Just finished this:




and found myself rooting for Titus, of course, even though I knew whiteboy Alistair was required to win. At least it had Varric in it, and some dragons.

This series is great. Don't worry. The plot will flesh itself out, and there are nice twists.

Well, there are quite a few books on my "to read" pile and I might even find some time for them in the future.

Patrick Rothfuss - The Slow Regard Of Silent Things
George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois - Dangerous Women
George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois - Rogues
Matt Ruff - Fool on the Hill
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings

I only read the first dozen pages of Murakami's 1Q84 and then had to put it away because something else was more important. It was a gift though so I should at least try to finish reading it.

Machiavelli's The Prince is satire. He never meant it to be taken seriously, it was his attack on the ruling family in one of Italy's city states back then. You can easily look up the details, which is why it's so aggravating when people use his work as a basis for their endevavours.

Yes well, he described the court in Rome and the Medicis who removed him from his position, had him imprisoned tortured and finally exiled. I don't think he was actually giving them sound advice on how to rule after that.


Machiavelli

"Machiavellianism" is a widely-used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described in The Prince. The book itself gained enormous notoriety and wide readership because most readers assumed the author was teaching and endorsing evil and immoral behavior. Because of this, the term "Machiavellian" is often associated with deceit, deviousness, ambition, and brutality, although Machiavelli likely only used it as stylistic device to gain the reader's attention for his close analysis of the actual techniques used by rulers.

The Prince

As discussed by Johnston (1958) many authors have historically argued that "the book is, first and foremost, a satire, so that many of the things we find in it which are morally absurd, specious, and contradictory, are there quite deliberately in order to ridicule ... the very notion of tyrannical rule". Hence, Johnston says, "the satire has a firm moral purpose – to expose tyranny and promote republican government."

This position was the standard one in Europe during the 18th century, amongst the Enlightenment philosophes. Diderot thought it was a satire. And in his The Social Contract, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said:


Whether or not the word "satire" is the best choice, there is more general agreement that despite seeming to be written for someone wanting to be a monarch, and not the leader of a republic, the Prince can be read as deliberately emphasizing the benefits of free republics as opposed to monarchies.

Differences of opinion amongst commentators revolve around whether this sub-text was intended to be understood, let alone understood as deliberately satirical or comic.

Nope, Not as far as I can tell anyway.

Ehh, I heard Ready Player One is kinda bad, so I'll see how the movie adaptation is.