Thursday, April 13, 2017

Philosophy and Terry Pratchett by Jacob Held and James South

I read this on a long bus trip, and found out that it's not light enough to be travel reading material - I will definitely have to reread this one day to more fully absorb everything.

Anyway, Philosophy & Terry Pratchett is a collection of essays divided into four categories:
1. Self-perception, Narrative and Identity (4 essays)
2. Social and Political Philosophy (3 essays)
3. Ethics and the Good Life (4 essays)
4. Logics and metaphysics. (2 essays)

Some essays read like an essay analysing Discworld, while others read as though Discworld was added to a discussion on philosophy. On the whole, though, I found parts two and three to be the most interesting ones, although that's probably because of the topic than the writing style. In particular, essays on the Witches on Lancre and Death tended to be the most interesting ones, no matter which category they were in.

You won't need to have an understand of philosophy to read this, though it will be helpful, but you'll want to have read most (if not all) of all the Discworld books before reading this. I haven't read a few and didn't get the reference to certain plot elements.

This is review is rather short but there isn't much to say. If you're a Discworld fan and are interested in exploring the different ways that we can view the Disc, then there's a good chance that you'll be interested in it (assuming you don't mind some academic language).

1 comment :

  1. I haven't read any of Pratchett's work, I'm afraid. I think I have the first couple of Discworld books on my TBR shelf. It's one of those series that has so many books in it, I'm afraid to start it! I really should though. This sounds like an interesting companion book. I'll have to keep it in mind for after I read the series.

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