(no subject)

[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

[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.