I'm not familiar with this author, or his books, but thought the link to this online article might be of interest to some:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2226306,00.html

Cher

It being the holidays and all, I highly suggest you go get a copy of "The Hogfather" and remedy this ASAP!
Terry Pratchett is a fabulous author. I'd dare say my favourite author.
I heard this news yesterday and am saddened that he has this battle to face.
~m

Thanks for the suggestion. I usually get a B&N gift card at XMas, so I'll probably use it for that.

Cher

Terry Pratchett really should be one of the first things that are thrust at a young person when they show any inkling of being a fan of fantasy. I had the misfortune to learn about Piers Anthony's Xanth series (truly, a series of puns that took on a life of their own) instead, and I have wished for a change in my past ever since.

Pratchett is a prolific writer; I believe he's on his 38th Discworld book, and it sounds like he will break the 40+ barrier before his illness will silence him. The remarkable thing about the Discworld books is that they - by and large - have a quality to them that one would not expect from such a lengthy series of what appears at first gawk as powder-light fantasy.

The key to understanding the phenomenon that is Pratchett's popularity (#2 best bookseller in the UK after that Rowling lady) is that the books are both ripping yarns for young boys and girls as well as keen satires of society and the larger fallacies of mankind for the older geeks out there. And although your enjoyment increases with each book of the Discworld that you read, each story is fleshed out enough that each can be enjoyed on their own.

For those of you who are fast friends of your libraries, I suggest picking up two books by the fellow:

Guards, Guards: considered to be one of the 'portal' books to the Discworld; GG was written right around the time that Pratchett rebooted the Disc from a faux-Elizabethan era to a world with more Edwardian and Victorian sensibilities. It's stayed there ever since. Want to get started with the Discworld? You can't do much better than following the story of the world's tallest dwarf as he enters LondoAnkh-Morpork's Night Guard and saves the city from the peril of a profoundly stupid cloister of conspirators that stumble on the secret of bringing back Dragons.

Good Omens: This isn't a Discworld book. It is instead a story co-written with a fella named Neil Gaiman about the Anti-Christ being born upon the Earth and turning out to be kind of a nice kid instead. Wonderful bit of whimsy that gets into all of the good, knotty bits that we all need when we think about good, evil, and humanity.

It's sad, but he seems optimisic.
Small Gods was always one of my favorites.
The younger readers stuff- Wee Free Men and Hat Full of Sky are great too.

Well, once I get done with Dream Hunter, if I don't go back to slogging through Time Enough for Love (I don't know why I'm having a hard time getting through that one, love...even harder than The Illuminatus Trilogy for some reason) the next in the queue is Color of Magic, which a certain 'Yote gave me for my birthday. As the list of authors he's turned me on to grows yet again...