https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

Note that this isn't a link to a web page, it's a link to a web authentication service–you're not doing anything wrong when you click it and it doesn't show you a web page.

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How to Use Your Google Account for OpenID is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

So I'll just get this out of the way early: Haruki Murakami¹ is an incredible writer. He is as good as anyone writing today. His tone, his choices of words and details, his characters, his subject matter all knock me flat.

His ability to mix the mundane and the surreal is unearthly.

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning is one of my all-time favorite stories. I can't think of a better use of six pages.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl — one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the table next to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

Murakami can perfectly capture the weird, bizarre, alien nature that is other people, internalize it, and then present it in a way that's endearing. I rarely feel the inherent narration in such descriptions, but more that I'm actually reading another person's thoughts. His writing is compassionate and cold. Embarrassing and revealing. Every time I read him, I have to mentally prepare for it, because it's a full meal.

From "The Elephant Vanishes":

For example, the [newspaper] article used such expressions as "the elephant escaped," but if you look at the entire piece it became obvious that the elephant had in no way "escaped." It had vanished into thin air. The reporter revealed his own conflicted state of mind by saying that a few "details" remained "unclear," but this was not a phenomenon that could be disposed of by using such ordinary terminology as "details" or "unclear," I felt.

I've read a good number of his books, and have purposefully left the remainder of them queued. They're a ready antidote to that disappointed feeling that lingers after reading a couple of books I didn't enjoy. When I need to read something great — not good, great — Murakami is my choice.

I give The Elephant Vanishes to anyone who I want to know better with regard to their reading taste. If the person likes it, it's a green flag. If not, it's a yellow flag. Some things in life, I simply cannot imagine anyone disliking. Like the sensation of showering after a long day. Reading this book is that for me; I have a hard time understanding how someone could not like it.

Amazon link: The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

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Review of "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

This will probably read better as part of an anthology, but this first volume wasn’t a complete story. A lot of spun plot threads and side characters introduced, but only the smallest subthreads resolved. Hey, check out the exciting next chapter! Nothing wrong with that, but the book as independent entity suffers considerably for it.

I enjoyed the page by page reading, even the book-as-part-of-a-series, but I’m not on board for an open-ended series just now. Novik's up to six and counting. A little quick research on Wikipedia says that she plans to stop at nine. I’ll circle back in ten years and see how that worked out.

Amazon link: His Majesty's Dragon

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Review of "His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novik is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

Today I learned that it allows me to stick a picture to a quarter of the screen, like a quarter-wallpaper. My emotional investment in the phone just doubled, even though I know it’s silly. A smartphone is a tiny touchscreen computer that can also make phone calls. But I can customize it, make it "mine" via pictures of my kids. And that matters, even though I know it shouldn't. I know that this feature is here for precisely this purpose, but that understanding doesn't make me smile less when I see those pictures of my kids, sitting there like reverse-pop-up ads.

But ads for what? "Wow, they let me look at my beautiful kids/dog/car/whatever on this smart phone." I know that I could (probably) take any other equivalent phone and do the same thing. But this phone is my phone, and my phone does all this stuff that I can’t afford to test on multiple devices, because who buys multiple smart phones? If I’m happy with the phone, why would I switch? So I enjoy my Nexus One a little more than I otherwise would.

I’m guessing this happens a lot.

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Personalization and Co-opted Affection is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

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DNS resolved is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

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Finding a Great Author is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

Amazon link: Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

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Review of "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

I'm kidding. But really, that summary is as useful as any other.

The writing is outstanding. Some of the descriptions are so incredibly vivid that I remember them like I was there. And yet, often times I found myself fighting the urge to skim. Whenever I think about the pejorative use of 'literary', I think of works like this. If you don't enjoy Ursula LeGuin, you won't enjoy this.

The author invents his own vocabulary–for example, a custom unit of distance measurement–because the story is told under the auspice that it's been translated from a very old, foreign source. This is part of reading a classic. People of the time perhaps thought, "Oh, this is novel!" and suffered through, then the next writer who tried it learned that it was a once-only gimmick. The art of writing has already moved on from that idea, or figured out how to do it better. The custom vocabulary annoyed me, and strangely I felt far more so after the end of the book. On the last page, the author translates and explains the custom vocabulary of the book you just read, which is just what I was hoping the last page of a 400 page book would be. I wish the translator had that page available at the beginning of the book.

Sevarian, the main character, reflects at length about all the women he's slept with. I'm not making value judgments about this–I mean, it is not bad writing, it's just not delivered in an interesting enough way to justify the amount of time spent on it. But then, it's one of the few concrete things we have to hold on to the character about, which brings me to the biggest problem in the book.

While reading this, I was easily interrupted and then didn't look forward to starting again once I put it down. There's nothing driving the story forward except the most perfunctory plot. Why does Sevarian care about going to a certain city? He doesn't. I feel the same way about this book as I did about the earlier works of Neil Gaiman, like Neverwhere–a main character who is not emotionally invested in anything is difficult to invest in as a reader. I never understood in the least what drove Sevarian, and hence the story. It was just drifting about in set pieces and disconnected ideas.

There's grisly torture, then dueling with toxic plant lances, then there's a play performed with full dialogue, then trapped in a timeless dream prison with a robotman , and then an ocean monster talking to him, and more! Much more. It's all beautiful and ethereal and I really don't see the thread that unified all the ideas. Just floating about.

Wonderful writing. Wonderful scenes. Obviously layered very thickly in the telling of the story. I'm glad I read it, but more because it's a classic. Still, I'll probably pass on the second volume.

(This review of Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' is cross-posted from my GoodReads.)

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Review of "Shadow and Claw" by Gene Wolfe is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

Various websites offer a home to random reviews. Yelp has decent local coverage. Of course, it turns out that Yelp has a strange business model which calls its reviews into question. (Allegedly, they extort local owners: "pay us $300 a year to suppress this negative review" that a real person may or may not have written) Friends have pointed me at Angie's List as an alternative for contracted services, but it turns out that they have similar problems.

So what's the big deal? Review websites are just a collection of reviews. Well, my participation becomes a feature of that website. The utility of a review website is determined by how much information it can give you. Unique user opinion is useful, and therefore no reviews is not useful, one review is something, and ten reviews is pretty good content. Therefore, why would I want to drive traffic, via my tiny participation, to a sketchy service that shakes down the people, manufacturers, and services I'm trying to review?

It's just a drop in the bucket, I know, but it's my drop.

I'm going to post my reviews here. I know, on my own blog! What a thought. In the case of book reviews, I'll keep up with GoodReads. If I find other places where the reviews fit well, I'll put them there as well. The internet's a big place with a ton of content, and little websites get washed away. However, the stronger voices do eventually get through… whether I'm one of them or not.

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On Reviews and Reviewing is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.

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Akismet def. Spam is a post from spaceponies by Clint Howarth.