Men at Arms
"Unadulterated fun." —San Francisco Chronicle "Pratchett has now moved beyond the limits of humorous fantasy, and should be recognized as one of the more significant contemporary English-language satirists." —Publishers Weekly The fifteenth novel in the Discworld series from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett, featuring a lycanthropic recruit and a sword in a stone! Corporal Carrot has been promoted! He’s now in charge of the new recruits guarding Ankh-Morpork, Discworld’s greatest city, from Barbarian Tribes, Miscellaneous Marauders, unlicensed Thieves, and such. It’s a big job, particularly for an adopted dwarf. But an even bigger job awaits. An ancient document has just revealed that Ankh-Morpork, ruled for decades by Disorganized crime, has a secret sovereign! And his name is Carrot... And so begins the most awesome epic encounter of all time, or at least all afternoon, in which the fate of a city—indeed of the universe itself!—depends on a young man’s courage, an ancient sword’s magic, and a three-legged poodle’s bladder.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
32mentions
29people
2010–2026years
13% recommend88% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I like the way Terry Pratchett put this in Men At Arms:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots...
- Men at Arms (the direct followup to Guards! Guards!) was my first Pratchett book and really had me hooked. I think any of the Vimes-centric books are great starting points, because the detective mystery style of plotting keeps the pages at a steady balance of exposition and development. The books focused on witches, wizards and religion can be too on-the-nose, and the ones that use more abstract themes or go deep into one character are easier to grasp after having that entry point of Vimes chasing after a villain.
- My favorite Pratchett book is probably Men at Arms, though he has many greats (and I have not even read all of them yet).
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, particularly:
"Mort" and "Reaper Man"; "Guards! Guards!", "Men at Arms", and "The Night Watch"; "Wyrd Sisters", "Witches Abroad" and "Lords and Ladies"; and "Small Gods" and "Pyramids".
The first two are about Death, the second three about Samuel Vimes, the third group about Granny Weatherwax, and the last two are stand-alones. All the books are worth reading, but those are some of the most engaging and compelling, and they teach skepticism, humanity, kindness, courage and absurdity in equal measures.
- Agreed, and thats why we have the boots theory.
The Poor Man’s Shoe Theory, widely known as the Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness, is a concept that explains how those who are poor often end up spending more in the long run because they can’t afford to make quality purchases up front. This idea was popularized by Terry Pratchett, the acclaimed British writer, in his 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms, through a passage in which the character Captain Sam Vimes observes the realities of poverty and consumption.
“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.”
“But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
https://footwearmagazine.com/poor-man-shoe-theory-poverty-co...
- "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
"This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness."
- Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
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Dollar stores, even when they're actually giving you low prices (and not just charging $1 for 1 of something that you could get a 3-pack of for $2 elsewhere), are often selling lower-quality versions of the products they sell—sometimes versions specifically made for them, but without any visible difference in packaging.
