Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by NXJ.

Are You Serious?

NXJ. — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 12:44:30 +0800

For you Potterheads.

The Glass Cage:Automation and Us, by Nicholas Carr

NXJ. — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:23:53 +0800

QUOTE

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Cage-Automation-Us/dp/0393240762/

One of my recent reads. Provocative thoughts on what constitutes as intelligence. A good read on what it means to be human.

In other's words:

QUOTE

The best non-fiction books, in my opinion, shouldn't just entertain you, they should change you. Carr, like in "The Shallows," expertly takes an ubiquitous convenience of modern life -- previously, the internet, and now, automation -- and dismantles everyday idealistic assumption about the benefits of their increasing dominance of our lives. Using a mix of anecdotes, statistics, history, and even the theories of the Luddites and Marxists, Carr provides many convincing reasons why we should think twice before putting technological progress -- self-driving cars, self-flying planes, self-trading stocks -- before human beings who may not be best served by becoming mere shepherds or monitors of complex systems and algorithms. His chapter about how the brain processes spatial information, for instance, compelled me to turn off my GPS before I lose my sense of direction and become a slave to my smartphone. But Carr is not simply an alarmist. "The Shallows" is still a celebration of technology and progress, but one that asks us to consider the human consequences of its misuse.

Carr might not do enough to convince skeptics of his points. At the same time, some of the main conclusions of his chapters are left frustratingly vague. With the data he's presented, much of what he concludes could be stronger stated. Overall, though, it's a fantastic book about a topic that most people don't seem to think enough about.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/97124...ion=true&page=1

QUOTE

Advanced Reading Copy review Publication date September 2014

Are smart phones making us less intelligent? Is technology a tool or a temptation? Who or what is the slave or master in our relationships with our automation? These and other questions are explored in "The Glass Cage" By Nicholas Carr.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is written for both technophiles and technophobes to take a step back and examine where modern technology has taken us and where it might lead us if we don't lead it. From autopilot and GPS to searchless answers and invisible interfaces, the author guides us through a minefield of musings on what it is to be human when we start to allow machines and algorithms do our work and much of our thinking for us. Fascinating and frightening, this book might cause a lot of people to look up from their screens to see where they are.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/99693...ion=true&page=1

Noah Webster's Finest Forgotten Words

NXJ. — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 13:11:04 +0800

QUOTE(An A to Z of Noah Webster's Finest Forgotten Words)

www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-anthony-jones/forgotten-words_b_5985494.html

October 16 is World Dictionary Day, marking the birthday of the great American lexicographer Noah Webster. Born in Connecticut in 1758, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, in 1806, but it was his two-volume American Dictionary of the English Language published in 1828 (when he was 70 years old) that earned him his place in history as the foremost lexicographer of American English.

The statistics alone speak for themselves: Webster's American Dictionary took him 28 years to complete. In preparation he learned 26 languages, including Old English, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. The final draft listed and defined 70,000 words, more than any other dictionary in history (and 30,000 more than Samuel Johnson's dictionary had almost a century earlier). 1 in every 6 of Webster's words had never been listed in a dictionary before; as a dictionary of American English, he radically chose to include a whole new vocabulary of emerging Americanisms like squash, skunk, hickory, chowder and applesauce for the very first time. And he famously took the opportunity to push through his ideas on English spelling reform - some of which took (center, color, honor, ax), and some of which didn't (dawter, wimmen, cloke, tung).

Despite all of his efforts, Webster's dictionary sold just 2,500 copies on its publication and he was compelled to mortgage his home in New Haven to fund a second edition in 1840. Three years later, having never quite gained the recognition his work deserved in his lifetime, he died at the age of 84. Today however, as both a literary and scholarly achievement Webster's 1828 dictionary is widely regarded as both the first truly comprehensive dictionary of American English, and as one of the most important dictionaries in the history of our language. So to mark World Dictionary Day - and to celebrate what would be Webster's 256th birthday - here are 26 of some of the most curious, most surprising and most obscure words from Webster's Dictionary in one handy A to Z.

AFTER-WISE (adj.)
Defined by Webster as "wise afterwards or too late" -- or in other words, the perfect term for describing that feeling of knowing exactly what you should have said (or done) after the opportunity to say it (or do it) has passed you by. Other useful after- words on Webster's list were after-game (a subsequent scheme or plan), after-supper (the time between supper and going to bed), and after-tossing (the rolling of the sea after a storm has passed).

BABBLEMENT (n.)
"Senseless prattle" or "unmeaning words," according to Webster. To twattle, incidentally, is to gossip or chatter.

CYCOPEDE
Cycopede is all but unique to Webster, who defined it as both a variation of cyclopedia (as in encyclopedia), and as a term for the entire "circle of human knowledge."

DAGGLE-TAIL (adj.)
As a verb, to daggle is "to befoul" or "dirty", or more specifically, "to trail in mud or wet grass". The adjective daggle-tail ultimately describes someone "having the lower ends of garments defiled with mud."

EAR-ERECTING (adj.)
Another of Webster's clever compound adjectives, this time describing any sound that "sets up the ears".

FOPDOODLE (n.)
The perfect name for "an insignificant fellow" -- Webster described this word as "vulgar and not used."

GASTRILOQUIST (n.)
An old-fashioned word for a ventriloquist, or as Webster explains, "one who so modified his voice that it seems to come from another person or place."

HUGGER-MUGGER (n.)
On the rare occasions when hugger-mugger appears in modern English, it's typically used to describe a state of noisy confusion or uproar. According to Webster, however, it was a "low cant word" synonymous with privacy or clandestineness -- doing something in hugger-mugger, he explained, meant doing it in absolute secrecy.

ILLAQUEATION (n.)
A formal word for "the act of ensnaring; a catching or entrapping."

JACKPUDDING (n.)
A jackpudding is a "merry-andrew" or "a zany" according to Webster -- in other words, a joker who acts the fool to make other people laugh.

KISSING-CRUST (n.)
As loaves of bread expand in the oven as they're cooked, a kissing-crust forms when they spread so far that they touch.

LONGINQUITY (n.)
Derived from the Latin word for distance, longinquity is a formal word for remoteness or isolation, or for any vast distance in space or time.

MAFFLE (v.)
To stammer or stumble on your words. To faffel means the same thing.

NUNCUPATORY (adj.)
If something is nuncupatory then it exists in name only. The word can also be used to describe a verbal rather than written agreement.

OBAMBULATE (v.)
Literally means "to walk about." The horseback equivalent, incidentally, is to obequitate -- or "to ride about."

PACKTHREAD (n.)
The strong string or twine used to wrap parcels? That's packthread.

QUADRIN (n.)
A quadrin was old copper coin, which Webster explains was "in value [worth] about a farthing". Its name can also be used figuratively of any tiny amount of something, or an insignificant amount of cash.

RAKESHAME (n.)
"A vile, dissolute wretch" -- also known as a rampallion, a scroyle, a runnion, a pander, a cullion and (if they seem destined to a life of crime) a crack-rope.

SHEEP-BITE (v.)
To sheep-bite is "to practice petty thefts" according to Webster. Some of his other criminally underused S-words include scantle ("to divide into small pieces"), scranch ("to grind with the teeth"), stalactical ("resembling an icicle"), squabbish ("thick, fat, heavy") and stramash ("to beat," "to destroy"). Less useful is sniggle, defined as "to fish for eels by thrusting the bait into their holes."

TARDIGRADOUS (adj.)
"Slow-paced; moving or stepping slowly."

UPTRAIN (v.)
To uptrain is "to educate" -- literally "to train up."

VERNATE (v.)
Derived from the Latin word for the spring, to vernate is "to become young again."

WRANGLESOME (adj.)
To wrangle is "to dispute angrily" or "to involve in contention," according to Webster. So if you're wranglesome, then you're "quarrelsome and contentious."

XEROPHAGY (n.)
Xerophagy is "the eating of dry meats," according to Webster, who described the practice as "a sort of fast among the primitive Christians." In all, he listed just 13 words under X in his dictionary - which is 13 more than Samuel Johnson, who instead stated that "X is a letter which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language."

YOKE-MATE (n.)
Also called a yoke-fellow, a yoke-mate is "an associate or companion."

ZUFFOLO (n.)
Z fairs slightly better than X in Webster's dictionary, with a total of 85 entries in all. A zuffolo, he explains, is "a little flute... especially that which is used to teach birds."

My favorite from this list: FOPDOODLE.

Are Ebooks Good Or Bad For Learning?

NXJ. — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:22:15 +0800

QUOTE(Are Ebooks Good Or Bad For Learning? @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/14/e..._n_5983114.html )

Since the advent of ebooks, a debate has raged as to whether the traditional, physical book or the digital copy leads to better learning for children.

In a HuffPost Live conversation Monday, a roundtable panel agreed both formats have advantages, but there is one key to making either successful: interaction.

"In many cases, with the traditional book, you go beyond the covers of the book to discuss the story," Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychology professor at Temple University, told host Nancy Redd. "In 'Curious George,' you might say something like, 'Do you remember the last time that we were at a zoo?' There seemed to be something in that interaction with parents and children that was very different than with the digital book versus the traditional book."

Heather Kirkorian, who helps run a cognitive development lab at the University of Wisconsin, said she has had similar experiences, but has seen positive results with ebooks. They just have to be used correctly.

We do find toddlers learn more from the screen when they're interacting in a very specific way, not just any way," Kirkorian said. "Really focusing on the device and what the device can afford is not as productive of a conversation as 'How can we use this tool?' This tool is in our lives, in kids' hands, how can we use that tool and create media content that's actually beneficial if possible and more importantly to scaffold the kinds of interactions Kathy just described."

I think as long as you are reading, it doesn't matter what format the book is in.

Important Kindle request

NXJ. — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 10:07:19 +0800

Here's an email I got from Amazon:

QUOTE(A Message from the Amazon Books Team @ http://www.readersunited.com )

Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.

With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.

Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.

Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers.

The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.

Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

But when a thing has been done a certain way for a long time, resisting change can be a reflexive instinct, and the powerful interests of the status quo are hard to move. It was never in George Orwell’s interest to suppress paperback books – he was wrong about that.

And despite what some would have you believe, authors are not united on this issue. When the Authors Guild recently wrote on this, they titled their post: “Amazon-Hachette Debate Yields Diverse Opinions Among Authors” (the comments to this post are worth a read). A petition started by another group of authors and aimed at Hachette, titled “Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages,” garnered over 7,600 signatures. And there are myriad articles and posts, by authors and readers alike, supporting us in our effort to keep prices low and build a healthy reading culture. Author David Gaughran’s recent interview is another piece worth reading.

We recognize that writers reasonably want to be left out of a dispute between large companies. Some have suggested that we “just talk.” We tried that. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store. Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle. We first suggested that we (Amazon and Hachette) jointly make author royalties whole during the term of the dispute. Then we suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until this dispute is resolved. Then we suggested that we would return to normal business operations if Amazon and Hachette’s normal share of revenue went to a literacy charity. But Hachette, and their parent company Lagardere, have quickly and repeatedly dismissed these offers even though e-books represent 1% of their revenues and they could easily agree to do so. They believe they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.

We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We’d like your help. Please email Hachette and copy us.

Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch: Michael.Pietsch@hbgusa.com

Copy us at: readers-united@amazon.com

Please consider including these points:

- We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.
- Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.
- Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.
- Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.

Thanks for your support.

The Amazon Books Team

P.S. You can also find this letter at www.readersunited.com

In a way, it's true that when price of books are low, I buy more than I usually would - RM200 for 4 books versus RM100 for 1. So I believe lowering price of books do help.

If Fifty Shades Of Grey Was Written By A Man

NXJ. — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 14:14:56 +0800

QUOTE(If Fifty Shades Of Grey Was Written By A Man @ http://www.tickld.com/x/if-50-shades-of-gr...ritten-by-a-man )

1. At the touch of her lips, it grew long and swollen. I sighed as she squeezed and pulled expertly. It was the best balloon giraffe I'd seen.

2. Staring at her naked body, I asked what she wanted. She told me to go for something between a smack and a stroke. So I went for a smoke.

3. 'How do you feel about using toys in the bedroom?' she asked. 'Fine,' I said, 'But I can't see how we're going to fit a Scalextric in here.'

4. Her body tensed and quivered as she felt wave after wave flow through it. I probably should've told her about the new electric fence.

5. As I lay there on the floor, my naked body covered in treacle and whipped cream, I heard those inevitable words . . . 'Clean up on aisle 3.'

6. 'Are you ready to be tortured in a way only a woman can torture a man?' she asked. I nodded nervously. 'OK' she said and ate half my chips.

7. Frantically I tore off her dress, bra and knickers. My heart was racing but I just managed to close the wardrobe door before she got home.

8. 'Hurt me!' she begged, leaning over the dining table expectantly. 'OK,' I replied, 'Your turkey's too dry and your sprouts are overcooked.'

9. She leant over the kitchen table. 'Smack that bottom,' she squealed, 'Smack it hard!' 'I am,' I said, 'But the ketchup just won't come out.'

10. She wanted to try phone sex so I pretended to be an IT support guy. It turned her on. Then it turned her off. Then it turned her on again.

11. They asked me to smear their naked bodies with the produce from my herb garden but I just couldn't do it. Too many women, not enough thyme.

12. 'I'm your slave,' she said breathlessly, 'Make me feel completely helpless and worthless.' So I locked her in the shed and went to the pub.

13. Her body trembled and shook.'I can't wait any longer, do it now!' she cried. 'OK,' I said and got the winter duvet from the airing cupboard.

14. 'Harder!' she cried, gripping the workbench even tighter, 'Harder!' 'Alright,' I said, 'What's the gross national product of Nicaragua?'

15. 'Hurt me!' she cried, pressing her body up against the shed wall. 'Alright,' I said. 'You're a terrible cook and I fancy your sister.'

16. 'Stick it right up there,' she said, 'I want to remember this!' I did, then I patted it firmly. You can't be too careful with Post-it notes.

17. My tongue flicked in and out, in and out, faster and faster until she was completely helpless. No woman can resist a good lizard impression.

18. 'I'm a bad girl,' she whispered, 'Punish me in a way only a real man can!' 'Alright,' I said and left my wet towels on the bathroom floor.

19. 'I want it now against this wall!' she ordered, 'And keep it up as long as possible.' 'Don't worry,' I said, 'I know how to put up a shelf.'

20. As we sat in the dark restaurant, she stroked my thigh and said 'I want to see your hardness.' 'Alright,' I replied, and punched the waiter.

Lost my control then laughed out loud at ninth.

But first, let me a shelfie.

NXJ. — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 12:31:33 +0800

QUOTE(What's Your Book Shelfie Style? @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/b..._n_5615093.html )

]Kids today, right? If we’re not taking selfies, we’re taking relfies, or ussies. Most importantly of all, however, we’re taking shelfies -- particularly, if you’re anything like us, book shelfies.

The book shelfie is, at its most basic, a photo of your bookshelf (often along with yourself). Maybe it’s artfully arranged so the spines create a mosaic of Harry Styles’ face. Maybe your cat is pawing at the books, adorably. Maybe you just got a full set of the Penguin clothbound classics (lucky you!) and you’re showing them off. There are myriad variations within the fairly strict constraints of the book shelfie.

But what if you’re about to take a shelfie and you realize that your shelf is a complete mess? Fear not. Shelfies are a great excuse to go through your bookshelf, wax nostalgic over your old favorites, and find a dynamite organizational principle for your collection. To start you off, here are 6 straightforward, beginner-level ways to organize your bookshelf for the camera:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Obviously, there are a million fun ways you can organize your bookshelves -- we’re barely even scraping the surface here. The important thing is to empty your bookshelves, dust them off, and spend some quality time with your books. Try a few different arrangements. And once you’ve taken a trip down memory lane with your book collection, find your own Dewey Decimal substitute (not that there's anything wrong with using the Dewey Decimal System!) to give your shelves a personal touch.

And for the book shelfie? We really recommend including a cat. Just a suggestion.

I'm a stack person.

The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith

NXJ. — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:28:33 +0800

Disclaimer: spoilers ahead.

QUOTE(The Silkworm)

"Challenging times. The arrival of electronic reading devices has been a game-changer. Do you read?" he asked Strike, point-blank.

"Sometimes," said Strike. There was a battered James Ellroy in his flat that he had been intending to finish for four weeks, but most nights he was too tired to focus. His favourite book lay in one of the unpacked boxes of possessions on the landing; it was twenty years old and he had not opened it for a long time.

"We need readers," muttered Daniel Chard. "More readers. Fewer writers."

At a glance, it is about a writer's death. Reading between the lines, it became clear to me Robert Galbraith told more than just a story. Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling's pseudonym, by the way, if you didn't already know.

I know it's stupid to write a post about it, and then tell you how reading it "might ruin your reading experience". So think of this as a confirmation, like, "yeah I've read it and I noticed it too! High five!". Here's something I noticed. Warning: spoiler ahead:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

What I like about this book: the jabs, "jokes", and stark reality in the world of publishing. Which isn't that odd of a material, considering how much time the author spent in said industry. In fact, I think it's brilliant and proper, that she's the one shaping this plot.

I thought she based her characters on actual personalities, but changed my mind when she criticized the act of working oneself into literature. I'm not sure if the criticism is a broad stroke, or directed at any particular author in real life.

I enjoyed the book. It's complicated enough to make you go "wow" at the end of it, and leisurely enough that you still want to turn the page instead of trading it for a glass of wine. Love the honest and accurate (at least I think so) depiction of writer's love for literature.

Here are some reviews from Goodreads:

QUOTE(Alejandro's review @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/976673437 )

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

QUOTE(Prity Malhotra's review @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/976960561 )

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

More Rowling!

NXJ. — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 07:55:47 +0800

"When the money keeps Rowling in, you don't ask how. Think of all the people guaranteed a good time now."

QUOTE(J.K. Rowling to Write a Lot More Cormoran Strike Novels @ http://time.com/3013543/jk-rowling-cormoran-strike-novels/ )

The crime series could become the Harry Potter author's other legacy

If you thought J.K. Rowling’s recent short story about the Harry Potter gang was putting her on the path back to the wizarding world, guess again. The beloved author says she’ll likely write more than seven Cormoran Strike novels, outnumbering the series she’s best known for.

Rowling has published two novels about the military-veteran-turned-private-eye , The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

“I really love writing these books, so I don’t know that I’ve got an end point in mind,” Rowling said at a crime-writing festival, the BBC reports. “One of the things I absolutely love about this genre is that, unlike Harry, where there was an overarching story, a beginning and an end, you’re talking about discrete stories. So while a detective lives, you can keep giving him cases.”

Rowling says she’s halfway through the third Cormoran Strike novel and has already begun planning the story of the fourth. The series is not her first post-Potter release — that would be 2012′s The Casual Vacancy — but Rowling said at the festival that she wrote it under a fake name to see if she could “get a book published on the merits of the book.”

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

NXJ. — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:10:42 +0800

QUOTE(Manny's review @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/170720894 )

As enjoyed by top Grandmasters. Photos taken yesterday at the World Rapid Chess Championships in Dubai suggest that Peter Svidler, current world #13, would rather be reading Scott Lynch than pushing pawns...

QUOTE(Patrick's review @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/99607064 )

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Disclaimer: spoilers ahead.

QUOTE(Prologue @ The Lies of Locke Lamora)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.

“Have I got a deal for you!” the Thiefmaker began, perhaps inauspiciously.

“Another deal like Calo and Galdo, maybe?” said the Eyeless Priest.

“I’ve still got my hands full training those giggling idiots out of every bad habit they picked up from you and replacing them with the bad habits I need.”

“Now, Chains.” The Thiefmaker shrugged. “I told you they were shit-flinging little monkeys when we made the deal, and it was good enough for you at the—”

“Or maybe another deal like Sabetha?” The priest’s richer, deeper voice chased the Thiefmaker’s objection right back down his throat. “I’m sure you recall charging me everything but my dead mother’s kneecaps for her. I should’ve paid you in copper and watched you spring a rupture trying to haul it all away.”

“Ahhhhhh, but she was special, and this boy, he’s special, too,” said the Thiefmaker. “Everything you asked me to look for after I sold you Calo and Galdo. Everything you liked so much about Sabetha! He’s Camorri, but a mongrel. Therin and Vadran blood with neither dominant. He’s got larceny in his heart, sure as the sea’s full of fish piss. And I can even let you have him at a… a discount.”

The Eyeless Priest spent a long moment mulling this. “You’ll pardon me,” he finally said, “if the suggestion that the minuscule black turnip you call a heart is suddenly overflowing with generosity toward me leaves me wanting to arm myself and put my back against a wall.”

The Thiefmaker tried to let a vaguely sincere expression scurry onto his face, where it froze inevident discomfort. His shrug was theatrically casual. “There are, ah, problems with the boy, yes. But the problems are unique to his situation in my care. Were he under yours, I’m sure they would, ahhhh, vanish.”

“Oh. You have a magic boy. Why didn’t you say so?” The priest scratched his forehead beneath the white silk blindfold that covered his eyes. “Magnificent. I’ll plant him in the f***ing ground and grow a vine to an enchanted land beyond the clouds.”

“Ahhhhh! I’ve tasted that flavor of sarcasm before, Chains.” The Thiefmaker gave an arthritic mock bow. “That’s the sort you spit out as a bargaining posture. Is it really so hard to say that you’re interested?”

The Eyeless Priest shrugged. “Suppose Calo, Galdo, and Sabetha might be able to use a new playmate, or at least a new punching bag. Suppose I’m willing to spend about three coppers and a bowl of piss for a mystery boy. But you’ll still need to convince me that you deserve the bowl of piss. What’s the boy’s problem?”

“His problem,” said the Thiefmaker, “is that if I can’t sell him to you, I’m going to have to slit his throat and throw him in the bay. And I’m going to have to do it tonight.”

Doors of Stone, by Patrick Rothfuss

NXJ. — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 08:52:37 +0800

QUOTE(Patrick's review @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/327213074 )

While it's nice to see folks out there giving this book five stars, and in some cases even reviewing it, I'll admit that I'm kinda puzzled.

After thinking it over for a while, I've realized there's only one explanation for this:

Time travelers love my books.

This is strangely reassuring, as it lets me know that, eventually, I do finish my revisions, and the book turns out good enough so that I still have a following out there in the big ball of wibbly-wobbly.... timey-wimey.... stuff that I like to think of as the future.

I would also like to say, future readers, that I appreciate your taking time to read and review my books. It's really flattering knowing that even with time-travel technology at your disposal, you'd rather read my stuff and mention it here on goodreads, rather than, say, hunt dinosaurs, get drunk with da Vinci, or pants Hitler.

Secondly, I'd like to say if you're The Doctor, and you're reading this, I would make an excellent traveling companion. I know you normally tend to hang out with pretty young women and robot dogs. And honestly? I respect that.

Still, I bring certain things to the table. Humor, witty banter, and a beard that will allow me to blend in seamlessly with any pre-industrial Germanic culture. I'm also an excellent kisser and play a mean game of Settlers of Catan.

Just throwing it out there.

Lastly, if any of you happen to have a digital copy of the book you'd like to e-mail me, I'd really appreciate it. I'd love to see the five-star version of the book, because right now, the one I'm toiling away at is about a three an a half-in my opinion. It would save me a lot of work if I could just skip to the end and publish it.

Sincerely yours,

pat

Oh, you.

For those not in the know, Doors of Stone is the third book in Kingkiller Chronicle, written by Patrick Rothfuss. As always, it is highly recommended to read the first two books before picking this up. Disclaimer: spoilers ahead!

QUOTE(The Doors of Stone @ http://kingkiller.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doors_of_Stone )

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The Doors of Stone is the working title of the third book in the Kingkiller Chronicle. It will involve the chronicling of Kvothe's life from where 'The Wise Man's Fear' left off until an unknown time (likely the present) and will be the third and final day of the story. Patrick Rothfuss has said that this will be where Kvothe's story ends although The Four Corners of Civilization will be explored in further novels and novellas.

Doors of Stone are referenced several times in the Chronicle.

- Skarpi tells that the enemy was set beyond the doors of stone at the Blac of Drossen Tor. (NotW Ch. 26)

- The mysterious four plate door in the Archives is stone covered with plates of copper.

- The doors of the University are made of stone.

- Felurian says that the shaper who stole the moon is shut beyond the doors of stone. (WMF Ch. 102)

- Bast swears upon the doors of stone. (WMF Ch. 105)

- The waystones, which might also be called greystones, standing stones or laystones may be door ways that lead to other destinations like the Fae or old roads.

- The Lackless door mentioned by both of the children's songs and by Caudicus is not described as a door of stone, but it is described as lockless, much like the one in the library. Given that both Felurian, Bast, and Skarpi talk about "doors" of stone (plural) then it is possible that the Lackless door is also a door of stone.

- On top of the hill near Trebon, where Kvothe and Denna first encounter the draccus, the stones upon which they take refuge are described as: "The only thing on the top of the hill was a handful of greystones. Three of the massive stones were stacked together to form a huge arch like a massive doorway." (NotW Ch. 74)

- The lackless box is similar to the box used to steal the name of the moon from the story (this needs verification)

- The Cthaeh tells Kvothe that the Maer has already come close to the Amyr. "Stick by the Maer and he will lead you to their door." and then Cthaeh implies he has just made a clever pun. The Amyr may be connected to the doors of stone. (WMF Ch. 104)

Should you finish every book you start? Do you?

NXJ. — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 08:36:26 +0800

I make it a point to read books I bought in entirety, including the likes of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. I believe I can't criticize any book legitimately without first reading them cover to cover.

Of course, you don't have to consume fecal matters to know it is shit. But how do you know for sure how they taste like without tasting them?

I don't hate anyone who can't finish books they don't like. I don't finish food I don't like too. It's just a matter of expectation: if I knew it's going to be shitty to begin with, then I'm more open to the idea of finishing it.

QUOTE(Should you finish every book you start? @ http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/...ng-index-debate)

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QUOTE(The Summer's Most Unread Book Is… @ http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-summers...k-is-1404417569 )

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QUOTE(How to tell who’s really reading Thomas Piketty @ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/peter-robins/...thomas-piketty/ )

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No one owns a Kindle for very long without becoming obsessed by its social highlighting feature: unless you go into the preferences to turn it off, the glibbest and most epigrammatic sentences in any popular book begin to appear with dotted lines underneath them and the words ’19 [or however many] people highlighted this’. Our own Mark Mason has written brilliantly and sympathetically about the consequences. But it is now necessary to admit that he may have missed a trick.

It turns out you may be able to use Kindle highlights to make a rough estimate of how many people are actually reading a book, as opposed to just buying it. The technique was described by Jordan Ellenburg in the Wall Street Journal; I saw it on the reliably interesting academic blog Crooked Timber. He calls it the Hawking Index, after that great unread classic A Brief History of Time:

‘Every book’s Kindle page lists the five passages most highlighted by readers. If every reader is getting to the end, those highlights could be scattered throughout the length of the book. If nobody has made it past the introduction, the popular highlights will be clustered at the beginning.

‘Thus, the Hawking Index (HI): Take the page numbers of a book’s five top highlights, average them, and divide by the number of pages in the whole book. The higher the number, the more of the book we’re guessing most people are likely to have read. (Disclaimer: This is not remotely scientific and is for entertainment purposes only!)’

On this measure, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch scores 98.5%, indicating compulsive readability and a highly quotable ending; and Thomas Piketty’s Inequality in the Twenty-first Century manages 2.4%, indicating either an exceptionally cogent and pithy introduction or a great many unread copies (or both). A Brief History of Time scores a relatively respectable 6.6%, but as Crooked Timber’s Harry Brighouse points out, this is probably a flattering result: the vast bulk of the unread copies will be in good, old-fashioned print.

Harry Potter continuation

NXJ. — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 08:50:31 +0800

Potterheads, huzzah!

QUOTE(Harry Potter is 34 in J.K. Rowling's new short story @ http://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5880445/harry-...new-short-story )

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Harry Potter fans woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning. J.K. Rowling published a new short story with updates on the lives of the main characters of the past seven books on her fan site Pottermore.com.

What's going on with Harry Potter and his friends?

"There are celebrities," the story begins, "and then there are celebrities." The story takes place at the Quidditch World Cup (which is conveniently timed with the real World Cup in Brazil) where the three most famous wizards—Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley—have arrived "no longer the fresh-faced teenagers they were in their heyday."

Harry, we learn, is still called "the Chosen One" by the wizarding world because of his dual encounters with the dark lord Voldemort: the first as a baby, and the last in the final battle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He is 34, starting to go gray, and still wearing the same rounded glasses of his youth. He brings his two sons, James and Albus, to visit the players and their mother, who is reporting on the matches.

Ron and Hermione are still married. Ron's hair is thinning and he has left the Ministry of Magic to work with his brother George at the family owned joke shop. Hermione, Rowling reminds, is still the "femme fatale" of the group. Hermione has ascended the ranks at the Ministry of Magic and she and Ron have two children.

There are even a brief appearances of a few important minor characters. Victor Krum—the man who competed against Potter in quidditch and almost seduced Hermione in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—is now playing again in the World Cup. Neville Longbottom is married, and so is Luna Lovegood, who is still the manic-pixie dream girl of the Potter universe.Bill Weasley is married to Fleur Delacour.

Is any of this definitive?

It's important to note that the "newspaper story" has Rita Skeeter's byline on it. Rita Skeeter, in the original seven books is a yellow journalist known for writing sensationalist gossip based off of false information. In the story, Rita questions Harry's marriage to Ron's younger sister, Ginny. She wonders whether or not Ron and Hermione are jealous of Harry's success. She alludes to young romance between Harry's godsonTeddy Lupin and Bill Weasley's daughter Victorie, which was alluded to in the epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

By writing from Skeeter's perspective, Rowling is able to shed light on the lives of these three now adult wizards without having to answer very many questions firmly. There's nothing in this story that wasn't at least alluded to in the final book, and because it's written from Rita's perspective, no insight is given to the lives and feelings of some of the world's favorite characters.

This update comes in the midst of several articles published on the Pottermore site by the Daily Prophet about the wizarding World Cup. But Rowling does pack the story with a few lingering questions. Harry has a mysterious cut on his cheek that is attributed to Ministry of Magic secrets. That detail sets Rowling up to continue the story if she wants to. Whether or not this new scar will pain Harry as the first one did is open for interpretation.

What is Pottermore?

J.K. Rowling published her new short story about the Harry Potter universe this morning on her fan website Pottermore. In 2011, J.K. Rowling launched Pottermore as a way to say thank you to her fans. In the introductory video, Rowling declared it "an online reading experience unlike any other." It was also the only place to purchase e-books and audio books. The idea behind the site was that the digital generation could experience the books and participate in the story behind the written word.

The site was interactive, built for one of the biggest fan-bases in literature. The Harry Potter books were the best-selling book series in history selling between 400 and 450 million copies. The movies became the highest grossing series ever to be produced raking in $7.7 billion dollars worldwide. The launch of Pottermore allowed J.K. Rowling to maintain control over electronic purchases, but she also promised that she would "be sharing additional information I've been hoarding for years about the world of Harry Potter." Here, three years later, is a piece of that story.

Does this mean J.K. Rowling is working on a new Harry Potter book?

Probably not. The final book in the Harry Potter series came out almost seven years ago: one year for every book J.K. Rowling wrote about the wizarding world. The story, however, is not over yet. At the least, this short story shows that Rowling is still interested in these characters.

Rowling has been busy since the publication of the last Harry Potter book. In 2012 she published her first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, and in 2013 she published her first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, under a pen-name. Her second crime novel, The Silkworm, was published last month. This short story, though, is the first time she has returned to her original characters. There's no new yet of whether or not there is more to come.

And here's a part of it. You will have to be a member of Pottermore to read the whole thing.

QUOTE(Clothing @ https://www.pottermore.com/en/jkr-writing# )

Wizards at large in the Muggle community may reveal themselves to each other by wearing the colours of purple and green, often in combination. However, this is no more than an unwritten code, and there is no obligation to conform to it. Plenty of members of the magical community prefer to wear their favourite colours when out and about in the Muggle world, or adopt black as a practical colour, especially when travelling by night.

The International Statute of Secrecy laid down clear guidelines on dress for witches and wizards when they are out in public.

When mingling with Muggles, wizards and witches will adopt an entirely Muggle standard of dress, which will conform as closely as possible to the fashion of the day. Clothing must be appropriate to the climate, the geographical region and the occasion. Nothing self-altering or adjusting is to be worn in front of Muggles.

In spite of these clear instructions, clothing misdemeanours have been one of the most common infractions of the International Statute of Secrecy since its inception. Younger generations have always tended to be better informed about Muggle culture in general; as children, they mingle freely with their Muggle counterparts; later, when they enter magical careers, it becomes more difficult to keep in touch with normal Muggle dress. Older witches and wizards are often hopelessly out of touch with how quickly fashions in the Muggle world change; having purchased a pair of psychedelic loon pants in their youth, they are indignant to be hauled up in front of the Wizengamot fifty years later for arousing widespread offence at a Muggle funeral.

The Ministry of Magic is not always so strict. A one-day amnesty was announced on the day that news broke of Lord Voldemort's disappearance following Harry Potter's survival of the Killing Curse. Such was the excitement that witches and wizards took to the streets in their traditional clothes, which they had either forgotten or adopted as a mark of celebration.

Some members of the magical community go out of their way to break the clothing clause in the Statute of Secrecy. A fringe movement calling itself Fresh Air Refreshes Totally (F.A.R.T.)* insists that Muggle trousers 'stem the magical flow at source' and insist on wearing robes in public, in spite of repeated warnings and fines.** More unusually, wizards deliberately adopt laughable Muggle confections, such as a crinoline worn with a sombrero and football boots.***

By and large, wizard clothing has remained outside of fashion, although small alterations have been made to such garments as dress robes. Standard wizard clothing comprises plain robes, worn with or without the traditional pointed hat, and will always be worn on such formal occasions as christenings, weddings and funerals. Women's dresses tend to be long. Wizard clothing might be said to be frozen in time, harking back to the seventeenth century, when they went into hiding. Their nostalgic adherence to this old-fashioned form of dress may be seen as a clinging to old ways and old times; a matter of cultural pride.

Day to day, however, even those who detest Muggles wear a version of Muggle clothing, which is undeniably practical compared with robes. Anti-Muggles will often attempt to demonstrate their superiority by adopting a deliberately flamboyant, out-of-date or dandyish style in public.

* President Archie Aymslowe.

** To date, they appear to have been taken as cult members by Muggles.

*** These are generally taken by Muggles to be students on a dare.

Millennium trilogy, further reading

NXJ. — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 18:23:44 +0800

If you haven't read the books, I highly recommend you give it a try. It will be quite a unique experience. For those who already did, here are some articles I enjoyed as additional reading after finishing the trilogy. For those who haven't, you can of course read them as a review to gauge your interest in the series, but there will be a lot of spoilers, so don't say I didn't warn you.

QUOTE(The man behind the Millennium trilogy @ http://isreview.org/issue/77/man-behind-millennium-trilogy )

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QUOTE(How a brutal rape and a lifelong burden of guilt fuelled Girl with the Dragon Tattoo writer Stieg Larsson @ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...rutal-rape.html)

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QUOTE(Why do people love Stieg Larsson’s novels? @ http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atla...tlarge_acocella )

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Rogues, by GRR Martin, N Gaiman, P Rothfuss, etc

NXJ. — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 10:26:12 +0800

One book. Twenty one short stories. Much epic, very value.

But the best thing about this book is the window to another point of view in stories long established by the writers. My favorite is Neverwhere and The Kingkiller Chronicle.

The hardcover is 18USD from Amazon, which should be in the range of RM70-RM100 if you going to get it in local stores.

Now, an introduction to the book by George R. R. Martin:

QUOTE(EVERYBODY LOVES A ROGUE @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogues_(anthology) )

by George R. R. Martin

… though sometime we live to regret it.

Scoundrels, con men, and scalawags. Ne’er-do-wells, thieves, cheats, and rascals. Bad boys and bad girls. Swindlers, seducers, deceivers, flimflam men, imposters, frauds, fakes, liars, cads, tricksters … they go many names, and they turn up in stories of all sorts, in every genre under the sun, in myth and legend … and, oh, everywhere in history as well. They are the children of Loki, the brothers of Coyote. Sometimes they are heroes. Sometimes they are villains. More often they are something in between, grey characters … and grey has long been my favorite color. It is so much more interesting than black or white.

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We think we have some good ones here. You will find rogues of every size, shape, and color in these pages, with a broad variety of settings, representing a healthy mix of different genres and subgenres. But you won’t know which genres and subgenres until you’ve read them, for Gardner and I, in the tradition of that old wire spinner rack, have mixed them all up. Some of the tales herein were written by your favorite writers, we expect; others are by writers you may never have heard of (yet). It’s our hope that by the time you finish Rogues, a few of the latter may have become the former.

Enjoy the read … but do be careful. Some of the gentlemen and lovely ladies in these pages are not entirely to be trusted.

QUOTE(Content @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogues_(anthology) )

1.“Everybody Loves a Rogue” (Introduction) by George R.R. Martin

2. “Tough Times All Over” by Joe Abercrombie
In the city of Sipani, a package goes through multiple owners, each being a different viewpoint, starting with a courier who gets robbed.

3. “What Do You Do?” by Gillian Flynn
A nameless sex worker and fortune teller begins cleansing a women's house under request but soon comes to believe she is in way over her head.

4. “The Inn of the Seven Blessings” by Matt Hughes
A thief is interrupted in a haul when he touches an idol and soon finds himself rescuing its owner.

5. “Bent Twig” by Joe R. Lansdale

6. “Tawny Petticoats” by Michael Swanwick

7. “Provenance” by David W. Ball

8. “The Roaring Twenties” by Carrie Vaughn

9. “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” by Scott Lynch

10. “Bad Brass” by Bradley Denton

11. “Heavy Metal” by Cherie Priest

12. “The Meaning of Love” by Daniel Abraham

13. “A Better Way to Die” by Paul Cornell

14. “Ill Seen in Tyre” by Steven Saylor

15. “A Cargo of Ivories” by Garth Nix

16. “Diamonds From Tequila” by Walter Jon Williams

17. “The Caravan to Nowhere” by Phyllis Eisenstein

18. “The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives” by Lisa Tuttle

19. “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back” by Neil Gaiman

20. “Now Showing” by Connie Willis

21. “The Lightning Tree” by Patrick Rothfuss

22. "The Rogue Prince, or, the King’s Brother" by George R. R. Martin
Set in the Westeros of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, hundreds of years before the events of A Game of Thrones.

Why reading fiction is good for you

NXJ. — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 11:19:48 +0800

I prefer learning via fiction, because in addition to factual knowledge (or inaccuracy which I can check against thus learning new fact or reinforcing established ones), I get to experience a wide range of emotions and ways of thinking. Bernoulli's principle itself is a fascinating read, but it's even better if it comes in form of a aeronautics disaster flick. I also learned the "suspension of disbelief" through fictions, allowing me to adopt a more open mentality in navigating real world. But the most enticing reason that keeps me reading is:

Also, brain acts like muscles, the more you use it the more developed it becomes. Reading fiction allows you to stretch more parts of your brain because of the additional simulations in processing multiple characters and their behaviors, judging the story's believability and predicting the outcome, as oppose to the straight delivery of a fact-based textbook.

Here are a selection of articles I found on Internet I believe to be helpful in convincing you to pick up a novel:

QUOTE(Reading Fiction Improves Brain Connectivity and Function @ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-at...ty-and-function )

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QUOTE(7 Benefits of Writing Fiction @ http://dreaminghobbit.com/2014/05/7-benefi...riting-fiction/)

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QUOTE(Should You Read More Fiction? @ http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/12/31...d-more-fiction/ )

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QUOTE(The Value of Science Fiction @ http://www.madisonhorror.com/sci-fi7.html )

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QUOTE(10 Novels to a Better You @ http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culture...ter_person.html )

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Does reading fiction make you a better, less self-absorbed person? You read because you are interested in the broad sweep of human experience, and because you want to gain access into the narrow sanctum of specific otherness—to feel Anna Karenina’s recklessness and desperation, or know the shape and weight of Ahab’s obsession, and thereby something of humanity itself. But in order to make any headway with a novel, you need to grant yourself a leave of absence from human affairs, to sequester yourself in a place where you are sheltered from the demanding presence of other people. Opening a novel might be a kind of exposure to the world beyond the self, but it’s one that necessarily involves a foreclosure against it too. A life spent reading is, among other things, a life spent alone.

The idea that reading is an ethically salutary pursuit gets more appealing the more time you spend doing it. There’s something basically reassuring about the notion that you might be a better person—not just intellectually, but morally—for having read a lot of literature. I’ve just recently moved house, a large part of which undertaking involved the handling and sorting and packing and schlepping of books. As I took the books off the shelves and put them into cardboard boxes—and again as I took them out of those boxes and put them back on shelves in a different house—I found myself thinking about what all the time spent reading them added up to. A lot of these books I’ve forgotten almost everything about; all that is left to me of Oblomov, say, is a chubby Russian aristocrat in a dressing gown (was he even actually chubby?), and basically all I remember of Don DeLillo’s Libra is that it was about Lee Harvey Oswald and that it was brilliant. I found myself trying to quantify the residue of all this reading; what was it that it left behind, and how had it changed me, if at all? There was, surely, some cumulative effect, some way in which I could be said to be a better or wiser person for it. But all I could think, really, was: Christ, if all this reading has made me a better or wiser person, I’d hate to think what kind of monster I’d be without it.

Earlier this month, a research paper was published in the journal Science which put forward evidence that social skills are improved by the reading of fiction—and specifically the high-end stuff: the 19th-century Russians, the European modernists, the contemporary prestige names. The experiment, conducted by psychologists Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd, found that the subjects who read extracts from literary novels, and then immediately afterward took tests measuring empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence (looking at photos of people’s eyes and guessing what emotions they might be going through), performed significantly better on the tests than other subjects who read serious nonfiction or genre fiction. Their basic finding was that reading literary fiction, and literary fiction alone, temporarily enhances what’s known as Theory of Mind—the ability to imagine and understand the mental states of others.

The reaction to this was widespread and, as you’d expect, overwhelmingly pleased. Louise Erdrich, whose novel The Round House was used as an example of literary fiction in the experiment, was quoted in the New York Times’ report on the research. “This is why I love science,” she said; the psychologists had “found a way to prove true the intangible benefits of literary fiction.” Finally, science has given its approval to one of the literary world’s most cherished ideas about the value of literature. Even though the study only measured extremely short-term benefits of exposure to small amounts of literary fiction, it was largely taken to stand for a wider truth about the morally improving effects of the stuff, the notion that it makes you a better, more empathic person.

And this, obviously, is nothing new. Although the novel has, throughout its history, often been subject to a kind of self-reflexively ironic anxiety about the dangers of excessive investment in fiction (see Don Quixote, Northanger Abbey, and poor old Emma Bovary for further details), the consensus among writers has generally been that imagining ourselves into fictional minds and lives is something that increases our moral faculties—a practice that grows our capacity for empathic engagement with the minds and lives of actually existing other humans. Our modern concept of empathy comes from the German term einfühlung, which means “feeling into,” and it makes sense that we would associate this quality with the literary capacities of affective projection.

Novelists have historically tended to be invested in the notion that narrative art can jolt us out of our selfish complacency and into a deeper sense of the experiences and sufferings of other people. George Eliot, in her essay on German realism, wrote that “the greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalisations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.” And here’s David Foster Wallace saying something quite similar, if more pessimistic about the degree to which genuine connection is possible: “We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.”

So this research is, in one sense, a pretty trivial reiteration of something that has long been taken as a basic article of faith by many people for whom literature is more than mere escapism. The important difference here, obviously, is that it is science that is telling us this about literature, and not literature itself—and so the idea seems, rightly or wrongly, more like something you can take to the bank. But although I believe that literature is a huge and indispensable aspect of our humanity—that books are, as Susan Sontag put it, nothing less than “a way of being fully human”—I felt that there was something oddly diminishing, and perhaps even absurd, in the notion of bringing literature to account in this way. Of sitting people down and giving them a chunk of Chekhov to work their way through, and then measuring the short-term uptick in their ability to read people’s facial expressions. (And does the ability to correctly read emotions from pictures of faces really translate into anything like real empathy? I can recognize that you are suffering, but not really feel that recognition act with any force upon myself, let alone lead me into doing anything about it.)

I’m equally ambivalent about the question of whether reading literary fiction really does make you a better person—not just about what the answer might be, but whether the question itself is really a meaningful one to be asking at all. It implies a fairly narrow and reductive legitimation of reading. There’s a risk of thinking about literature in a sort of morally instrumentalist way, whereby its value can be measured in terms of its capacity to improve us. There was a weirdly revealing quality, for instance, in the language that the Atlantic Wire used in reporting on similar research conducted in the Netherlands earlier this year. “Readers who emotionally immerse themselves with written fiction for weeklong periods,” David Wagner wrote, “can help boost their empathetic skills [...] Gauging the participants' empathetic abilities and self-reported emotions before and after such reading sessions, they found that the fiction readers got more of an emotional workout than the nonfiction readers.” It’s possibly unfair to put too much pressure on one writer’s choice of words in framing the discussion (particularly in a roundup blurb), but it hints at a certain view of literature that is implicit in this way of thinking about it—literature as PX90 workout for the soul, as a cardio circuit for the bleeding heart.

We have, I think, an anxiety about the place of literature in our world, about the usefulness of reading fiction. If we can answer the question of why we read with the empirically verifiable assertion that it makes us more socially attuned, then that seems to give literature an identifiable job to do, a useful function in our lives. Perhaps this is the case; perhaps reading Kafka or Woolf or Naipaul does make you a better, more empathic person. (Though what about your hardline literary misanthropes, by the way—your Bernhards, your Houellebecqs, your Célines? Do we gain anything in moral aptitude by reading these dreadful old bastards, and, if we don’t, is doing so somehow less worthy of our time?) But even if it didn’t, even if reading made you a worse person—if you found yourself too engrossed in Karl Ove Knausgaard to take your bored children to the park—reading would be no less vital an activity. I don’t know whether all those boxes full of books have made me any kind of better person; I don’t know whether they’ve made me kinder and more perceptive, or whether they’ve made me more introspective and detached and self-absorbed. Most likely it’s some combination of all these characteristic, perhaps canceling each other out. But I do know that I wouldn’t want to be without those books or my having read them, and that their importance to me is mostly unrelated to any power they might have to make me a more considerate person. This, at least, is what I plan to tell my wife next time she complains about my keeping her awake by reading too late.

The Martian, by Andy Weir

NXJ. — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 10:49:21 +0800

Disclaimer: Spoilers Ahead.

First impression of the title: it's a science fiction about an alien on Mars. I love science fiction, and I'm okay with aliens.

So I bought the audiobook from the list without checking its description. Expecting some sort of introduction to an alien universe, I was pleasantly surprised by the action right from the beginning.

It was an enjoyable experience, because I understood the science that is the backbone to this story. But what made it interesting also made it boring. The science can be daunting for laymen, and the narration is too "simple" for sci-fi lovers. I cringed a few times listening to the book. I can only imagine the reactions of those who had to read it.

But hey, it's Cast Away on Mars. Instead of the bitter-sweetness of the package's delivery, I found myself smiling gladly at the end of it - I finished the book in one sitting.

Like most modern sci-fi, the book assumes you have the most basic of knowledge in astrobiology/physics/chemistry. If you enjoyed Chris Hadfield's autobiography, I believe you will enjoy this too.

Here are some reviews courtesy of Goodreads.

Positive reviews:

QUOTE(Wart Hill's review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/873022491 )

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QUOTE(Richard Reviles Censorship Always in All Ways's review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/984017323 )

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Negative reviews:

QUOTE(Davy-Gravy's review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/835112881 )

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Unpopular opinion time: I don't like how this book is written. Watney's journals read like a nerdy blog rather than a dramatic survivor's diary. It's hard to find something harrowing and traumatic when the protagonist is saying "yay!" a lot and making incessant corny puns. "3.6 pirate-ninjas!" "Yay oxygen!" "Lol gay probe lol!!!!!1!" "Bad rover, no Scooby snack!!!111!" "LOL craaaaaaap!!1!" For me, those aren't funny, they're almost embarrassing.

No matter what horrible thing is happening to Watney, he's sure to pull though, but not before laying a smug, cutesy zinger on us. It sucks all the tension out of any situation, which is the complete opposite of what I want in a book that's supposed to be a thriller.

Now, don't get me wrong, Andy Weir is a great technical writer. When Watney isn't being a wacky douche, he's going on and on about some technical or mechanical or biological process that, with me not being a scientist, usually goes over my head. And that's fine, I have no fault with a book that's factually complicated like that. In fact, it's really admirable and cool that Weir is able to pool all of his expertise into a book about survival on Mars.

That being said, other aspects of the book suffer. According to the author's bio on the back of the book, Andy Weir "was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight." If I can stereotype here, it shows. My guess is that he doesn't really know how people behave or interact in the real world. The dialog is stilted and awkward. The characters are all one-dimensional and flat. They almost seem like an afterthought. The emotional and psychological trauma rendered by all these near-death experiences and complete and utter isolation? What trauma? There's no mention of that anywhere. Watney is apparently that cool and awesome of a guy, as evidenced by all his canned laugh track one-liners and grating sarcasm.

But hey, maybe that doesn't bother some people (obviously, considering that people actually watch The Big Bang Theory), and they're in for a technologically-driven, "funny" space-thriller. Because I have to admit, it's a terrifyingly cool premise. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I was hoping for an emotionally-taxing, horrifying, survival drama, but instead got a cutesily witty astrophysics manual. Just because something is nerdy doesn't automatically mean that it's good.

QUOTE(Louisa's review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/785154982 )

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QUOTE(Jean's review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/90357...on=false&page=1)

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What is the value of your book?

NXJ. — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 10:10:13 +0800

You can just check how much people are selling smiliar books for on Internet, in web sites like eBay, Amazon, or Lelong. But here's a compilation of articles about how much your book is worth at a glance, just in case you fancy some know-how.

QUOTE(How to determine the value of a book. @ http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-determine-t...07330572/g.html )

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QUOTE(HOW MUCH IS YOUR BOOK WORTH? @ http://www.biblio.com/pages/book_value.html )

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QUOTE( Your Old Books @ http://www.rbms.info/yob.shtml )

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Additional read on second hand books' impact on the market:

QUOTE(Reading Between the Lines of Used Book Sales @ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/technology/28scene.html )

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QUOTE(Could Selling A Used Book Become Illegal? @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/u..._n_2236781.html )

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My opinion? I don't sell my books. I'm a book collector, not a book dealer. I buy a book because I'm interested in its content. I might want to read it again ten years down the road.

But I would sell a copy of Gutenberg bible without skipping a heartbeat.