some unrelated thoughts

[ricardienne]

-I guess "presume" is the "correct" substitute for the evil "assume" because it acknowledges that the speaker's statement is 'presumptious'?

-Early Tamora Pierce is actually not nearly as bad either as I remember, or as her later stuff.

-Latin diplomas = win! (but don't bother congratulating me: I'm still in undergrad for one more semester, as I finish up my second major in spite of having graduated in the first one.)

-Why don't Naomi Novik's characters read any literature? All these scientific treatises don't actually seem to help at all, and Temeraire would probably learn more useful things, emotionally and socially, from things Aeschylus or Shakespeare or even Jane Austen. Also, it would be more fun if Laurence pulled out his Horace and Virgil to try to persuade his dragon that they need to sacrifice everything for king and country.

-Philosophers beating their slaves while maintaining perfect calm is a really weird and disturbing trope. But also rather fascinating.

Comments

[existentialgoat.livejournal.com]

-Philosophers beating their slaves while maintaining perfect calm is a really weird and disturbing trope. But also rather fascinating.

*cracks up*

I don't think I've ever run across that trope. Where have you found it lately?

Also: should I read His Majesty's Dragon? I read about the first ten pages and am not convinced I want to read the rest of it. But maybe it gets more interesting after the dragon actually hatches?

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Well, I've so far encountered it about Plutarch, Plato, and Zeno, and it makes sense: slaves being the ultimate place where in principle one is unrestrained, and self-control being the ultimate trait of the philosopher. But still...

I have now read 3 HMDragon books, and they are sort of fun, for values of fun that include Dragons Acting Like Battleships and lots of awkward Napoleonic Britishness. Although after the first one, she seems to have taken a page from Jacqueline Carey and is sending them off on Foreign Travel (China in bk. 2, Istanbul and surroundings in bk. 3, and, I'm told, Africa in bk. 4). But at least it's foreign travel -- in space with dragons.