August 07, 2025

Browsing Ben’s Bookshelf (bonus books)

25 minutes

Our August episode has been delayed, so here’s a bonus episode in which Ben talks about some of the books on his Pratchett shelf that won’t get their own episode!

You can find all the books mentioned in this episode in the Books index on our website.

Some brief notes on this episode:

A “shelfie” is a photo of one’s shelf of books or board games, usually shared online.

The tie-in books Ben mentions are Where’s My Cow (see #Pratchat62, “There’s a Cow in There”), The World of Poo (as referenced in Snuff), Mrs Bradshaw’s Guide and Dodger’s Guide to London (see #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh”).

The published official Discworld maps are The Streets of Ankh-Morpork, The Discworld Mappe, Death’s Domain, A Tourist Guide to Lancre (now out of print), The Mappa Discworld, and the books The Compleat Ankh-Morpork and The Compleat Discworld Atlas. There’s also a newer one Ben forgot: The Unreal Guide to Unseen University.

Paul Kidby’s first Discworld art book was The Pratchett Portfolio. It was followed by The Art of Discworld (the one with the “Mona Ogg” on the cover) in 2001.

Turtles All the Way Down was Marc Burrows’ companion volume for his biography The Magic of Terry Pratchett. It’s currently sold out, as is Tales From Roundworld, the collection of Pratchett rarities he gave away at early performances of his live show based on the biography.

Only the first four Discworld plays – the three Ben mentions, plus Wyrd Sisters – were published by Corgi. Fourteen more have been published by Methuen Drama (Bloomsbury), three by Oxford University Press, and three by Samuel French (Concord Theatricals). Find out more on Stephen Briggs’ website.

The public version of our video episode about the two versions of The Carpet People is on YouTube.

Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure was published as a tie-in to The Amazing Maurice film, and was available from the official website. It’s still there, but can’t be ordered; presumably it is now out of print and out of stock.I

It turns out The Nac Mac Feegle’s Big Wee Alphabet Book is back in stock! (Though postage to Australia costs more than the book.) Please don’t buy up all the copies before we get a few, ye ken? Big thanks to listener Emily for the tip-off!

The new collections of Pratchett’s early children’s stories are quite different to the previous ones. Tales of Wizards and Dragons and Tales of Beasts and Bugs each collect a handful of stories with full colour illustrations by Pratchett children’s illustration Mark Beech. They’re new this year from Puffin, and so aimed at a younger audience. Beasts and Bugs comes out at the end of August 2025.

We’ll be back soon (hopefully later this month) with #Pratchat88, our episode about Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch and Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

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By Splendid Chaps Productions

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