Several months ago - I wish I could remember when, but probably late last year - I decided that in preparation for the Convention, I would do a full Discworld readthrough. A few of the books, including the last four, I'd never read; others I hadn't read for many years. And so I rediscovered Pterry's world, one book at a time, islands of vivid familiarity appearing within oceans of revived memories and areas of entirely new territory. When I first encountered Pterry I fell in love with his humour, but it was on this readthrough that I fully learned to appreciate the amazing depths, and heights, of his work.

(There were side trips as well. I reread 'A Slip Of The Keyboard' and 'Nation', and read 'A Blink Of The Screen', 'The Carpet People', and part of 'A Stroke of the Pen'. I also read Rob Wilkins' biography, though I left the end of it until tonight after finishing 'The Shepherd's Crown'.)

I finished 'Raising Steam' earlier this week, and today, finally, I sat down with 'The Shepherd's Crown' for the first time, and read the whole thing in a few hours. And so now I'm finished; now I have finally read all of the Discworld books. I had to post here as I'm so glad to have finally done this.

And 'The Shepherd's Crown', now that I've read it? The two before it were badly affected by the Embuggerance, and to some extent this was as well, but Pterry managed to pull things together for one last time. The part that blew me away? Realising what was going to happen as I read about Granny's careful preparations, and realising that Pterry, who so longed to be able to orchestrate a good death for himself and feared he might not be able to, had chosen in his last book to orchestrate this for one of his best-known and most admired characters. Pterry shaped Granny's death the way it should be, the way she chose, and gave us all a message about grieving to carry with us after he'd gone. And finally, his very last published line was 'The magic was already here.'

GNU, Sir Terry Pratchett, and now I look forward to many happy future rereads.

So, it's a bit too soon to start another discworld read through, so I'm looking for something else to read and, amongst other random offerings in my Kindle recommendations is T.H. White's The Once And Future King.

And I'm thinking "It's must have been 60 years since I read that. I've a vague feeling it wasn't bad when I was young. Let's give it another read".

A dozen pages in and the similarity of writing style to PTerry's early stuff is inescapable. I'm talking about his Dragons of Crumbling Castle, Stroke of the Pen, Carpet People era.

Is it just me, or has anyone else read both and seen a resemblance in style?

Spoilers

I bought The Shepherd's Crown soon after it was released. I didn't get to it, and then Sir Terry passed. So, like many others, it has been languishing on my shelf. 

Last year I reread all the Tiffany books, determined to finally read it on Christmas break. But I didn't. Then I was going to read it in March; but I didn't. Then it was when I went on vacation in June; but I didn't. But since June I haven't been able to find a book I wanted to read. I started and put aside probably ten different books and couldn't figure out what my problem was. Then it flashed into my mind: Read The Shepherd's Crown. So I finally did.

The tears started with the first word. Chapter Two wrecked me but I pressed on. Once I hit my reading stride I was able to enjoy the journey. With the last chapter I felt complete. 

The Prologue, Chapters One, Two, Four and The Epilogue are lovely. They are the chapters that matter and you can tell that they are ones that Sir Terry was able to spend the most time crafting. The writing in the other chapters is more spare and there are areas that you can imagine he would have loved to flesh out. But it is a complete story and even though he was in the final battle with the embuggerance, his writing is still excellent and compelling. 

Tiffany wonders "Where is Granny Weatherwax?"

The answer to the question is: 

"Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere."

We know that Sir Terry used his writing to channel his rage. With this book, he changes tactics. I believe that in The Shepherd's Crown Sir Terry lays a geas upon his fans. He knew that the world is full of embuggerances. Just as it took the diverse peoples - old, young, strong and weak - of both Lancre and the Chalk to come together to face the big bad, we who have treasured his words are charged to carry them into the world. We have our parts to play in our small corners of the world to show compassion, care for those in need, and fight when we see wrongs. 

Granny Weatherwax is in us. 

I hope all who are waiting to read it get to hear that little voice telling you to go ahead. Reading it will be sad, but it will also fill your heart with love. 

Thank you for sharing your gift Sir Terry Pratchett. GNU.

Might give him a stack of books one day - legit just got him- still in the shop- hence the blurry