Terry Pratchett's Discworld is one of the most famous, best-loved - and largest! - series of novels in the English language. The first Discworld book, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. The most recent, Unseen Academicals, is the 37th Discworld novel. (Yes, you read that right!)

So what is it about Discworld that has captured the imaginations of so many readers around the world and reputedly made Terry Pratchett both the most popular fantasy author AND the most shoplifted author in the UK during the 1990s?

For a start, Discworld is not quite like anything else. It's fantasy, but comic fantasy rather than epic sword and sorcery. The Discworld is flat and round and sits on the backs of four giant elephants, which in turn stand on the back of the giant space turtle, the Great A'Tuin. The Discworld contains a variety of continents, countries and cities, many of which may seem eerily familiar.

Terry Pratchett's great talent is in the complex, amusing and so very human characters he creates and the ways in which he uses their adventures to poke gentle and not so gentle fun at the real world. You'll find send-ups of everything from stamp collecting to the communications revolution to The Phantom of the Opera in the Discworld novels, as well as more serious points being made about issues including race relations, democracy and personal freedom - to name just a few.

So, where to begin? I'd recommend NOT starting at the beginning. This is partly because Pratchett is clearly still feeling his way early on and so the first few novels in the series are less polished than those that come later. The other reason not to start at the beginning is, well, thanks to the way the series is structured, you don't have to! Different novels in the series focus on different sets of characters. Each book has a specific, self-contained plot but some are "stand alone" novels with only passing references to characters and events from other books, while others follow the continuing adventures of particular characters and form sub-series within the main series.