So I wanna read Discworld...

While publishing order is best way to experience it, most of the ppl who I tried to get into the series found "The Colour of Magic" and "The Lighting Fantastic" a little hard to swallow.

I find the standalone books to be a better start : "Small Gods" or "Pyramids" or the 1st book of City Watch series - "Guard,Guards" .

So if you want, try with the publishing order but if it doesnt click for you try one of the 3 above mentioned books.

Let's go with a rare answer.

Unseed Academicals.

It's a later novel, but it features an all new core cast and requires no real knowledge of the world before diving in.
It also happens to be really good.

There's something to be said for the publication order or the listed "started novels", but those are for if you're already committed to reading the whole thing.

Why not instead start with an excellent standalone one?

I'm going to go against the grain here a bit, and recommend the book Guards, Guards as a first read. Not only is it really funny and well written, it also works as a great introduction to one of the major locations of Discworld, Ankh-Morpork. The reason why I would not recommend starting with the first books in publishing order is simply because they might not give you the best first impression. Guards, Guards is also a good start as it won't really spoil anything else.

In order sounds about right, but to be honest it doesn't really matter. My favorite books in the series are the ones about the city/night watch police force. I also enjoyed the Rincewind ones, & the lipwig series. Also The Truth, which is about the founding of the first news paper is a really fun read.

I often recommend Mort as a first novel, is the best novel of the early times, and the Pratchett style is getting stronger...

...or Small Gods, because is my favourite book of the Discworld, and anyone sci-fi /fantasy fan or not should read it,

From Mort, you can go on publishing order without having any weak book ahead, and go back to the first three novels as a fan of the series.

You should start at the begining, with The Colour of Magic (and then The Light Fantastic since it is a direct sequel). I think I read them in publication order.

This

View attached image.

Publishing order byt skip "Rising Steam". Pratchett was very sick (altzhimers) and that one is terrible. You simply dont want it. Like "Snuff" but way worse.

Actually, there's really no only one right way to start. But I warn you - it's not wise to try first each of every saga's. You may be not able to chose later what to take first)
I , personally, also started with Rincewind 's first title as got gifted 3 books: 2 of Rincewind's saga and one of Death's.
However, even though I liked all of them, 'Mort' seemed to me much interesting one. So I started to love The Death. AS MUCH AS CATS.
But... Than I found about Mother Weatherwax....
And later about Commandor Vimes....
Now I can't simply choose my favourite one! Aaaargh!

Oh, sir Terry... come back, pleeease...