Reread 'Thud!' (Discworld) today. I'd remembered an it was one of my favourite Discworld books, but it'd been long enough since I'd last read it, that I couldn't actually remember most of what happened; the resolution, but not how it got there. It was good.
Caught some stuff I hadn't previously. Not just "oh this was explained by such-and-such", but with theming, or parallels. And even if one bit was near-explicitly spelled out, the sheer ARTISTRY of how it was done, how it's woven together, and how it works on multiple levels. For purposes of the plot, the contents of that book could have been anything, but it was chosen as something that would fit nicely, AND have a proper level of dissonance for that one scene near the end.
Also, a sentence an stuck out to me, this time. "You can't say 'we're the good guys' and then do bad-guy things", or words to that effect, I don't remember the page number to look up the direct quote. On its own, and even more in context, it encapsulates something I've been thinking about.
Also... something I'm only considering now, I hadn't noticed it while reading, but since the last time I'd read it, I have more experience with what I call "madness", the drive that overwhelms everything else and makes anything done in its services acceptable and you don't want to step away and think for a moment because then you'll stop, and its consequences. The things he didn't do, they don't seem silly, they don't even seem "understandable", they seem obvious. I feel like I have a greater understanding of the ludicrous degree of self-control he showed here. Better able to properly get the story as it was intended to convey.
