Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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Mind Performance Hacks in Boing Boing
As I write this, my book Mind Performance Hacks is ranked 104 at Amazon. That means it's very nearly in the top 100 books Amazon is selling right now. Its ranking for all of today will be a lot lower; the book started out the day around 5000. However, thanks to a positive review by David Pescovitz at Boing Boing, ("...Mind Performance Hacks is a thinking person's self-help book. Highly recommended"), it did wonderfully well this afternoon.
If you're not familiar with Boing Boing, it's probably the most widely read blog in the world. Are you trying to tell me you read my blog but not Boing Boing? Pull the other one; it's got bells on. Now pull my finger.
The review's just in time for the holiday season, too. Remember, much like Fudgie the Whale, Mind Performance Hacks makes a great gift.
Entered 22:27 [/books] permalink
All a long the riverrun, Howth Castle kept the view
Last night, around this time (dark and a half in the morning), I finished Finnegans Wake. Actually, you can't finish the book, so I lapped it. LAP = ALP = Anna Livia Plurabella = Great Mother Goddess = River Liffey (Livia), the riverrun in the famous circular sentence that begins on the last page of the Wake and ends on the first:
A way a lone a last a loved a long the
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
I've been reading Finnegans Wake on and off since about 1985, more on than off. I stopped years ago about 2/3 through, but this time dug up my old copy, and my trusty Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, and plowed to the end and back again. Bigod (Shem and Shaun), this is forking nectarnal stuff. Don't let anyone tell you it's nonsense; those are their own limitations speaking. There is more meaning packed into some sentences of the Wake than in whole pages of other books, and I intend to prove it. But more about that later.
So whence the impetus to lap the Wake, and whence the impetus to blog, since the last time I did so (it says here) was 25 April? Well, dear friends, I have been writing a book since then, and I'm just about done, so I have some spare time. The book is called Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Becoming a Better Thinker, and it's a more "practical" sequel to the popular Mind Hacks published by geek favourite O'Reilly. I got the gig when the Mentat Wiki suddenly started getting lots of hits due to a mention in 43 Folders. If you like the Mentat Wiki, you will heart Mind Performance Hacks.
One of the hacks in my books has to do with learning to communicate via portmanteaux and neologisms as Joyce did in Finnegans Wake, so that stimulated me to peruse it again, and then, as I said, this sudden free time sealed the meal.
I believe it was yesterday also that I accidentally learned my book already has an ISBN number and is listed in the catalogues of some online booksellers. The ISBN is 0596101538, and it's listed for publication in December 2005. (Unfortunately, it will really be published a little later than that.) Check out my placeholder pages below! If you're reading this after the book is published, you can go to Amazon and browse it online. O'Reilly will also have a page for the book containing PDFs of a few complete sample hacks, but it's not up yet.
Whoops, B&N has it as Mental Performance Hacks. That's the old title.
Anyway, hard to believe my book is coming together. At times it seemed incompletable, but now there are mutterings of a sequel if the book does well. Just gotta make a few last editorial changes, negotiate illustrations and layout with Production, and coax a few final efforts from the friends and strangers I shanghaied into contributing a non-Ron hack here and there. (You know who you are, and I have your phone numbers.)
And oh yeah, I'm starting a Finnegans Wake reading group in the Seattle area, tentatively called Allforabit Funferall, so if you're interested in that, or in getting your copy of Mind Performance Hacks signed or something, drop me a line at rwhe@ludism.org.
Golly, I'm almost a real writer now like my hero James Joyce, except he's... better. Two wriders were approaching, and thunder began to bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronn- tuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk...
Entered 00:00 [/books] permalink
I swore I would never write lyrics to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer", but sadly, here some are. My wife Marty co-wrote them. She thinks my Ozzy obsession is silly but likes to hear about the characters secondhand.
Grampa got run over by Kabumpo,
Limpin' home from Ozma's chic soirée.
Elephants don't like iv'ry prosthetics,
So if you wear one, don't get in their way!
That's the chorus. You probably don't want to hear the verses.
Entered 13:56 [/books/oz] permalink
Grampa's got himself an Emergency Game Kit:
Grampa, too, had much to occupy him, oiling his gun, packing his knapsack and polishing his sword and game leg. Many old soldiers do a lot of talking about game legs, but Grampa had the real genuine article. It buckled on at the knee and was an oblong red and white ivory box that opened out like a checker board when one wanted to play. Jointed neatly on the end of this was another red box that Grampa used for a foot, and that contained the little red figures one used for playing. The game itself was known as scrum and was a great favorite in Ragbad, being a bit like checkers, a bit like parchesi and a bit like chess.
Grampa was very proud of his game leg, for it not only served him in place of the one he had lost in battle, but whiled away many dull hours, and being hollow was a splendid place to store his pipe and tobacco.
--Grampa in Oz (1924), Ruth Plumly Thompson, chapter 2
Don't try to Google for "scrum oz" or you'll get hundreds of hits on Rugby in Australia...
Someday I need to work out the rules to Scrum. Also to write an article about prosthetics in Oz. (I could write a book, actually.)
Entered 13:37 [/books/oz] permalink
Shaggy Man, eyeing little girl with bad intent
"THIS, MY DEAR, IS THE WONDERFUL LOVE MAGNET."
If you were Aunt Em, would YOU trust your niece with this man? That's some unintentional humour in the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. It comes from Chapter 1 of The Road to Oz, the fifth book in the series, and concerns a jolly homeless fellow named the Shaggy Man, whom Dorothy loves and trusts even after she learns he has stolen and pocketed Toto, because he has a magic magnet that makes everyone who meets him love him.
While there are whimsy and puns in the Oz books (I was surprised at how many puns there were when I started reading Baum; I had considered them the exclusive domain of Lewis Carroll), there aren't many laugh-out-loud moments, but there are a few. Here's some rather more intentional humour from later in the same book. The party on the Road to Oz (some of whom now have the heads of animals, and one of whom is Dorothy but not Dorothy Lamour), are surrounded by hundreds of fierce creatures called Scoodlers, which have faces on both sides of their bodies, can walk or run in either direction, and incidentally are somewhat racist caricatures to the 21st Century eye:
"Ask 'em who they are, and what they want," whispered Dorothy; so the shaggy man called out in a loud voice:
"Who are you?"
"Scoodlers!" they yelled in chorus, their voices sharp and shrill.
"What do you want?" called the shaggy man.
"You!" they yelled, pointing their thin fingers at the group; and they all flopped around, so they were white, and then all flopped back again, so they were black.
"But what do you want us for?" asked the shaggy man, uneasily.
"Soup!" they all shouted, as if with one voice.
"Goodness me!" said Dorothy, trembling a little; "the Scoodlers must be reg'lar cannibals."
"Don't want to be soup," protested Button-Bright, beginning to cry....
Happening just then to feel the Love Magnet in his pocket [!!!--Ed.], [the Shaggy Man] said to the creatures, with more confidence:
"Don't you love me?"
"Yes!" they shouted, all together.
"Then you mustn't harm me, or my friends," said the shaggy man, firmly.
"We love you in soup!" they yelled...
"We love you in SOUP!"
Since all the animals in Oz can talk, and even some of the plants, much of the humour (too much?) revolves around who wants to eat (or doesn't want to be eaten by) whom. In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Dorothy meets the once and future Wizard of Oz at the center of the Earth. He has with him his Nine Tiny (and fairly interchangeable) Piglets, real pigs the size of hamsters, whom he has taught to do tricks. Dorothy has her kitten Eureka along rather than her dog Toto:
But the travellers were obliged to rest, and while they were sitting on the rocky floor the Wizard felt in his pocket and brought out the nine tiny piglets. To his delight they were now plainly visible, which proved that they had passed beyond the influence of the magical Valley of Voe.
"Why, we can see each other again!" cried one, joyfully.
"Yes," sighed Eureka; "and I also can see you again, and the sight makes me dreadfully hungry. Please, Mr. Wizard, may I eat just one of the fat little piglets? You'd never miss ONE of them, I'm sure!"
"What a horrid, savage beast!" exclaimed a piglet; "and after we've been such good friends, too, and played with one another!"
"When I'm not hungry, I love to play with you all," said the kitten, demurely; "but when my stomach is empty it seems that nothing would fill it so nicely as a fat piglet."
"And we trusted you so!" said another of the nine, reproachfully.
"And thought you were respectable!" said another.
"It seems we were mistaken," declared a third, looking at the kitten timorously, "no one with such murderous desires should belong to our party, I'm sure."
Oh, please, Mr. Baum, Eureka's right -- surely one or two wouldn't be missed, except by the other piglets... It's never clear where all the mystery meat at Oz feasts comes from, although some of it is created ex nihilo and some of it grows on trees. Nevertheless, when the Cowardly Lion goes off into the wilderness to find something more suitable for breakfast than strawberry jam or whatever Dorothy is eating, it is pretty clear he ain't hunting mushrooms.
In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the Crooked Magician creates a transparent Glass Cat. It has a ruby heart that is cold, hard, and haughty, and pink brains that roll around in its head when it is thinking. The cat is very proud of these visible brains, and states no less than 12 times, "My brains are pink -- you can see 'em work!" or some variation thereof. (I counted. This is my new email signature.) That's the only joke not related to eating that really made me laugh in the 14 Baum books. This running gag is certainly less tiresome than Baum's repeated description of food as "smoking hot", which I'm sure he says far more than a dozen times.
Turning to a contemporary Oz author, Martin Gardner made me laugh aloud twice in the first 14 pages of his non-canonical Visitors from Oz, in which Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman visit the New York City of 1998. The first laugh happened when Ozma, who is on the Internet (anonymously of course) and thus in touch with the ordinary world, called her council chamber in the Emerald City "the Green Room". The second laugh happened when Ozma asked the council members which of them would like to go back to Earth:
Ozma turned to Button-Bright, the little boy who was always getting lost. "Would you like to go along with Dorothy and perhaps see Philadelphia again?"
"Nope," said Button-Bright.
The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger shook their huge heads vigorously. "We wouldn't be able to talk outside Oz," said the lion. "The police would try to capture us and lock us up in some awful zoo. After all, on Earth we're considered ferocious beasts. No thanks. We'd rather stay here where we're loved and respected, and no one is afraid of us."
"Or think that I'd eat one of their precious babies," said the Hungry Tiger. He paused, then added, "Much as I would like to."
The Hungry Tiger's claims that he wanted to "eat fat babies" have always rung hollow to me. After a hundred years of sumptuous banquets in Ozma's palace, he's probably stuffed (apologies to the Scarecrow). His disclaimer in Gardner's book strikes me as pro forma, merely keeping up appearances. We're back to jokes about eating people, of course.
Gardner has a contemporary sense of humour, so it's not surprising that he can make me laugh twice in one book, whereas Baum takes 14 books to make me laugh thrice. However, for charm and whimsy, Baum is a much superior author to any of his successors that I have read. There are some kinds of amusement that don't necessitate laughter.
Entered 00:24 [/books/oz] permalink
I just learned on the Nonestica mailing list that the remaindered trade paperbacks by Mundus of the 14 Baum Oz books (nearly full-size photoreproductions) I described are available online from Daedalus Books and Music for $4.98, which is what I paid for them locally. Their retail price (it says here) is $14.95, which is 67% off.
I also noticed that Daedalus has The Annotated Wizard of Oz: Centennial Edition, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn, for $9.98, which is what I paid for it locally. That's about 75% off, as the book retails for $39.95. This massive tome with beautiful full-colour illustrations is well worth a $10 investment.
Disclaimer: I have no connection with Daedalus. But go there, search for "Baum", and order the Oz books anyway.
Entered 13:33 [/books/oz] permalink
A redundancy? Not necessarily. "The Emerald City" has long been a nickname for Seattle. This post will tell you where to get the Oz books relatively cheaply in Seattle, and some other places if you have the misfortune not to live here. :)
Half Price Books is your dear, dear friend. As of early 2004, you can pick up all 14 of the L. Frank Baum Oz books by hitting various Half Price Books locations in the Seattle area. Each book is $4.98, so a complete set will cost you about $70 plus tax. At present, there are nine stores in metro-Seattle. The new Capital Hill store on Belmont Avenue seems to have the widest selection, but you will probably have to visit more than one store to get all the books. The editions being remaindered, by the way, are published by a company calling itself "For Your Knowledge" or "Mundus". (The company seems to have changed its name at one point; the books published under one name do not differ in any significant way from those published under the other.) These are hefty trade paperbacks -- not quite Dover quality, but I have no complaints at $5 apiece.
Half Price Books has stores in Arizona, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas (of course), Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin as well, so if you live in those states, you may also be in luck. Unfortunately, they seem to have discontinued web orders.
If you do want Dover-quality paperbacks, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square has most or all of the Baum Oz books in Dover editions. They cost twice as much as the Mundus/For Your Knowledge editions, but that's still only $10 or so, and they will last you the rest of your life. Alternatively, order the Dover editions directly from Dover.
The University of Washington Bookstore has half a dozen of the Mundus/For Your Knowledge editions, plus remaindered copies of the Centennial Edition of the Annotated Wizard of Oz for about $10. This book from 2000 is well worth making a special trip for. The UW Bookstore also has several of the Dover editions, and they sometimes stock Edward Einhorn's influential Paradox in Oz. (It's where I got my copy.)
If you don't care much about illustrations, you can find all 14 of the Baum Oz books at the Online Books Page and then some, in free ebook form. Share and Enjoy!
If none of these options suit you, try ordering Oz
books from Powell's, which has an incredible variety of them, new and used.
You'll support this site if you order via the link
I just gave you. SURRENDER AMAZON!
Entered 19:59 [/books/oz] permalink
Found Tuesday night at the Crossroads Barnes & Noble in Bellevue, Washington:
More Frugal Gambling, Jean Scott with Angela Sparks, Huntington Press, 2003.
Apparently this is a bestselling book, or series of books. Am I bizarre in finding it bizarre?
Entered 04:32 [/books/bizarre] permalink
Found Thursday in an outdoor bookstall on First Avenue in Seattle:
Pillion, Numa Jay. Understanding Homosexuality Through Reincarnation: The Story of a Quest. www.1stbooks.com. Second edition, 2002.
Marty said she thought it would be better if it were called Understanding Homosexuality Through Mime.
A Google search for "Numa Jay Pillion" finds 73 hits, most for this book.
Entered 12:48 [/books/bizarre] permalink
I recently received the following email. (My correspondent's name has been changed to prevent googling by the gift recipient.)
On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 08:45:17PM -0800, Patricia wrote: > Dear Ron, > > I am a mother of a 16 year old who has learned Esperanto, speaks it > well (I guess), and spends quite a bit of time online in Esperanto > chat rooms. In any case, he has asked for books in Esperanto for > Christmas and I am having a heck of a time finding any. Then I > stumbled upon your website which looks quite promising. I see you > use Powell's Books (good for you - a great store) for purchasing but > I still can't seem to find any books in Esperanto. Too much to wade > through and I don't know what I'm looking for. Can you help me? > Offer suggestions? > > I'd sure appreciate it if you had time to suggest a few things.
Here is my response, lightly edited. All the books I mention are good gifts for not only Christmas but also Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Yule, or for birthdays if you're reading this at a different time of year.
Hi, Patricia--
I've got my Christmas MP3 mix playing as I write this. At first I thought that since I didn't know your son, I couldn't recommend any books for him. Then I realised that there are a few books I would recommend for practically any Esperantist, and that I could guess at a few more.
First of all, as much as I love Powell's, forget about them. Powell's has only a small selection of books in Esperanto. The ELNA Libroservo (Esperanto League for North America Book Service) is where you want to go. (ELNA has a broad array of books, but not as broad as that of the UEA (Universala Esperanto-Asocio, the global organisation).) Unfortunately, the UEA is in Rotterdam, therefore unlikely to get books to you by Christmas, but you might consider it if there's a birthday coming up...
To continue, many English-speaking Esperantists can still improve their Esperanto. The best book in English I know of for becoming a better Esperanto speaker is Being Colloquial in Esperanto: A Reference Guide, by David K. Jordan. Unless your son has already read this book, I guarantee there are fine points of Esperanto usage in it that he doesn't know yet.
Also by David K. Jordan (under the pseudonym Doko) is the side-splitting (to an Esperantist, admittedly) Rakontoj prapatraj pri nia lando antaux multaj jarcentoj kiam okazemis mirindaj aferoj ("Stories of our forefathers about our country, many centuries ago, when there tended to occur wonderful things"). This is a book of satirical fairy tales about Esperanto culture along the lines of Kipling's Just-So Stories, but much funnier. Since your son is spending time in Esperanto chat rooms, he has undoubtedly experienced some of the global Esperanto culture, so this book will probably tickle him.
Another good book on Esperanto language is La Bona Lingvo by Claude Piron. It is a book about simplifying Esperanto usage; I like it a lot, but it might or might not appeal to your son. There's a review available in English, so you can decide for yourself.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro ("Unabridged Illustrated Dictionary"). This is the definitive Esperanto dictionary, which contains just about every word you'll ever find in an Esperanto text. It's about three inches thick. It also costs about $75.00. I have one already, or else I'd certainly be glad if someone gave me one for Christmas.
I'm going to hazard a couple of guesses about your son. Since he's an Esperantist, it's quite likely that he is interested in world peace. In that case, I recommend a fine novel about a man in his early twenties who travels to Germany in the 1960s as a social worker to care for former concentration camp inmates who are in trouble with the law: Apenaux papilioj en Bergen-Belsen ("Hardly Butterflies in Bergen-Belsen"), by Trevor Steele.
Since your son is obviously intelligent (anyone who can teach himself a language to a conversational level from a book at age 16 has got to be smart, even if the language is Esperanto), I'll lay 50/50 odds that he reads some science fiction. In that case I have two recommendations. Naskigxo de la Rustimuna Sxtalrato ("A Stainless Steel Rat is Born") by Harry Harrison is a cracking SF coming-of-age story by a "real" science fiction author (it's a translation from English). It also happens to be set in a future in which everyone speaks Esperanto. For something further from home, I recommend the Sferoj series. This is a more-or-less annual collection of science fiction stories from all over the world translated into Esperanto. The title is a pun; it means both "Spheres" and "pieces of SF". There are many volumes available.
I hear that William Auld's translation of The Lord of the Rings is quite good, but it does not seem to be available at ELNA. Auld's translation of Jurgen by James Branch Cabell is, though. Jurgen was the subject of obscenity proceedings in the 1920s, but hey, The Catcher in the Rye has been banned at times too. I read Jurgen in English when I was 16 or 17 and it didn't hurt me. Jurgen is available online in the original English, so you can judge for yourself whether it is appropriate.
A non-SF novel about growing up is Fajron sentas mi interne ("I Feel a Fire Within Me") by Ulrich Matthias. I enjoyed it, and it has been praised within the Esperanto community. This book is also available online. Thus, your son might have read it already. If not, you might save a few bucks by printing it yourself and making a stocking stuffer of it.
I have also enjoyed Esperanto sen mitoj ("Esperanto Without Myths") by Ziko Marcus Sikosek. This is a nonfiction examination of the sometimes exaggerated claims made for Esperanto. Interesting for the devoted Esperantist, if a bit disillusioning.
No matter what language the person I spoke to read it in, I have heard only good things about Nudpieda Gen ("Barefoot Gen"), a Japanese "manga" (graphic novel) about surviving Hiroshima.
Finally, ELNA sells all kinds of doodads (buttons, pens, stickers, tote bags, T-shirts, etc.) with Esperanto logos and slogans that might be useful as stocking stuffers.
One word of warning: some of the titles above are transliterations; the Esperanto alphabet has more letters than the English one. If you have trouble searching for some of the titles at the ELNA site, try entering the author's name, or enter only the words without Xs in them.
I don't think all of these items are available from ELNA right now, but a fair portion seem to be. Good luck, and Merry Christmas to you both.
--Ron
Entered 21:09 [/books] permalink
In mid-November I finished reading The Other Wind (2001), the fifth novel by Ursula Le Guin set in the world of Earthsea, and this morning (30 November) I finished reading her collection of Earthsea stories, Tales from Earthsea (2001).
Both were heartbreakingly beautiful. Earthsea is a reflection of our world in some ways, but not an allegory as Narnia is. There are few worlds in fantasy, let alone science fiction, in which I would like to live, but Earthsea is one of them.
These two Earthsea books, as well as Tehanu, the fourth novel, have been criticised for being revisionist, for being "bad Ursula". However, as Le Guin writes in the foreword to Tales, "The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime." Hell, all of Middle-earth changed between chapters 10 and 12 of The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo, I don't think we're in The Hobbit anymore...
By the way, I have not yet seen anyone draw a comparison between The Other Wind and Philip Pullman's book The Amber Spyglass, which was published in 2000. I wonder if there was any influence.
I didn't like Tehanu when it came out, but now I am going to reread the whole series. So much "high fantasy" reads like a USan trying to speak with an English accent, but Le Guin has a true voice, and still can call the wind to bring our ships into Roke.
You can read a nice review of the two books in a 2001 issue of Salon.
Entered 01:20 [/books] permalink
I just finished reading the final novel in a six-volume science fiction cycle by Brian Stableford sometimes called "Emortals". Privately, I call it the "Third Millennium series" because it is based loosely on a future history by Stableford and David Langford called The Third Millennium (1984) (not to be confused with the apocalyptic Christian fantasy novel of the same name).
The Emortals series spans approximately 13 centuries, from the late 20th century to the middle of the Fourth Millennium. Much of the action focuses on the characters' quest for "emortality" (true immortality is not seen as a plausible goal because a putative immortal would still be subject to death by misadventure).
This is not great speculative fiction. Stableford is neither Greg Egan nor Gene Wolfe. However, the Emortals series is thought-provoking; for example, Stableford's reasoning why periodic rejuvenation by nanotechnology would provide only "false emortality" is a bloody thread running throughout the series, and it is not at all clear that he is wrong. Also thought-provoking is the ideology of Hardinism, which posits that the Earth must be owned by someone (in this case, a small clique of emortal capitalists) in order to prevent a catastrophic global "tragedy of the commons". (Hardin's original paper can be found online.)
The volumes in the series are listed below, in Stableford's preferred reading order (= rough chronological order). Book links in this article are part of my Powell's affiliate program, as detailed on the Books Ron Read page. If you enjoy this series of novels, you might also enjoy the game 6 Billion. (In this case, the link benefits Games to the Rescue.)
Entered 00:25 [/books] permalink
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