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[bliumchik]

I'm reading Machiavelli's The Prince. Thank you, Google.

"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge."

I like this guy, he's clever. Ruthless, but clever. It's also helping me get a better perspective on the Patrician character from the Discworld books, who remains awesome.

I'm also being sat on by a very insistent cat and perusing comic book feminist blogs, which I've just discovered. I mean, I've just discovered they exist. It kind of makes me wish I had the time and money to read comics. Alas, they go on for ever and my library barely acknowledges their existence - they've managed to collect almost all the Sandman books, thankfully, and assorted random volumes of various "teeny" comics, but... yeah. I've liked what I read of Ultimate X-Men, but it really does take so long, and reading it on the computer is of course inconvenient and annoying.

Comments

[ambient-hermes.livejournal.com]

Machiavelli is like sex. Honestly, that man could manipulate the pope into having wild BDSM sex with him.

Feminist blogs are hilarious. Read them, but don't take them too seriously, otherwise they'll try and debate with you-- and we all know where that leads to.

Really bad sex, and not the good sort of bad either.

Definition debates.

And nobody wants to get into those.

*shakes head sadly*

[ambient-hermes.livejournal.com]

Wow. Pope sex. There's some wrong mental imagery for you.

God, I'm on crack.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

The Sandman books are pure unadulterated awesome -- some of the storylines don't really have payoffs and The Kindly Ones, in particular, wanders far too long, but it's still probably the best illustrated narrative of our time.

Ultimate X-Men has its ups and downs, as well, but it's a good take on the old team. You'd love what Joss Whedon's doing in Astonishing X-Men, and if you can find Grant Morrison's work on New X-Men, that's worth a read; Grant's simply mad. (But neither of those are in the Ultimate continuity, of course.)

What else is awesome enough for your attention? Hrm. Pretty much anything by Alan Moore, of course. Top Ten was pure crack for the long-time comic reader, but you'd enjoy it too (check out this snippet (http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php)). If they have the Kingdom Come TPB, that's worth a look, if nothing else (so purty!)....

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

That's the issue with X-men there's so damn much continuity everywhere.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to think of what else might pique your interest. I'd recommend Y: The Last Man for starters. If you really want to explore the darker side of the genre, there's Preacher (heresy beyond compare) and Transmetropolitan (Hunter S. Thompson in the nth century), but they're not for the faint of heart. If you want mad mad crack, there's always Invisibles, but

More in the super-heroic genre Starman was decent if a bit sentimental and too damn stilted for me to fully get into. Authority has its high moments -- the first twelve issues, the Warren Ellis/Bryan Hitch run are the textbook definition of widescreen comics. Planetary is much slower, quieter and much more metatextual, but its payoffs are still profound.

And pretty much anything Gail Simone touches is gold, but she's big on continuity, so I can understand you staying clear.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I read the free sample of transmetropolitan and I do intend to dig that up whenever I have time because it was interesting.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

This chapter (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/30/fanposted_chapter_of.html), I hope? About a present-day photog awoken in the impossibly-far-future? It's probably my favorite single issue for a variety of reasons, and it has the tone I occasionally tapped into for my own columns, back in the day....

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

no, the first one, they put it online for free. Got link from blog of Neil Gaiman, who is awsome.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

The first one is a good start, but the series didn't hook me until the third issue -- the first three issues are an arc, and it has quite a brutal payoff. You'll love it. (It doesn't help that I had a roomie at the time who was much much much like Spider except that he was a stage director and not a journalist, but that's about the only difference.)

I do hope you've hunted down both of Neil's Death TPBs, then? The first one is excellent, the second...eh, not so much, but charmingly adequate, I think. And even sub-par Neil is still Neil.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Only the first one, sadly. My library is for the lose :(
Whenever I'm in the city and I have time to waste gravitate to Kinokunia, the local HUUUUGE comics/manga/nonfiction store, and stand around reading things my library fails at.

[cynicky.livejournal.com]

Wow, when I'm done with exams, and olympiad, and trials, and hsc, and uni and life in general and have some free time I have to read that book, it sounds awesome. He seems to have such cruel and realistic logic, I thrive on that stuff ^-^

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Oh you'd love it. It'll come in handy for taking over the world, and also you get to feel smart when you read science fiction books where somebody does and you're like "Ha! This author read Machiavelli!"

[cynicky.livejournal.com]

I don't think he was the original person to come up with the idea of taking over the world :P

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

No, but his kind of logic is quite obvious in many cases. Eg I was just reading an Orson scott Card book in which there was a virtual war game, and the very successful empire within that followed almost to the word Machiavelli's precautions against rebellion.