Books of interest

Positive Password; Negative Past.

A:

Imagine a book, a sequence of compressed symbols, twenty-seven of them. Every symbol tells it's own story, together they form part of a greater story. Shuffle the symbols around a bit and you get a different story. Now ask yourself if the book can still be said to be the same once the symbols have been disordered, or if the book can only exist when the original order remains intact.

X:

I'm not talking to a book am I?

Y:

No. You're talking to that thing you created to understand your mind. It has power over you, if you hadn't already realized.

X:

Yes, power over me I understand. Power over others is a bit problematical when it hits the mass-(un)consciousness meme.

Y:

Nonsense, it's merely an evolved form of thought. True, right now it can sometimes mean spending time sitting in a field waiting for the energies to balance out, but you have to admit sometimes... the girl from the sauna for instance.

X:

Okay, now it's getting downright supernatural. A Circle of candles is a bit much don't you think?

Y:

No. It anchors you in a realm, gives your mind parameters, contains the effect.

B:

It's an obvious point. Only when the symbols are in the original order can the book be said to exist. That said, what remains when the order is beyond recollection. Or, worse still, never consciously witnessed. All that remains is a location in time and space.

Y:

And with that a mysterious player has destroyed the majority of the human race.

X:

True, and like the undead they are they'll be back on my case tomorrow. Now, I have the answer in-front of me. Getting beyond explaining it to myself is proving apparently pointless.

Y:

No, not pointless. Merely tricky. It's a translation issue. Fifty-five may mean something specific, and in this context could suggest a certain environment. But right now you're painting in very broad strokes. That others will find hard to understand.

X:

It's the ramifications. When I start thinking like this things like the LHC begins to worry me. In that case it's the overlapping wavefront thing, like someone's trying to take my photograph and I feel like I don't want them to, but don't really know why.

Y:

Discovering a third and doubling the sum of all knowledge may sound like a tall order, but you'll see. It's a chain. An yes, the whole LHC actually creates the universe time paradox is most probably true, in at least seventeen dimensions.

X:

Okay, when you start using words like {probability} I know you're trimming the hedge.

Y:

True, there's some who shouldn't be allowed to believe in what to us is so readily obvious.

X:

Fine, throwing uncertainty into my very words for the audience is fine, but whenever you do it fires off a tiger-team and I loose some visualization capability. It's unpleasant. In unsecured space the effect can be unfortunate.

Y:

Not all the time, and face it, you're getting better handling the paradigm shifts. Gaining a greater ability to manipulate the fluidic nature of reality too. Mastery you could say. Finding the edge becomes easier.

X:

Easier? When sometimes I feel like my view on the matter it seen as little more than the television's opinion on whatever channel is playing. The problem here is that something like the Shrek effect is liable to get someone hurt. Fighting it gets downright nasty, when I see who it is that I'm hitting I start to see patterns of force which speak of something deeper. That my identity is in part built from the experience of those effects suggests something beyond failed to take responsibility because I took it upon myself. That's unfair, and speaks of deep entanglement in state resolution.

Y:

Starting to get the feeling some one has been deliberately pushing you over the edge? Something done so they may claim right. The truth here is they were really fighting themselves all along and you got caught in the back wash. It was conscious but repressed.

X:

The shape of it changes. From a huge gorilla to a peanut in an instant. That's only one barb though, there are others. Then there's the question of the mechanism of transference.

::

It has become dispossessed. Cast it out.

Wheels

Aparrently I can even invent wheels. I don't have to of course. I just can, a sort of party trick for the numbers.

A panda walks into a cafe...

Truss, Lynne Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Profile Books ISBN 1861976127

One of my most heartfelt beliefs is that the burning of books is wrong. In the case of this book, however, I'm willing to make an exception. That said, the copy I read was a loaner: I shall be buying my own copy. Not to burn - though I may leave instructions in my will - but to keep as a one of those books I never read but feel better knowing I have.

The reasons for my schizophrenic opinion of this book is down it being two different books in one. Firstly it's Lynne Truss's attempt to patronise the hell out of the reader whilst simultaneously showing off her superior grasp of pedantry (although I believe she gets it slightly wrong in places). Then secondly it's a damn good - light-hearted - guide to punctuation.

The first book could benefit from the odd footnote. Many of the high-horses onto which the author leaps with such glee really could do with a hint of an explanation. Also, tagging Book #1 text with 'IMHO' in large friendly letters would help the reader feel marginally less letdown by their education. Highly annoying. Just reading the introduction had me looking for the matches...

The second book is superb. Not only does it tell what your English teachers failed to (in my school English mainly seemed to have something to do with sitting-up straight, silence, fear, and dog-food), but it also highlights the areas of uncertainty. Personal style and opinion, it seems, has quite a lot to do which what's right and wrong. Occasionally I did find a bit more explanation would have been beneficial... the oft mentioned 'Two Weeks Notice' (should be 'Two Weeks' Notice' but as this a totally new concept to me I still don't get it) for example.

In all this is a good book which I'd recommend to all. But, after breaking out in a cold sweat over the use (or misuse) of an apostrophe on several occasions, I've decided to punctuate in the correct manner as far as possible - but to forgo correctness in favour of ignorance when it all becomes too much.

It all started with the Chronicles of Narnia

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first. Then, several years later I read The Magicians Nephew: a far darker tale. Yet I'd seen Narnia's future, that gave it depth. Turning Narnia from a place into a World, a Universe. And I loved it. I read all but two of remaining chronicles in some random order over a period of years. More years... I reread the whole series when I was given the entire set, a new edition with "better" cover-art, when it was discovered I'd missed two whole books. The spine of each book was numbered. This clearly showed The Magicians Nephew was to be read first. Yet I found that something was missing. It didn't feel right.

For some forgotten reason I did some research into the ordering of the Chronicles and stumbled onto a bit of a controversy. Then, after a while, I realised that the whole question was moot. There may be an generally accepted order. But I could still pick any order I wished. No matter what order they were published in, no matter what order they were written in, no matter what the chronology. To me the order in which I'd first read these wonderful books was "The Right Way". So that's the order I will always read them in: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then The Magicians Nephew, then the rest.

Thinking with a wider scope I eventually decided that all narrative order can be treated as arbitrary. As a result, I was perfectly entitled to impose my own order. Specifically, I was perfectly entitled to read a single book with a threaded plot with any ordering I could devise. So I tried it with Lord of the Rings. When the fellowship dissolves Sam and Frodo head off to Mordor; Merry and Pippin get captured; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli follow the captured hobbits. The story branches again when Pippin splits from Merry. There was nothing stopping me, I decided, from reading the "Pippin thread" first, then reading the rest later. So that's what I did.

From there it was just a small step to reading LOTR whilst leaving bits out. These days I usually skip The Council of Elrond, and indeed much that takes place in Rivendell. And Tom Bombadil - I've always felt he belongs in a totally different book. It's not that I don't read these bits, I do. On their own. Skipping the rest of the book.

I've tried it with other books since. And discovered a few problems: mainly that it can be annoying if you haven't read it, properly, recently. But on the whole I find it's a very good way to get more out of a familiar book. I'm perfectly aware literary purists will now be accusing me of heresy... but I don't care. I've discovered more re-reading books my way that I ever did re-reading in the conventional way. In the end that's what really matters. Isn't it?

Light

Harrison, M. John. Light. Gollancz ISBN: 0575074035

Although I sadly lost my copy back around 1989 The Centari Device by M. John Harrison has always stuck in my memory. It's not that I remember the story (which I do). Or that it's a great tale (which it is). Or that it's Space Opera (which I love). I remember it because it because the words on the page somehow managed to alter my connection with reality.

I had somehow got myself in precisely the same mood when, on a particularly surreal day last week I wandered into a bookshop hoping to find the last Iain M. Banks book I needed to complete my collection. The books were in alphabetical order so I found the books of Banks easy enough. As luck would have it there was one copy left of the book I wanted. Sitting next to it, so obviously out of place, was Light. I wouldn't have paid this much attention normally. However there was my odd mood, also just under the book's title was the following line:

"Light is brilliant" - Iain M. Banks

Picking up the book the blurb inside alluded to the fact that Light was Harrison's first 'hard' SF novel since The Centari Device was published in the mid 70s.

It was at this point I gave-up trying to reconnect to my normal reality. There were just too many little coincidences. I simply surrendered to the inevitable and bought Light too. I'm glad I did - it's one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Light is superbly written - Harrison's prose is a joy to read. I'd describe it as effortless except I'm sure a lot of effort went in to making it appear so. The three stranded story is deep, dark, and downright bizarre in places. One starts in 1999, two in 2400. There are connections, some you see clearly, some you don't. Even the blurb on the back of the book heightened the effect of weirdness, it seemed to bear no resemblance to what was going on. Then about 100 pages in I started to get the creeping feeling that the blurb was telling me about the end of the story. I wasn't wrong - yet it still made no difference. And then there is all the quantum physics which I can't rightly say I understand at the best of times - not that you really need to understand it.

However, personally, the best bit about Light is that strange alteration of my connection with reality. It's a book which somehow manages to sum up a feeling. A feeling which stayed beyond the point where I needed to hunt for something suitable to use as a bookmark. A feeling which made reality seem almost dream like. A head trip. Definitely. One which I'll be taking again very soon.

Maverick

Semler, Ricardo Maverick!. Random House Business Books ISBN 0712678867

A fantastic book. A friend lent it to me, but again it's another book I'd like to buy for myself. It's all about how Semco, a Brazilian manufacturing firm, threw-out the old business rulebook and implemented workplace democracy.

It's a business book. But it's like no other. For a start most of the points made can be applied to more than more than management. Also, unlike other management books, the author tells us about his mistakes. It's more philosophy than management, so most of what is said translates to other areas of life

I've even discovered some of Ricardo's points on time management have rubbed off. Specifically the rule that "if somebody else can do it at least 70% as good as you, let them". So simple. Yet having applied this simple rule to a couple of little projects of mine I can truly say it's had an affect way beyond just getting the job done.

The main inspiration I've drawn from this book is that to create something awesome, you don't even have to approach perfection.

Mother Tongue

Bryson, Bill. Mother Tongue. Penguin ISBN 0-14-014305-X

I defy any language fascist to survive a reading of this book. As usual Bryson is informative AND amusing.

Though I probably should return the copy I borrowed and buy my own.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Pursig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

The tagline on the copy I read was "This book will change your life". Initially I tuned this out of my consciousness, believing it to be nothing but marketing hyperbole. Wrong. This book really did change my life. Well, it changed my perception of life - which is essentially the same thing. It's a strange book, part travelogue, part philosophy. It's captivating and thought provoking. And virtually impossible to get the measure of after a single reading.

In the earlier parts of the book I found Pursig's conclusions were so similar to my own. Initially I took this as validation of elements of my own philosophical views. But then it dawned on my that perhaps Pursig was writing about thoughts which, when presented with similar circumstances as Pursig, are so obvious nobody would bother to discuss them. Yet discuss them he does, and in the process I learned a thing or two about myself.

I need to read this book again sometime soon. I didn't quite grok the discussion of quality, but I muddled through hoping for enlightenment. Which came as I was reaching the end of the book. Essentially Pusrig says that you can't define quality. Only I think you can. So I'm hoping a re-read will help me crystallise my thoughts.