{"id":4776,"date":"2018-11-20T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2018-11-18T05:06:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-18T13:06:33","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapters-31-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapters-31-32\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld II&#8217;: Chapters 31 &#038; 32"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the the final chapters of <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, the wizards succeed in tricking the elves. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made it, friends! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve completed my second <i>Science of Discworld<\/i> book! As a whole, I feel like I enjoyed the <i>Discworld<\/i> story more than the first <i>Science <\/i>book. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re both pretty ridiculous, but I do enjoy time travel a great deal, and this book manages to poke fun at the genre and couple the plot with a lot of really cool science about history and time travel. I did want to bring up the question I posed on video: exactly what was it like going to the theater in Shakespeare\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this particular line that interested me:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The wizards looked at the crowd. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as well behaved even as the ones back home; people were picnicking, small parties were being held, and there was a general sense that the audience looked upon the actual play as pleasant background noise to their personal social occasions.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fascinating to think of that and how theater is viewed these days: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not nearly as participatory in most settings. There <i>is<\/i> an importance to socializing at the theater, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got all these class designations attached to live theater, particularly if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about the high-end stuff in the major cities. (And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even get me started on accessibility and money issues in theater I WILL START SCREAMING LIKE A PTERODACTYL.) So how much of this is true? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten a sense that things were far more rollicking back then, and that it was only in the last few hundred years that theater became associated with the upper class or with high society. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m <i>real<\/i> vague on that sort of knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think as much of the science went over my head as the first time either, and while I had some issues with the generalities made, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that this ended on such a positive note. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any secret that I love talking about stories and their meaning to me and others. Hell, my next book is deliberately about storytelling and myth-making, so this is entirely my JAM. I admit that it was a pleasant surprise that this book dealt so much with the science of storytelling because it was not something I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever given so much thought to. Over the course of <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, I got to experience a book that felt <i>very<\/i> in-line with the greater themes of the <i>Discworld<\/i> series, too, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another reason I liked it more. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotten me to re-visit the stories I was told that I never really <i>thought<\/i> of as stories, and I appreciate that. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this message that I enjoyed the most:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Think critically about what you are told. Do not accept the word of authority unthinkingly.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to think I try to do this as often as I can, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a challenging journey. There are so many sources of authority that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not exactly aware of! Authority figures don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to necessarily be leaders or public figures either. They can be teachers, members of your family, friends. And we are told <i>so much<\/i> bullshit on a daily basis, and I do think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our responsibility to unravel that. Well, not just that, but to challenge the narrators, to make sure that <i>better<\/i> stories are told about humanity and our world. We have to do this sometimes to people we like and admire, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s immensely difficult, too. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a nice note to end the book on; throughout this story, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been the general focus. Who tells stories? What do they <i>actually<\/i> say about the world? Our development would have been nigh impossible without that, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad to have some actual science to back up that position.<\/p>\n<p>So! From here on out, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going back to just one book at a time for the remainder of this series. I may slot in another <i>Science <\/i>book later on, but for now, I do want to make good time for the rest of the <i>Discworld <\/i>books. Thanks, friends!<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/tD9EnJ-D8RA<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the the final chapters of The Science of Discworld II, the wizards succeed in tricking the elves. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,552],"class_list":["post-4776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->