Reviews and Comments

I'm now slightly worried, because almost all tyranny in the whole Disc series is sorted out by overthrowing the old tyrant and substituting it with a nice, kind new one. I am slightly worried this is not going to last, that without changing the system, it will soon slip back to the old kind of tyranny. But on the other hand, the new one, or some of them, are trying to change the system. Not very fast and not very obviously, but I think ... they are trying to change the system while not allowing power to get out of their own hand. Well not exactly not ... it's ... intricate ... to be more specific ... I wouldn't say Vetinari lets Vimes to take power away from him, but ... he does give Vimes a lot of freedom to do things in Vimes' ways ... but on the other hand ... he knows what Vimes would do is what he also wants ... he uses Vimes. Sure Vimes sometimes plays Vetinari too, but ... mostly Vetinari still controls how most of things go in the city. But that kind of control ... is only managed by Vetinari among all past Patricians of A-M. With the start of the Guilds and board made by the Guild chairs ... maybe Vetinari can slowly transform A-M from a tyranny to something a little more democratic. (even though I think it is canon that Vetinari detests democracy. He doesn't believe it would work. well maybe one day, Vetinari will be replaced, and A-M people under his rule would have grown up enough to take democracy. I mean ... in Guards Guards they were trying to get back to the monarchy. A-M has quite a long way to go before any democracy lasts.

But it is really ... half admirable half alarming, that frequently quoted Otter story by Vetinari. It's the remaining worry of God complex I got from Hannibal (. But it is what he does, it is what the book is doing. It even continues Hogfather. The nature, and the human beasts, have no sense of morality, fairness, goodness or evil. We make it by making the rules.

To be fair I feel the becoming of Nutt is a little bit ... unstructured. The whole book is a little bit unstructured, maybe I didn't get the connections between the parts between the crowd-unity-belonging and the becoming. I can taste sth like a connection there but I'm not yet very clear. The point is I don't see what makes Nutt change so much. It's a little jump-y. But I am so glad to see Nutt become.

And it is both powerful and sad, how Nutt in the end settled the opposition against him. He shouldn't have had to resort to violence/demonstration/threat of violence. But violence is all they understand! (.

I felt it funny, because this is so like debugging, it's like watching a testing/debugging tutorial.... every story is kind of like some robot issues were found and they were trying to design some tests and find out which part of the laws was making it do that. Later stories have some more about how the Laws are logically preventing misuse. I do feel it may be a bit too optimistic to believe under the three laws there is no way the robot could, as the story where the first law was changed said, hold grudge, believe in its own superiority, start a religion and a revolution. I doubt if human could make the robots that can and will always make better - more morally correct - decisions than humans do, with the laws.

But on the other hand, I suppose in that story, she was just trying to take a chance. She was doing some believing in her part too.

It is good. I'll note down some passages, because it would be very long if I record everything in quote...

Atticus Finch's speech at the court is of course the most important. Then there is the part of rigorous school teaching plan. The part where Miss Maudie said her church people criticise her for spending too much time in the garden and not enough time reading the Bible and saying this is too much pleasure to be a good humble believer. The part where Calpurnia brought the two kids to her black people's church. All the parts with Boo Radley. Dill's running away. I think Ms Alexandra and people's kitchen talk and the hiding of true sad things beneath the trivial chitchat? and the part of minding coming from a good family too much, and all the parts about we are not their kind of people (or folks, as in the southern dialect).

I listened to the audiobook, so it is quite easy to go through all this. I imagine I'd need more patience to read it myself. But it is a lot more fun than what I had thought. Telling from the child's perspective and all the kid things they do make it more fun.