I've been experimenting with the idea of combining ChatGPT, DALL-E, the ReadSpeaker TTS engine and the LARA toolkit to create multimedia stories that I've been experimenting with the idea of combining ChatGPT, DALL-E, the ReadSpeaker TTS engine and the LARA toolkit to create multimedia stories that can be used as reading material for people who want to improve their foreign language skills. Here's an example. I simply gave the prompt "Write a short, quirky news story in Italian that could be used in an intermediate language class", and let Chat get on with it; when it had finished, I also asked it to add an English gloss for each word. I created a DALL-E image and converted into multimodal form using the LARA toolkit, the whole thing took about half an hour.
You can see the result here (view in Chrome or Firefox). People whose Italian is better than mine have said good things about it. _________________________
I've now created similar stories in about twenty more languages, there's a complete list below. For some reason ChatGPT likes writing about heroic animals, I have no idea why! In a few cases (Mandarin, Spanish, Swedish), I asked it not to do that, since I was getting tired of the theme.
There are several languages here that I don't know at all, and others that I know very badly. I've just cut and pasted Chat's text, making a few minor corrections to keep things consistent when there were obvious formatting errors.
After each link, I'm adding comments received from native and near-native speakers. If you speak one of these languages and have thoughts about any aspect of the content, please feel free to post below or PM me!
There is a pause between the second last and last words in the first sentence of the last paragraph which must not be there as there is no punctuation mark between the two words. For the same reason, there must not be any pause between the third last and second last words in the last sentence of the same paragraph.
The Bengali word chosen for the English word ‘inventor’ actually means artist and not inventor; there is a more accurate word in Bengali for inventor.
The last sentence could be improved by restructuring it. But, I think that would not do much to improve it. The reason is this: The English translation of the last sentence as it stands now would be the following: The artist is showing a huge amount of interest in his initiative because of this success and he/she is waiting for his/her next technological invention.
The sentence needs to rephrased if the following in intended:
The inventor is greatly motivated by this success and is looking forward to his/her next technological invention.
"Cat saves baby" (French) Christèle (native) says it's more or less perfect as far as the French goes, but queries the plausibility. How could the cat have saved the baby?
"Dog reunited with family" (French) Christèle (native) says it's more or less perfect as far as the French goes, but queries the plausibility. Why would you do a DNA test on a dog?
"Time capsule found in school" (German) Mark (near-native?) says in message #33 that it is "flawless". However, Berengaria (C2 level) says in message #63: "The German one about the time capsule is grammatically correct, but one or two word choices/phrasings are odd". Leidzeit (native) comments further in message #65: "I would not say the German story is flawless. The use of the past tense (preterit) is odd but okay for a piece written in the local paper. But you would not use gewährten as the stuff found still allows you to look back. As for style as an editor I would ask the writer not to use the als-clause two times."
"Monkey business" (Hindi) Saurabh (native) says in message #52 that "the Hindi one is simple, the words used are more daily-usage than literary, and the story, surprisingly, I could imagine in a Hindi children's book." Peter (near-native) says: "Seems pretty good to me: a bank raid in New Delhi by a gang of monkeys... seems all too plausible to me!"
"Cheeky horse" (Irish) Neasa (native) says the word choice is very odd. In particular, the key content word capall is an obscure archaic word for "horse" never used in modern Irish.
"Cat elected mayor" (Italian) Catia (native) says one small mistake. Plch (native) says in message #35 below that the name of the town should be feminine, otherwise perfect. Ivana (near-native) says very good.
"Historical cat" (Latin) Not's mother, a retired Latin teacher, said there were no obvious mistakes in Chat's grammar. She would however prefer not to give its homework a mark until she has seen at least one more Latin composition by an AI.
"Historical dog" (Latin) [This text was created using an early version of the new C-LARA platform using a story originally written by the Bing engine.]
"Inexplicable event at museum" (Slovak) Branislav (native speaker) says that there are some unnatural word choices and minor grammatical errors, and in general that it sounds as though it's been written by someone whose native language is English. But he added that he quite liked the story, and that it would only take a few minutes for a fluent Slovak speaker to fix it up so that it was fully acceptable.
I checked the Ukrainian version. Despite its numerous instances of unconventional usage and dubious stylistic choices the text overall could easily pass as a work of a 10 year old child. It was unexpected to find a newly coined participle блукуючи instead of блукаючи the blunder most probably caused by the wrong declension of the same verb. Overall not too shabby.
I read the story. It is well written. There are two points where I felt it could improve from my perspective:
- The AI generated an odd use of ‘mahli’ (local) birds in the title. While everywhere else the use of word ‘mahala’ sounds appropriate. In the title when used to describe the birds, it seems a bit off. - At another point, the use of the words ‘ibtadai doar’ though might have sounded better in English, it reads a bit off in the Urdu sentence. The use of these word here does not flow with the present tense/contemporary nature of the story, making it seem like a historical text and translates more as in the ‘beginning era of their efforts’ rather than ‘at the start of their effort’ at least to me.
Otherwise, the text reads really well as a short story about birds attempting to fly to the moon and inspiring children and adults to appreciate their efforts and expand their own horizons.
As a native speaker, I can say that it flows quite smoothly and it's almost impossible to tell if it was written by a Vietnamese person or not. However, upon closer inspection, there may be a few words that are not 100% appropriate (but they are still not incorrect).
It's an interesting challenge to try and explain the charm of this unassuming little book, which has already won a surprising number of fans. Not was It's an interesting challenge to try and explain the charm of this unassuming little book, which has already won a surprising number of fans. Not was in change of producing it, and her description made it sound terribly dull: Arn Crabb, a postal worker in 1940 Adelaide, signs up for the Army, gets sent to Singapore as part of a military postal unit, gets captured by the Japanese, and spends the rest of the war in a POW camp. The greater part of the book consists of the illegal diary he kept while interned. There isn't much detail; entries typically consist of a laconic sentence or two about the day's duties, the latest Red Cross package, or the weather. Sometimes we get no more than "ditto". There are no daring escapes, no heroic feats of bravery, just the endless struggle to survive.
On thinking about it some more, a chess analogy occurred to me which perhaps might convey what it is that makes the book feel worthwhile and even gripping. If you're a casual player, you're only going to be interested in looking at dramatic games with a decisive result: dashing attacks, brilliant positional squeezes and the like. These games, of course, are always popular. But serious players are also interested in a second kind of game. The hardest thing about chess is playing the black pieces. Your opponent moves first, and he tries to use that to keep you on the back foot. You look for examples of people who managed to come up with good defensive schemes that let them hold an inferior position without allowing it to get any worse. If you can learn how to draw these games, you've acquired an extremely important skill.
Arn doesn't do anything obviously interesting in the book, but the end result is remarkable. He survives the hellish experience of Changi and comes out of it not just alive, but sane and capable of enjoying life; a great many of his fellow-prisoners didn't. He does this by cashing in on the occasional stroke of good luck (the title is a phrase he liked to use himself), by managing to exchange the odd letter with his young wife back home, who waited for him, but more than anything just by being a kind, decent human being who maintained his sense of self throughout this ordeal. He makes it sound easy, and the more you think about that the more extraordinary it becomes.
Nice work, Arn. I'm glad your story survived. I read it, and I think: well, so you can actually get through these things. Next time I'm playing black in the game of life, I'll try to remember what it was that helped you dig in, and carry on, and wait for those little chances that helped you improve your desperate position into a slightly less desperate one. The whole world's playing defence at the moment. We need to be reminded that it isn't always hopeless....more
I recently discovered that "to become" in Persian is شدن, pronounced "shodan". So if Miyamoto's book is translated into Persian, will the title be "شدI recently discovered that "to become" in Persian is شدن, pronounced "shodan". So if Miyamoto's book is translated into Persian, will the title be "شدن شدن"?
I see reviewers here complaining that La vieillesse is boring, or disorganised, or outdated gerontology or whatever, but with all due respect I think I see reviewers here complaining that La vieillesse is boring, or disorganised, or outdated gerontology or whatever, but with all due respect I think this is missing the point. Simone de Beauvoir, now in her early sixties, is a distinguished author and philosopher characterised by her calm, lucid way of approaching all kinds of difficult questions. It has been clear to her for some time that she is getting older, and will soon, perhaps even now, be at an age when she's generally called "old". Well: what does that mean? What is old age? Is it an objective thing, a social construct, or a combination of the two? How do people experience being old? What strategies do you have for dealing with the fact of being old? How do different cultures treat old people? What ethical issues arise? In short, she's setting out to examine old age from a philosophical point of view.
De Beauvoir starts off by saying that most people have a great deal of resistance to thinking about these things at all and would rather avoid them: denial is definitely the preferred approach. I will never get old, they tell themselves. I am going to stay young, maybe not in body but at least in spirit. Perhaps I will kill myself to avoid such a miserable fate. (She tells us this is a very common reaction). And yet, most people become old. So why not look at what this means? At first, I did indeed find La vieillesse hard to get through, and progress became mysteriously stalled for a couple of months as I switched to more appealing books; but I decided to return to it, and after a while I found I was hooked. She's right. There's no point in pretending the problems don't exist, and once you start thinking about them they are fascinating.
There are many different threads. Every other page contains something you want to quote - my favourite was Paulhan's comment that old age had revealed to him the existence of several things he'd previously thought were only to be found in books - and it's full of extraordinary stories. But three themes in particular keep coming back. First, old age is something that is very different for different people. Some people do indeed experience it, in what she regards as the traditional stereotype, as a calming of the passions, a serene preparation for departing life, but these are the exceptions. Most old people are not calm or serene; the story that made the deepest impression on me was the very physical romance between a pensioned teacher in his late eighties and a former student, which ends with her tracking down his grave after he has been kidnapped and killed by his own children, and spending twenty-four hours lying prostrate on the granite slab. Needless to say, this is also an exception: but all the same.
Second, there is the question of what it is that primarily characterises being old. Of course, there is physiology, and she is typically dispassionate about detailing the various unpleasant things that happen to people's bodies, particularly men's bodies, as they get older. But she also shows you many examples of old people who are physically decrepit, yet still enjoying life and finding it meaningful. She argues persuasively that a much more important factor is the balance between the past and the future. We all live with the accumulated weight of our past, which we feel responsible for in various ways; we need to carry on being the person we used to be, who is no longer us. After a while, we may spend so much energy thinking about our past self that we have nothing left to devote to our future self, and then we are finished. I thought this was very insightful and helpful.
So, third and finally, what options do we in fact have when we are old? What can we do that will make us feel that we have a future? Here, too, I was struck by the clarity of her answer. For a great many people, there are no options. Once they are too old to be employable, society has no use for them. It may just barely keep them alive because it feels too unpleasant to kill old people directly, but it does so unwillingly, and it is made clear to these people that they are now irrelevant. They cannot make meaningful plans for the future, because whatever they do makes no difference. I think the situation is now better than it was in 1970, when she published the book. But it is not that much better, and it could easily get worse again. The attitudes she describes are deeply rooted in the structure of our civilization.
Well: not exactly an upbeat book. She notes that many of her readers were disappointed to find her later output "pessimistic"; avoid this if you want to hear that you shouldn't worry, it'll all be okay. But personally I loved it. If you also enjoy authors who tell it like it is and don't try to bullshit us, you may love it too....more
This short book describes the eight basic strategic principles of the game of Go, and if you're a reasonably good chess player then I kind of recommenThis short book describes the eight basic strategic principles of the game of Go, and if you're a reasonably good chess player then I kind of recommend looking at it. The striking thing is that most of Nagahara-san's principles are very general - almost philosophical, in fact - and you sort of recognize them from your chess experience, but oddly enough you find you don't have a word for them. It's a strange feeling. After a while, you draw the conclusion that Go theory has to be more advanced than chess theory.
In some cases, you almost have a word. Two of the most basic ideas in Go are sente and its converse gote. Sente is sort of similar to what chess players mean when they say "initiative" or "tempo", but it's more precise. If you start a combination which is intended to achieve something - maybe you want to save a group of your stones from being killed - there will be a sequence of moves where you do something, and your opponent replies, and then you do something else, and so on. The question is who plays last. If your opponent plays last, you can now decide what do next, and you've finished in sente; you've forced him. If you play last, your opponent decides what to do next, and you've finished in gote; you've been forced. The initiative is valuable, so finishing in sente is worth a lot. People expend a lot of cleverness to try and grab sente.
So that's pretty familiar, but other concepts are harder to pin down. Sabaki is another very important concept. Ideally, you'd rather not get into a fight in an area where your opponent is strong and you're weak - but sometimes it's unavoidable, and that's where sabaki comes in. It means playing your stones lightly, so that you don't mind losing a few of them as long as some others survive and you establish a base. The same principle can apply in chess too; everyone knows that in some situations the right thing to do is accept that you're going to lose some material, and try to get positional compensation for that inevitable loss. But I'm struggling to find any way to say it explicitly.
The one that's strangest of all is aji, which sort of means "potential" - except that, once again, the Go term is much more precise. Once some stones are on the board, there are always a lot of possible sequences you can play which might turn out to be useful. Looking at what's going on in the corner over here, I could play this to get an outside wall, or I could play that to get some territory, or I could play the other thing to cut the connection between two of my opponent's groups. But I can only do one of them. You say that each of these sequences is a piece of aji. Usually, I don't know which one will be most useful to me, so I wait until I have a reason for picking one rather than another, and then I take my opportunity. Playing a forcing sequence too early is a beginner's mistake, and it's called ajikeshi - erasing your aji. Chess players sort of know about this too. There's a much-quoted proverb, "Patzer sees a check, patzer checks". And Nimzowitch famously said that the threat is stronger than the execution - if you look at the context, you see, clear as day, that he's warning you about ajikeshi. But no one's invented a word that's caught on.
The more I think about it, the weirder it gets. I mean, us Europeans are the advanced culture, right? But somehow these Chinese and Japanese and Korean guys seem to be way ahead of us. How did that happen?
The authors assume you know the basics, and do a nice job of introducing you to real strategy: not just thinking about the next few stones (can I kill this group? can I make a connection here?), but the global flow of the game. In chess terms, it's like levelling up from I take him, he takes back, I play check! and win to I exchange bishops and fix the kingside pawn structure to leave him with chronic light square weaknesses. Go strategy is at least as difficult as chess strategy. There's always a bunch of different things going on simultaneouly on that roomy 19x19 board, and the challenge is to link them together into a coherent plan.
At the end of the day, you win by surrounding more territory than your opponent - but only playing to surround territory in Go is as stupid as trying to take every pawn that your opponent offers in chess. When you have a local fight, usually one player ends on the inside and the other player ends on the outside. The guy on the inside has taken territory, but the guy on the outside has influence towards the rest of the board. If a new fight starts nearby, the person with the outside influence will be at an advantage. So if you have influence, you want to make it count by starting a fight where it will be useful; conversely, if your opponent has influence you want to "reduce" it - create a living group nearby, so that influence won't be useful any more.
The authors make it seem like common sense, but they also show you how fiendishly complicated the details are. A strong Go player is always thinking about dozens or even hundreds of potential sequences in different parts of the board. He has to keep them all simultaneously in his mind, and wait for an opportune moment to use them. In most cases, choosing one sequence means that others become impossible. You can play an attacking move towards the center, forcing your opponent to answer on the inside so that you in effect get an extra play; but this means you no longer have an opportunity to win eight points of free territory in the ending. After a while, you start to see why masters can think a whole hour over one move.
Looking for material on Go history, I found another interesting page in Sensei's Library which lists the "Ten Golden Rules of Go Strategy", originally formulated by Ji Xin Wang in the T'ang dynasty, about 1300 years ago. They're still pretty good advice, and they all appear in this book in one form or another. It's humbling for chess players to think that most of the principles of chess strategy weren't discovered until the 19th century or later. I must get back to Go again.
The Ten Golden Rules
Tān bùdé shèng （贪不得胜) Greediness is not victorious
Rù jiè yí huǎn （入界宜缓) Be unhurried to enter opponent's territory
Gōng bǐ gù wǒ (攻彼顾我) Take care of oneself when attacking others
Qì zǐ zhēng xiān （弃子争先 ） Discard stones to gain sente [initiative]
Shě xiǎo jiù dà （舍小就大） Abandon small to save big
Féng wēi xū qì （逢危须弃） When in danger, sacrifice
Shèn wù qīng sù （慎勿轻速） Make thick shape, avoid hasty moves
Dòng xū xiāng yìng （动须相应） A move must respond to the opponent´s
Bǐ qiáng zì bǎo （彼强自保） Against strong positions, play safely
Shì gū qǔ hé （势孤取和） Look for peace, avoid fighting in an isolated or weak situation ...more
For two or three years of my life I was very interested in topology, so when I saw this little novel going for a few francs at the second-hand book shFor two or three years of my life I was very interested in topology, so when I saw this little novel going for a few francs at the second-hand book shop on the Rue de Carouge I couldn't resist it. The description on the back didn't seem unpromising: brilliant young French mathematician goes to Japan, falls in love with Japanese girl, then things go wrong. I was curious to find out how, and even more to know where the topology came in.
Well, it really is quite annoying. The idea is fine, and the right author could have made a good book out of it. Thomas is a gifted mathematician of the Platonic school. He loves mathematics because it liberates him from the dreary contingency of the world, and allows him to live in the intangible spaces of logical truth. For this reason, the author tells us, he's drawn to the field of topology, which is abstract even by the standards of pure mathematics. Laboriously calculating things on paper to reach a conclusion is still too earthly for Thomas; he wants to see the proof in its essence, through the power of his mind alone. This way of thinking starts to affect the way he lives his life. He takes a scholarship to spend a year in Japan and finds that Japanese girls are crazy about handsome, gifted young Frenchmen. After seducing a number of them (they put up not even token resistance; it's just "Do you want to come back to my place?" "Wakarimashita"), he meets Ayako and decides after a few days that she is The One. It is, you understand, the ineffable purity of her soul that captures him. But then things start getting complicated. First Fukushima happens; everyone in France is telling him to come home at once, but he decides he can't leave his true love, and sticks it out when all his colleagues are fleeing like rats. Then, after his year is up, he brings her back to France with him. (He must stay true to his ideal). But they need money to live, so he takes the only job he can find, which is teaching math at a school in one of the nastier banlieues. Their relationship starts turning sour under the strain. After a while he gets involved with another Japanese girl he meets by accident on the subway, his wife finds out, and it all ends in tears.
Even though the story is on the banal side, the author has a plan in mind; in order to convey Thomas's unusual, mathematical way of looking at things, the writing throughout nearly the whole book is extremely abstract. We get to hear very little about what kind of person Ayako is, or even what she looks like; it's all conveyed in generalities. It's only right at the end, when Thomas has the disastrous adventure with the other Japanese girl and is forced to confront the fact that he's a human being and not a pure spirit, that we get any descriptions of normal reality. This is subtly conveyed by (view spoiler)[the scene where, after trying to persuade her to have sex with him and being turned down because she's having her period, he comes all over her, leaving her gasping with disgust and desperately looking for more Kleenex since the first packet wasn't enough to wipe everything off. (hide spoiler)]
I'm sure someone could have made this work very well. The problem is that Arnaud, despite being a competent constructor of French sentences, doesn't appear to know anything about mathematics. He can't decide whether Thomas's field is general topology or algebraic topology, appears to be confusing both of them with category theory, and in general is unable to say anything even remotely plausible about what it is his hero is so abstractly thinking. He's severed Thomas's relationship with the material world, but he hasn't got anything to replace it. The mathematician's view of reality is in fact rather more interesting than the purely negative picture which Arnaud presents, though you won't learn that from Topologie de l'amour. I can't quite figure out what he imagined he was doing; hasn't he ever heard of "write what you know"?
Oh well. I suppose I should have paid more attention to the picture on the front than the blurb on the back; with 20/20 hindsight, the fact that none of the formulas have anything whatsoever to do with topology is a rather significant clue. From now on, I promise to judge more books by their covers. Lesson learned.
If you were concerned about The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit, you'll be even more worried by this book. I must admit that I haven'If you were concerned about The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit, you'll be even more worried by this book. I must admit that I haven't yet tried reading it to a two year old, but here's my artist's impression of how it might play out:
ME: So what are we going to read tonight? How about the cat book?
KID: Cat who lived a million times!!!
ME: Okay. So there was this cat, a great, tiger-striped cat, and how many times did he live?
KID: Million times!
ME: He did! And when he died, what did people do?
KID: They cried!
ME: They did. But did the cat cry?
KID: No!
ME: That's right, he never cried. So let's see what happened. Who is he in this life?
KID: He's a king's cat.
ME: That's right! And they go off to fight a war. What happens to the cat?
KID: Arrow hits him.
ME: Poor cat! The arrow kills him. And what does the king do?
KID: He cries.
ME: He does. He goes home and buries the cat in the castle garden and he cries and cries. Now who is he in the next life?
KID: He's a sailor's cat.
ME: That's right! And he sails around the world in the sailor's ship. But now what happens to the cat?
KID: He falls in the water.
ME: Poor cat! The sailor fishes him out, but he's drowned. So what does he do?
KID: He cries. And he buries the cat under the tree.
ME: That's right! He buries the cat under the tree in a far-away port.
(... several lives later ...)
ME: Now who is the cat this time?
KID: He's a stray cat.
ME: That's right! He can do what he wants. He thinks he's so important because he's lived a million times. Now who's he met here?
KID: A white girl cat.
ME: He thinks the white girl cat is so pretty! But she isn't interested. How does he feel?
KID: He's sad.
ME: He is! He keeps on telling her how clever he is. Is she interested?
KID: No!
ME: That's right! She isn't interested because he only thinks about himself. But now he asks the white cat if she wants to marry him. What does she say?
KID: Yes!
ME: She says she will marry him! He's so happy. They have lots of cute kittens. The cat loves the white cat and the kittens very much. But one day what happens?
KID: White cat is dead.
ME: The white cat is dead. She was very old. What does the cat do now?
KID: He cries.
ME: That's right. He is so sad the white cat is dead, and he cries and cries for three days. And now what's happened?
KID: Cat is dead.
ME: Yes, he's dead too. And does the cat come back again?
I can never go into the children's bookshop off Route de Carouge without buying something, and today it was Gilles Brulet's charming and original littI can never go into the children's bookshop off Route de Carouge without buying something, and today it was Gilles Brulet's charming and original little book of verse. Freely adapting the classical haiku form to French, Brulet has written a collection of short poems about a teddy bear, seen through the eyes of its very young owner and with accompanying translations in Japanese. Both the French and the Japanese are at about three year old level. Here's a sample page with literal translations:
[image]
French:
quand je rentre de l'école mon nounours à la fenêtre
(when i come home from school my teddy at the window)
Japanese:
gakkou kara kaeru to madobe de matteru watashi no kumachan
(when from school return waiting at window my teddy)
In response to innumerable queries from MJ and other people, this cheap, tacky PDF edition is now available to people who want to post sarcastic revieIn response to innumerable queries from MJ and other people, this cheap, tacky PDF edition is now available to people who want to post sarcastic reviews without substantially affecting their bank balance.
You know that pen-and-paper game kids sometimes play, where you take turns writing Os and Xs on graph paper and the winner is the first person to get You know that pen-and-paper game kids sometimes play, where you take turns writing Os and Xs on graph paper and the winner is the first person to get five in a row? Well, in case you weren't aware of this, there's a galaxy far, far away (sometimes called Japan) where it's played in deadly earnest. Professional players have subjected the theory to the same intense scrutiny that our culture has applied to chess, and it was long ago determined that the guy who moves first has a forced win.
But it would be such a pity to lose this fine game, so the rules have been modified to handicap the first player just enough to make it interesting. Read Sakata and Iwata's book if you want to know more. 99% of the people on this site will literally be unable to imagine anything duller. If you're in the remaining 1%, though, it will give you a unique buzz. I can't really describe it, but you feel the ground giving way beneath you in a manner that's simultaneously disquieting and rather pleasant... a little like the high you get from reading a good Philip K. Dick drunk at 3 am in a country you've never visited before. Try it and see. ...more
"...would make a great present for somebody who's never heard of GoodReads before, like maybe a caveman Praise for What Pooh Might Have Said To Dante:
"...would make a great present for somebody who's never heard of GoodReads before, like maybe a caveman recently unfrozen from an ancient glacier" - BirdBrian
"Having observed both Counsel extremely closely, I am compelled to find that the market value of Mr Rayner's efforts is precisely Nil" - Ian G
"... something rather amateurish that looked like it had been done in somebody's back room" - notgettingenough
"Manny doesn't like Harry Potter and sometimes I get mad at him and threaten to throw him into the ocean" - Mariel
"I bought this as a gift for my mum and there was rather more sex in it than I had expected." - Hamish
"... a waste of time... you can read all that stuff for free online" - Paul B
"The future is an endless oneupmanship to see who can write the wittiest, most popular 200-word capsule review on fuck-all. This is Manny’s fault." - MJ
"... call it Rue Vomitorium" - David C
"... good if you read it in the original failboatese" - Vote Whore
"... almost... funny" - Traveller
"... just ... some ... book" - Michael P
"Will you enjoy this? In a word, no, unless you are a masochist" - Sean D
"Never in my life I seen a more desperate attempt to get votes" - Alfonso
"... advertising..." - Esteban
"If I'd been drinking I think it could have made me seasick" - Tabitha
"The thing about Manny... he almost never throws feces at random strangers." - Kat
"... explicit ... the author has failed ..." - Scribble
"... rattling a virtual tip jar at every opportunity ..." - Jason P
"Manny, you sure are fascinated with Stephenie Meyer" - Rowena M
"GoodReads in-jokes ... off-putting ..." - Cecily
"... book snob ... insecurity ... stupid ..." - midnightfaerie
"... sexist garbage ... if you ask me, he is off his onion ..." - Nandakishore
"... ridiculous ... dilettante ..." - Rlotz
"... a pain in the testicles ..." - Faek
"... pompous ..." - Heep
"... silly ..." - Stian
"... enough..." - Alan B __________________________________
Over the last couple of years, several kind people have asked whether I'd considered publishing a collection of my best reviews. I always replied that I appreciated the suggestion, but it didn't seem like a sensible thing to do. But, a few weeks ago, I started wondering whether I shouldn't give it a shot after all. If Goodreads unexpectedly folded up - these things happen - it would be so annoying to lose my writing. Self-publishing has become cheap and easy. And I've got a fair amount of experience with type-setting. How much work could it be to implement a few scripts to turn HTML into LaTeX and then upload a PDF file to Lulu?
Well, it's never quite as straightforward as you think, but here is the result. For the benefit of other people who may feel tempted to do the same thing, let me give you the key lessons I've learned from this little adventure:
1. Sign up an editor and some readers. No author can be objective about their own work; they need keen external eyes to tell them both what's good and what's bad about it. It was fortunate for me that notgettingenough, who has long-term experience with publishing, took an early interest in the project and was willing to act as editor. She ruthlessly corrected several of my dumber ideas, forced me to think about issues I'd happily have ignored, and made sure that the book was produced to professional standards. My advisory committee - BirdBrian, Mariel and Ian - read through the manuscript and gave me encouragement and helpful suggestions. They convinced me that it was worth continuing and taking the time required to make it look good. Thank you, guys! You have all been so thoughtful and patient, and I greatly appreciate it!
2. Think carefully about which reviews to include. Not groaned over my initial selection, which probably took an hour to do and had no structure whatsoever. She encouraged me to group the reviews by style and type of book, after which I saw that some things were grossly overrepresented. Even if bashing Twilight is the Goodreads national sport, I didn't need this many examples of the genre. And much as I love writing about Flaubert, Proust, Wittgenstein and Kasparov, it's likely that the average reader will not share my enthusiasms to the same degree.
3. Acquire at least a smattering of knowledge regarding copyright. As I now understand it, most quoted text that might appear in a Goodreads review should be covered by the rules on Fair Use. I found the following passage from this page helpful:
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
- The nature of the copyrighted work
- The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
- The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied..."
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that copyrighted images are generally not easy to include: the problem is that you'll be using the whole image, rather than just an illustrative part of it. Martha, my talented cover artist, had put together the following very attractive cover:
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But, alas, the Estate of E.H. Shepherd thought this was an "inappropriate" use of Pooh Bear's image and politely but firmly refused to grant me permission. I didn't even get that far with Penguin (Jemima Puddle-Duck) or Gallimard (the Little Prince), who still haven't given me any clear answers. Not, in her capacity as excutive editor, made the sensible but painful decision to go for a simpler solution.
So there have been a few rough moments, but all in all I found this an interesting and rewarding experience. And now, I hardly need add, I'm curious to see if anyone is going to buy it! It's available from this Lulu page....more
One of the sad lessons that life teaches you some time during adolescence is that love is nearly always unrequited. You gaze longingly at the cute girOne of the sad lessons that life teaches you some time during adolescence is that love is nearly always unrequited. You gaze longingly at the cute girl who sits two desks over during English; but she can't stop thinking about the hunky soccer player she sometimes sees at gym, and he dreams every night about the cheerleader who's barely even noticed he exists. Such, alas, is the world we live in. And, oddly enough, it's not just people, it's countries. America can't get England out of her head, even though she was sensible enough to dump him in 1776. She knows perfectly well that he was a cruel, selfish bastard and she's much better off without him, but, damn it, she just has to hear an English accent and she feels all funny inside. England, of course, is still furious and wouldn't take America back if she went down on her knees and begged him. Anyway, it was all a mistake. The only girl he's ever really loved was France. But France hasn't wasted a thought on England since she discovered Japan. God, he's so hot! She calls her friends every night and goes on about him until they beg her to shut up.
Well, France has done her best to get Japan's attention. Some of her outpourings have been just plain embarrassing: L'élégance du hérisson was a large Valentine's Day card with JE T'AIME in glitter followed by a hundred hand-drawn kisses in purple marker, and Japan pretended it never received Stupeur et tremblements, a bitter, tearful missive that France clearly wrote drunk. But every now and then she really gives it her best shot, and then Japan doesn't know what to do. He's still looking guiltily at Nagasaki. Damn! The amount of trouble the chick's gone to. Sparely and elegantly written, with that wistful sense of inevitable loss and the changing of the seasons. Little nods to the irony of dropping a nuclear weapon on Nagasaki, the city which was the home of Japan's largest Christian community. Taking a trivial story which appeared as a curiosity in some Japanese newspapers in 2008, and turning it into a disquieting meditation on alienation and the futility of life. Yes, France has clearly been studying her Kawabata.
But it's still no good. Try as she will, she's just a gaijin, and she keeps making annoying little mistakes which ruin the whole effect. I mean, fancy thinking there was only one nijuuhibakusha. Five minutes on Google would have caught that one, but she was evidently too busy writing "M. et Mme. Japon" in her diary.
Oh well. At least it's better than being stalked by Korea....more
Did a secret Japanese research program during World War II construct its own atomic weapon, which was actually tested in North Korea a day or two afteDid a secret Japanese research program during World War II construct its own atomic weapon, which was actually tested in North Korea a day or two after Nagasaki and then captured by the invading Russians?
The answer, I'm afraid, is probably "no", but the author has discovered a remarkable story. I was left in no doubt that a Japanese version of the Manhattan Project did exist. It's rather moving in a strange way, and I was reminded several times of Das Boot. Just as with the movie, where after a while you realise you're identifying with the crew of the U-boat and cheering them on as they sink Allied convoy ships, I found myself hoping that Professor Nishina and his team would somehow succeed.
They had some real stars on their side: Yukawa, who got a Nobel Prize for discovering the meson, and Tomonaga, who later made major contributions to quantum electrodynamics and helped work out the renormalisation method. Nishina himself comes across as a great man, who just happened to end up fighting on the wrong side. But they never received enough funding, and they couldn't get their hands on sufficient quantities of uranium, despite valiant efforts. Also, they chose the wrong method for trying to separate out U-235 from U-238. Thermal diffusion didn't turn out to work, though everyone would have called it a stroke of genius if it had. They did eventually start building large centrifuges, but then the firebombing started and it was too late.
In the parallel universe described in Man In The High Castle, I wonder if Kawabata writes a novel about this project instead of The Master of Go? I'm trying to imagine the plot. I think Nishina, who died of cancer a few years after the end of the war, is the figure corresponding to the Master; Arakatsu, his shadowy and apparently rather more pragmatic rival in the parallel Navy-run project, is Otake. There's a subplot in Wilcox's book about a Spanish spy ring in the US who unsuccessfully try to penetrate the American nuclear program; here, I'm guessing that they succeed, and Arakatsu is able to use their stolen knowledge to win the race.
I've already half-convinced myself that the book exists. Perhaps I will get some yarrow stalks and see if I can cross over the other side for long enough to locate a copy. ...more
I think this is the book I used to have - someone borrowed it and I never got it back. I read it many times. Here are some of my favourites, in EnglisI think this is the book I used to have - someone borrowed it and I never got it back. I read it many times. Here are some of my favourites, in English translation.
To sumo-wrestle with another's loin-cloth.
If they succeed, a revolutionary army. If they fail, a bunch of terrorists.
Children: pain. No children: also pain.
The soul of the three year old child remains the same even if he lives to be a hundred.
If you're familiar with Kawabata's The Master of Go, it's impossible to read Shan Sa's book without thinking about it on every page. Kawabata, in subtIf you're familiar with Kawabata's The Master of Go, it's impossible to read Shan Sa's book without thinking about it on every page. Kawabata, in subtle, elliptical prose, describes a real Go match which he covered as a young reporter working for a Japanese newspaper. He reorganized his match reports as a novel, where the symbolic aspects of the game gradually come to the fore; the Master represents the old Japan, his brash young challenger the new Western culture that was destroying its soul. The game itself is central to the story. Kawabata, himself a strong amateur player, understands all the nuances, and does a magnificent job of conveying them to the reader: both the moves themselves, and their deeper meaning. It is a unique work of art.
If I hadn't read Kawabata, I'm guessing that I would have liked this book more. Unfortunately, it's all too clear that Shan Sa has adapted the formula without really understanding it. The book, set in the Manchuria of the 30s, is again organized around a Go game, this time between a young Japanese officer and a 16 year old Chinese girl. I am happy to concede the author's technical skill in some respects. Writing in a language not her own, she does a good job of crafting poetic touches which combine the characters of French and Oriental literature; the illusion that one is reading Chinese or Japanese is sometimes quite strong. The tragic storyline has some force.
The problem is that Sa, unlike Kawabata, knows nothing about Go; alas, this isn't optional, and the constant errors are after a while quite exasperating. Maybe she thought that a Western audience wouldn't notice, but if so she's underestimating us. For the morbidly curious, this page gives all the details.
Oh well. As several people have suggested, it'll probably make a decent movie one day. ...more
There's been this ongoing thread about works of literature composed under extreme formal constraints - star examples are La Disparition (French novel There's been this ongoing thread about works of literature composed under extreme formal constraints - star examples are La Disparition (French novel with no e's) and Eunoia (prose poem in five sections, each of which only uses one vowel). But it occurred to me today that a strong contender for the greatest such work in all world literature is the Japanese poem generally called the Iroha.
For people who don't know it, the background is as follows. Japanese writing uses a complicated combination of Chinese-derived characters called kanji and phonetic characters called kana. Simplifying slightly, each kana represents either a lone vowel, or a consonant followed by a vowel. There are 9 consonants and 5 vowels, hence there are 50 kana.
Now, here's the formal constraint task: compose a poem containing all 50 kana, using each one exactly once! The astonishing thing is that this is not merely possible, but has resulted in a classic poem. In transliteration, using the original pronunciation, it goes like this:
i ro ha ni ho he to chi ri nu ru wo wa ka yo ta re so tsu ne na ra mu u wi no o ku ya ma ke fu ko e te a sa ki yu me mi shi we hi mo se su
There are many translations into English. The one I like best is the following:
Flowers bloom, but they fade What in this world is permanent? Today, let us cross the high mountains of life's illusion And there will be no more shallow dreaming, no more drunkenness
I never much liked Enid Blyton when I was a kid, but this one got read out to us aloud sometime in second grade so I had no choice. I don't remember vI never much liked Enid Blyton when I was a kid, but this one got read out to us aloud sometime in second grade so I had no choice. I don't remember very much of it (I fear I may not really have been paying attention), but there is one incident that stuck in my memory. The kids have found this magical ice-cream vendor who can give you absolutely any flavour you want. All but one of them do the sensible thing and just request their favourite kind. But the smart-ass in the group decides to test the limits of the system, and asks for a sardine ice-cream. And, sure enough, he gets it, and very unpleasant it is too. I can still clearly see the picture of the discomfited-looking child holding the cone, with a fish's tail poking out of the scoop of ice-cream. No doubt the episode resonated with me because I'm also a smart-ass.
The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)
Combinations are the heart of chess, as they say, and similarly tesuji (literally, "skillful moves") are the heart of Go. This book gives you a nice iCombinations are the heart of chess, as they say, and similarly tesuji (literally, "skillful moves") are the heart of Go. This book gives you a nice introduction.
Here's an example of a tesuji, the "crane's nest", which is about as basic as it gets; it's sort of the Go equivalent of the smothered mate. Recall that, in Go, you capture by surrounding the opponent's stones. Black has just played 1, trying to connect the three stones on the left to the circled stone on the right:
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White now counters with the clever move 2, and continues up to 8 (Black's stone 7 is played at the same point as White's 2):
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To sum up, White lets Black surround a stone, but ends up surrounding the whole Black army. If you took the trouble to follow this and liked it, maybe you're already hooked! ...more
I learned Go from this book; I can't guarantee that it's the absolute best introductory text, but it's definitely very good, and I'm one of many peoplI learned Go from this book; I can't guarantee that it's the absolute best introductory text, but it's definitely very good, and I'm one of many people who think highly of it. The authors, top Japanese players, walk you through the basic principles of the game. They introduce you to opening theory, both joseki (set patterns in one corner) and fuseki (opening play over the whole board). Since it's a beginner's text, they stress handicap openings - unlike chess, Go has a sensible handicapping system, where the weaker player is given extra stones at the start of the game. Later, there are chapters on tesuji (roughly, combinations) and life-and-death problems.
I particularly liked the chapter on yose (endings). Go endings are both like and unlike chess endings. They are like in that they are basically mathematical, and it's possible to calculate exactly a long way ahead, but the details are completely different. Just as in chess, if you have a decent knowledge of the ending you can often save apparently hopeless positions.
In my humble opinion, Go is the most subtle of the mind sports, far exceeding chess and bridge. It's just a shame that people in the West still haven't quite discovered it. Haruyama and Nagahara's book is a great way to start exploring this new universe. ...more