The Packbats' Weblog

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was published in 2004, and everyone seemed to be enraptured by it, and ... well, the name Packbat didn't exist until 2005, but someone who would take that name in a year read it and thought it was kind of adequate but not great. The worldbuilding was interesting, and this was a time where they didn't tend to give up on books, so they did read it through? But the whole thing felt to that reader like a plot summary - maybe somewhere else there was a version of this story that was enrapturing, but we were reading the TV Tropes recap page of that story, and it was just dry.

Except when it wasn't. Because sometimes Jonathan Strange would try something, or someone else would try something, and it was like being dropped into a story that was happening now, not in a summary. There was dialogue, conversation, perspective. It was suddenly and unquestionably alive, and whoever we remember being "I" then loved it.

Anyway, this year a friend of ours mentioned another book, Piranesi, said it was really good, and we'd been looking for an excuse to go to the library so we checked our library catalogue. And there was a book called "Piranesi" in the catalog, by the same Susanna Clarke, and it was the book our friend was talking about, so we thought, "Maybe Clarke's learned something. Bits of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell were great, even if the book as a whole was a bit of a slog, so maybe this'll be better than that was."

If you liked Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I apologize? We mean no offense, I know that two people reading the same book will have different opinions.

But Piranesi was terrific. It was alive, not in patches but from front to back. The fantastical was there - we were dropped into an endless house of statues, like Borges's Library of Babel for statues, with waves sweeping through its lower rooms and clouds through its upper - but the fantastical was seen through a perspective. We were dropped into the world of a person, a world he introduced us to and spoke eloquently about and cared about, and cared about in the specific way that he cared about it.

We picked up this book at about one in the afternoon from the library. By seven we were gushing about it in the DMs of our friend who recommended it. By nine-thirty we were through, and reeling.

We can talk about what happens if you like? There's some heavy stuff in there, so if you do want to read it, you might want to check first, see if it hits something that affects you strongly. We had to ask our friend for some content warnings, which it gave, and that was helpful, and assuming we get along we'll do the same for you if you ask ... but our friend also said the story benefits from reading with very little idea of what will happen, and the story does. It would perhaps be helpful if you came into it having heard of Battersea...? but even if you haven't, you'll likely figure things out quickly. The protagonist and narrator is not deceptive towards you or me.

It's currently four thirty in the morning, typing this. We'll go back to bed in a moment. But we couldn't lie just in bed waiting for all these thoughts to slip through our fingers into sleep.

And you don't have to read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It is just a book, two hundred and forty-five pages among uncountable billions, and you have other calls upon your time. But we have to gush about it for a minute, because we were hoping it would be alive and it was.

(We were also hoping it would last us longer than a day, but somehow I think we'll live.)

At a formative age, we read a 1981 science fiction novella by Vernor Vinge titled True Names, about a population of hyper-hackers doing operations around the world and maintaining the secrecy of their identity to protect them from being controlled by others through elementary magic spells computer exploits.

...come to think, it used "the Internet as a 3D immersive space" as a narrative device eleven years before the publication of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash made "the Metaverse" a meme. Kinda funny.

Anyway, in retrospect, that novella really encouraged us to think about security of identity in a substantial way. (At least, once we started caring at all.) This is a story in which an action which restricts your identity to three million possible candidates is considered high-risk. The concept of what could expose personal information becomes very broad, when you're thinking about that level.

And then you get into the stories about people identifying physical locations by nothing but the background scenery, or incidental environmental details. Like that time Tom Scott challenged people to identify where he and Matt Parker watched an eclipse from, and they got it within feet.

On that level of investigation - the, to be frank, "ten thousand people decided to stalk you" level - we are shit out of luck. If we wanted to be secret at that level, we would have to burn the name "Packbat" altogether and start over. But ... increasingly, we are very careful about landmarks in our photographs, we don't talk about trash pickup schedules or the weather, and we do not name streets. We will say we are in the mid-Atlantic region - we will even say where within on occasion - but we do not want to be specific enough to phone book.

Because it's 2023, there have been a lot of harassment campaigns that jump from Internet to city streets, and we don't want to make it easy.

We realized partway through our reading of Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening by Christopher Small that we no longer expected the reading of the book to be an event we appreciated - we expected it to be an obligation. So we halted there. We'll talk more about the book at the end.

( 845 words )

We found out about Christopher Small and the book (and word) "Musicking" through the YouTube videos of Adam Neely, and were prompted to read it specifically from its reference in Neely's video about hating CCM - Contemporary Christian Music - but trying to like it. It clearly left a strong and lasting impression on Neely, and for good reason: as a musician and especially as a working jazz musician, a musician in a heavily improvisational style of music seeking to make an income out of performance, the importance of music as an entire event is inescapable. And though we don't love the book and didn't finish it, this perspective was enriching to us as well.

Given the choice, would you prefer to be a world-class (visual or performing) artist or an intellectual genius? Which, in your opinion, would facilitate a more fulfilling career and social life? Submitted By numbartist View 809 Answers

Why, this is perfectly straightforward. "Intellectual genius" and "world-class artist", respectively.

...what?

Oh, the contradiction. Yeah, I just have to own that one. The thing is, somewhere in my head, I have this driving principle which seeks out knowledge rather than pleasure. "Socrates dissatisfied", as they say. The thing is, though, I do so even though I dispute John Stuart Mill's thesis: I would be more content, not merely happier, if I chose to subordinate my intellectual drive and took up the paintbrush. I just choose not to. I prefer to choose the less pleasant when offered the choice of truth or happiness, or even truth and safety, or truth and pride - I would rather know the truth, though it tear me to pieces.

Which, to disgress, may be part of what I find so compelling in Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net. And that may be as satisfactory a conclusion as any to the post.

With the caveat that I'm just naming books off the top of my head, and I might miss something perfectly obvious, and the further caveat that I only include books that I've read straight through:

Best:

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

One of the best English humor books ever written. Three English blokes (and a dog) decide to go on a trip up the Thames river. What makes it hilarious is J's writing - he is a brilliant raconteur with a poetic, charmingly digressive style, and he finds exceptional material in his reminisces.

(Conveniently, it is available online in several places.)

Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling

You could describe it many ways, but it feels to me a bit like film noir Twenty Minutes in the Future (as they say on the Tropes of the TV). Remarkably, it's still Twenty Minutes in the Future despite being published in 1988 (five years before the Eternal September), which should give you an idea of how strong Sterling's SF chops are. In any case, this stands out for its skilled worldbuilding (of course), characterization, and pacing. Events occur kinetically yet vividly, which is a fine line to walk.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Reportedly, somewhere in the television series Lost, a character named Sawyer says about this: "Hell of a book! It's about bunnies." It would be difficult to describe it more eloquently in less space.

Taking advantage, then, of having more: this is my very first favorite book, and I'm proud to say that it's held up well for more than half my life, reading it again and again. Richard Adams possesses the most fluent descriptive voice that I have ever encountered, and paces it with a master's grace. There is a simply beautiful passage where Hazel (the protagonist) pauses at the mouth of a burrow to check the surroundings before going out in the field, and Adams takes this moment of time to describe in lyrical terms the sights, smells, and sounds of that instant. It is a beautiful trick of the writing art, and Adams wields it with virtuosic skill. A true classic, in the sense of a work which survives the test of time.

And fun to read! Hell of a book, like the man said.

Some books which I considered, but did not include in the top three:

• Shardik by Richard Adams
  
• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
  
• A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
  
• A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will by Robert Kane
  
• Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn
  
• The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
  
• Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II

Worst:

Caveat: I enjoyed most of these. All of them, if I'm honest. I (mostly) don't finish books if I don't. That said...

Born to Run by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

Cheesy modern fantasy. It makes this list less out of any flaw than out of general lack of merit.

War of Honor by David Weber (Book Ten of the Honor Harrington series)

The Honor Harrington series follows a very simple formula. That formula has worn paper-thin by Book Ten. The new elements Weber introduces to liven it up do precisely the opposite, except where they introduce a little excitement by being profoundly stupid. I had enjoyed the first two books in the series, continued reading the series out of intertia, and ran out on this one.

In truth, this is probably the worst of my three-worst list. But I feel obliged to bump it from that slot in light of...

The Radiant Warrior by Leo Frankowski (Book Three of the Conrad Starguard series)

...which features ( censored )

trope. The first four books are pure fluff otherwise - time-travel wish fulfillment fantasy of the most elemental sort - but the misogynistic aspects are utterly grating. Fortunately, the most epochal Crowning Moment of Awesome for the series is in Book Two. Unfortunately, as far as respect for women is concerned, the aforementioned ( censored )

is more a dip than a chasm in the narrative.

(I will not include a near-misses list here - I have too much respect for NAME REDACTED and NAME REDACTED, and TITLE REDACTED wasn't supposed to be good in the first place.)

(Edit: Actually below all three books on the list is a Dean Koontz book I read ages ago, my former copy of which my mother decided should be dismembered and recycled rather than continue to exist. I take pride in not remembering the title - it featured incest, Body Horror, thoroughly horrible people, and was written in a loving style which cannot reflect well on the author.)

From peterchayward

Don't take too long to think about it. 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Copy these instructions and do it yourself, because I'm interested in seeing what books are in your head.

(I spent more than 15 minutes. I r slo.)

1. A Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson. This is the book I often talk about when I'm talking about racism - the movie is good as well, although I prefer the text. The thing is: the problem doesn't stop with the people who go out hunting with baseball bats and chains and trucks on back roads. It's an education, for sure.

2. Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is merely one of the best written books in the English language. Adams is very simply a master of description, and he uses it in a way which flows seamlessly with the narration - I remember vividly scenes where a pause in the action is indicated, not by any explicit statement, but by the opening up of the world which occurs in the pauses, the sounds and sights that awaken in the silences of our conversations.

3 & 4. A Woman Of The Iron People by Eleanor Aranson, Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. These are simply good SF - books that take you to a place that does not exist and let you live with its natives. The former is one of the best anthropological SF stories I have read, better than Ursula Le Guin - simply very, very interesting. The latter is a political thriller in a world not unlike our own that is just a superb piece of storytelling - a story with all the tempo of a potboiler, but just intellectual in a way which those are not.

5. Transmetropolitan #1 by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. I swear this book is the most anti-classy ode to Truth I have ever read. It's a series I haven't finished reading, but even Vol. 1 alone is a poem. A poem you wouldn't want to read in church, but still.

6. Abel's Island by William Steig. An illustrated talking-animals book for the younger set (not youngest set, but those to whom Watership Down is incorrectly marketed, I believe); a simple bildungsroman, but well done.

7. Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos. A lesson in the form of dialogue (polylogue? "Dia" always seems wrong when many people are speaking) in the nature of mathematical proofs, surrounding Euler's formula and the counterexamples to it. Suggests many things, including (and this counters a widespread myth) that mathematical proofs aren't truly perfect and irrefutable deliverances of knowledge.

8. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It's just a fantastic example of someone breaking the rules of novels in a way which works, breaking narrative order, breaking the division between falsity and truth ... it's somehow still readable. And it has a reality to it, a coherency in the face of its manifest contradictions and blatant insertions of biography into fiction.

9. Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. Just an impressive, impressive dissection of the thing that is us, destroying an army of illusions in its wake.

10. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. One of the best humor books of all time. No more need be said. (Except that it's old, so you can find it for free online and for cheap in the shops.)

11. Still River by Hal Clement. This is not what you might call a great book - every flaw that Hal Clement's writing is prone to, this book suffers from ... but the setting! I will long remember this one fondly just as an utterly science-fiction potboiler - only no bodies, just the brute mystery of the research project the protagonists have to complete.

12. Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Probably one of his best books (although Needle might be more popular). Don't read Still River if you don't like Mission of Gravity, but Mission of Gravity is a classic. Especially if you have the edition with the discussion of the creation of the book, a discussion which I highly recommend to every SF fan.

13. Shardik by Richard Adams. I joked with toya121 that if I had a million dollars, I'd give everyone I know a copy of this book - like Watership Down, it is just magnificently written. Much more depressing, though, and epic on a grander scale.

14. A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge. Science fiction rather than fantasy, but still greater in scope and grandeur. A real potboiler, too. Pay attention to the side stories.

15. I will cheat a little with the last slot: On War by Carl von Clausewitz. I have not finished reading it, but it is a simply muscular work. I anticipate much of it.

If you knew that a friend's significant other was cheating on him or her, would you tell your friend the truth or keep it to yourself? View other answers

I would confront the S.O. before anything else (not the least because some people are in open relationships). Then I would talk to someone I trust, to make sure that I'm not being utterly stupid. But if I did that and still knew, I would tell my friend - it's what I'd want.

(See, that's the thing with lies - it's much easier to think lying is okay if you don't put yourself in the shoes of the lied-to. I know - I read it in a book!)

(But seriously - it's true, and it's a good book: Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok. I recommend it.)

Saw this "genre fiction" (how I hate that term!) book list on hmmm_tea's journal - made a few inconsequential alterations to the rules myself...

1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Marks: read one or all of, intend to read (or reread, or finish), loved, hated.
3) Feel free to elaborate wherever you like, whether on the books, the rules, or the list itself.

In no particular order:

( 100 items long, for whatever reason. Be warned. )

Obvious lacunae - Richard Adams (at least "Watership Down", and I'd add "Shardik"), Hal Clement ("Needle", "Mission of Gravity", but probably not "Still River", however much I love that book), Vernor freakin' Vinge ("A Fire Upon the Deep", I haven't read "A Deepness in the Sky", "True Names"), Edgar Allan Poe (anything, for cripe's sake), Bruce Sterling ("Islands in the Net", for one), Bram Stoker ("Dracula")...

In response to shatterstripes, ceruleanst, and tracerj simultaneously:

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
  
  • I mean it. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the closest.
    
  • ...straight line to the centroid of your head, if you have to ask.
  
  
• Turn to page 56.
  
  • Count if you have to. Start on the first page (including the title) of Chapter One, and remember to count both sides of the page.
  
  
• Find the fifth sentence.
  
  • No, a colon doesn't end a sentence.
    
  • Yes, a question-mark ends a sentence.
  
  
• Post that sentence along with these instructions on your LJ.

"All part of the show."

(Dag, two fifty-plus word sentences to start the page and I hit the five-word? The book is Rhyme's Reason, John Hollander.)

As a sociological relic, The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet is an interesting book.

As a book of advice, The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet is a superb book - but you may save a great deal of time by a simple method: turn immediately to Part Three and stop immediately upon reaching Part Four.

Some quotes:

1—About saving time.

Is there no time you can reclaim, not from your work, not from your exercise, not from your family or friends, but from pleasure that really does not give you much pleasure, from empty talk at the Club, from inferior plays, from doubtfully enjoyable week ends or not very profitable trips?

[...]

Do you know how to gather up fragments of time lest they perish? Do you realize the value of minutes? One of the Lamoignons had a wife who always kept him waiting a few minutes before dinner which in those days was in broad daylight, at three o'clock. After a time it occurred to him that eight or ten lines could be written during this interval, and he had paper and ink laid in a convenient place for that purpose. In time—for years are short but minutes are long—several volumes of spiritual meditations were the result. Mankind might be divided between the multitude who hate to be kept waiting because they get bored and the happy few who rather like it because it gives them time for thought. The latter lead the rest, of course.

---

There are in the daily press a number of writers, male and female, who make it a point to have an opinion about everything. Day after day, four or five hundred words from their pens appear in which they express their views on an immense variety of subjects, most of them interesting. An expert runs little risk of erring in estimating how much time these fellow-writers of his have devoted to each individual question. It can be counted in minutes rather than in hours. The authors have seldom referred to any literature, even to an encyclopædia, they have been satisfied with summing up their own flimsy knowledge of the data and their flimsier impression of them. Yet, this is so much better than nothing that we read the articles through.

---

Some people imagine they have to write a book as, at fifteen, they had to write an essay, whether they liked it or not. All the time they are at work on a chapter which ought to monopolise their attention, they are anxious over future chapters still unborn and even unconceived, and the anxiety throws its shadow over the page just being written. As long as an author does not take the habit of "only writing his book," as Joubert says, "when it is finished in his mind," or cannot honestly say, like Racine: "My tragedy is done, now I have only to write the verses," he will be a prey to the schoolboy's error. Nothing is as exciting as the hunt after thoughts or facts intended to elucidate a question we think vital to us, and the enjoyment of writing when the hunt has been successful is an unparalleled reward for intellectual honesty. Leave only the slavish necessity or the meretricious desire for producing a book and all the pleasure will be gone.

---

A fascinating book.