★★★☆☆ It's better if read after the previous 19 novels
Hogfather
Terry Pratchett
I previously read Hogfather on kindle, and gave it quite a low rating: two stars. It only avoided the one-star rating by having a lot of very good jokes in it. In retrospect, I was unfair to Hogfather. The one-star rating was, in essence, given for a single sentence at the beginning of the book
The Discworld novels can be read in any order, but the Death series is a good place to start.
Now, the statement "The Discworld novels can be read in any order" is literally true. It is physically possible to read the last one first, then the second to last... In fact, if you want, you can pick one out at random, read the middle page, then the page after that, then the page before the middle, and so on, until you arrive simultaneously at the beginning and the end. But I'm not not letting Sir Terry off the hook so easily. He obviously intends to imply that they can be enjoyed in any order.
This is not true.
The important difference between my most recent reading of Hogfather and the previous reading, which I gave a two-star rating, is that I have been listening my way through the Discworld series in order. Thus I have now read (or listened to) the 19 previous Discworld novels. It makes a huge difference. I now know who the Hell Susan Sto Helit is and what Hex is. And similarly for most of the other characters. (Not, peculiarly, the Hogfather himself, who has never before appeared in the Discworld, and barely appears in this, his eponymous novel.)
That said, Hogfather is not, in my opinion, one of the best Discworld novels. The plot is weak and random -- more of a plum pudding with jokes dispersed randomly throughout than a coherent story. (TBH, I have never met a plum pudding in the flesh. My impressions of plum puddings are entirely based on literary references. Like this one.) Pratchett is of course a very funny writer, and his verbal fireworks provoke awe. Many of the jokes even work when you don't know who the characters are. They work much better when you do, though!