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Discworld books, by Terry Pratchett

Constable Detritus, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, was guarding the Opera House. It was an approach to policing that he'd picked up from Sergeant Colon. When you were all by yourself in the middle of a rainy night, go and guard something big with handy overhanging eaves. Colon had pursued this policy for years, as a result of which no major landmark had ever been stolen.¹

¹ Well, except for Unseen University once, but that was just a student prank.

(from Soul Music)

Can I choose a favorite? Pretty difficult. If I'm choosing a one-off, maybe, Pyramids? And Interesting Times. And ... oh dear, now I've started it's hard to stop. Let's leave it there for the moment.

And as far as series are concerned, well, I have a fondness for the Guards books (dear Carrot), and it's always fun to see Death in action. But I think my favorite series has to be the wizards, and of course Rincewind has to be the all-time favorite character.

I don't know what you can say about the Discworld books, except that I believe Pratchett is responsible for about half the hardcover book buying in Great Britain (don't quote me, I just think I read that somewhere), and they're set in a fantasy world but really they're all about humor, and I imagine some large proportion of Pratchett's readers would never dream of touching "fantasy", and don't even realize they are. They're parodies, first and foremost. Parodies of what, you may ask? Well, real life, I guess. He covers a lot of ground! But very very funny.

Wizard books:

The Colour of Magic

The Light Fantastic

Equal Rites

Sourcery

Eric

Interesting Times

The Last Continent

Click on the book covers to go to Amazon and find out more about these books

Witch books:

Wyrd Sisters

Witches Abroad

Lords and Ladies

Maskerade

Carpe Jugulum

Guard books:

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Death books:

Mort

Reaper Man

Soul Music

Hogfather

Misc:

Pyramids

Moving Pictures

Small Gods

The Truth

Thief of Time

Monstrous Regiment

Going Postal

Pratchett has also written some Discworld books "for younger readers", as well as a number of other books for the younger crowd - all of which are worth reading.

You can find out more about the books at: http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/

This site has extensive quotes from the books, so a great place to go to get a flavor of Terry Pratchett's style:

http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/closet/Closet.html#Pratchett

and so has this:

http://www.extenuation.net/disc/quotescom.html

and so has this! (you can see that one of the big things people enjoy about Terry Pratchett is the one-liners):

http://www.au.lspace.org/books/pqf/index.html

The site this page appears on is also one of the best fan sites, with lots of information, newsgroups, etc:

http://www.au.lspace.org/