Terry Pratchett's books are the opposite of 'ordinary potboilers'

The moral weight that Jonathan Jones says is missing from the Discworld novels is very much there – but to know this, you do actually have to read them

Like many people on Twitter, I felt the red mist descend as I read Guardian art columnist Jonathan Jones’s newly published article saying that life is too short to read a Terry Pratchett novel. I’ve loved the Discworld books since I was nine and also spent some of my professional life carefully reading and commenting on them. But a raised eyebrow and a shoulder shrug are probably the most dignified response to Jones’s declaration that while he doesn’t intend to read a single one of Pratchett’s books, he is nonetheless sure that they’re not “actual literature” and that the late author was a “mediocrity” churning out “ordinary potboilers”.

When he turned his attention to “the true delights of ambitious fiction”, though, I had to speak up. Jones writes:

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