Terry Prachett

He's a very uneven writer, though. Some of his books feel rushed and are rather repetitive; others are true gems. IMO he's at his best with his "children's" books -- The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is probably my all-time favorite.

I also liked Dark Side of the Sun, which isn't Discworld at all. And yeah, Nanny Ogg rocks.

I've read books in both my native language and English. And I find them far more enjoyable in English, but that's mostly a personal preference.

I've switched from reading the novels in my own language (German) to reading them in English.

I particularly like the tiny bits of German-sounding words or even German words in the novels, for example in The Amazing Maurice …

Now, last week a friend of mine showed me a calendar with pictures of the Hogfather TV series … up to then I didn't even know about it. Seems that PTerry himself is in there ! (Wikipedia has a small page about it).

Last novel In read was Thud! I honestly dislike the horrible american & German cover, but the original English one is superb. I'd like to have it as a wallpaper.

What few people know is that Rhianna, his daughter (don't know how many children he has), is an editor of a gaming mag, as far as I know, and that she wrote a novella for Beyond Divinity. It shipped with the British versions of the game, I think. Currently unavailable otherwise. She has a nice humour in it, too.

I've got a signed book - from the only time he was in Cologne. He even was in my home town, Leverkusen, near Cologne, when a novel of him was played on stage. Sadly I got this info only few days after the event. I'd still like ti kick myself for that (to me it's like hgetting to know that Jeff Smith, author of Bone, was actually here in Bonn, south of Cologne, on his signing tour, and I got to know it only a week later ! I was almost banging my head on the next wall for that.)

In short : I love his books, and the older he gets, the more he writes, the better his books become.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
He's a very uneven writer, though. Some of his books feel rushed and are rather repetitive; others are true gems.

I personally believe his "worst" books are the early ones, and the newest ones are actually very good, imho. But that's my personal opinion.

To me, it's a matter of how old his books are.

Originally Posted by Danicek
I've read TP books both in my native language (Czech) and in English and I have to say that I enjoy them more in English. I believe they are pretty easy to read and to understand. I don't think you should have problems with them, Bartacus. Did you try?

Nope, I didn't try it out yet. Normally when I do have the chance to read a book in my language, I will take that one above the original version. When I don't have the chance, I will try to read it in the native language. -> I'm reading the Harry Potter books now and the sixth book wasn't there in Dutch. There was an English book at the library, so I simply took that one.

Bartacus, sometimes there are things that cannot be translated very good. Especially things like word plays, which can often be found in Terry's books. At best, this could be remedied as simple as a provided explanation on behalf of the translator, but I've heard that in my language's translation this led to cutting entire paragraphs …

Yes, word games are increadibly hard to translate. I tried it with my own, very few short stories.
At least I *kenw* what intention I had in using them - a professional translator often has not, unless he or she contacts the author.

I have the feeling they did a decent job, since I still have tons of fun reading a TP book. I know however when you need to form an opinio of a writer you can only do it when you've read the book in the native language of the author