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Come by chance
1. Am reading Invisible Cities in a brown-edged Picador paperback. I found this passage, which I pass on to qwerty:
2. I read Moon Over Soho in January, and then again, I believe, before starting Whispers Underground, and now I've read it a third time. Each time I seem to be reading a different book. This is what comes of understated writing. Read against a background of the Midnight Mayor, to say nothing Felix Castor, I now see many more horrors than I did before. Aaronovitch is just more considerate in how he tells you about them. Which is why Aaronovitch repays reading.
He also has three plots at least going on simultaneously, and I can usually only remember the details of one and a half, whereas it's the other one and a half that get referenced in the next book.
3. But my choice for book that repays many many rereadings is Point of Dreams which I'm now going through for the fourth or fifth time. Seems to me you can only do world-building of that density by deciding all the details of your world beforehand and then slipping in only those that would occur to a protagonist living in that world to mention. Scott and Barnett are the English and verbal equivalent of Ima Ichiko: that hand in the last panel, belonging to who knows who and easily overlooked-- that watercolour remark in a speech bubble not attached to any speaker-- will prove to be very important by story's end. Only that one can read the Points series for plot alone and never register all the little side bits of information. Maybe more like what I've heard of the Final Fantasy series-- you can go straight through, fighting your fights and winning the last boss; or you can follow little side stories and back stories and learn about characters who are relatively unimportant to the main storyline.
4. My acupuncturist yesterday said 'A lot of people have been coming in saying they feel fuzzy, so it's not just you.' This was shortly after I'd hung up my jacket, taken off my hoodie, turned to hang it up and found my jacket gone- missing- vanished into thin air. It took the receptionist saying 'It fell off the hanger' for me to realize that my jacket had, yes, fallen off the hanger, and was down on the floor among the shoes.
However the fuzziness that had me losing things that were not, fortunately, lost, has finally claimed one OMFG victim. Sweeping the kitchen floor Wednesday, prior to putting out the garbage, I found a strip of plastic with prongs that I couldn't place at all. No idea what bit of packaging it might be, so threw it in the garbage bag and forgot about it. Until tonight when I thought, 'Better put the back of the new Wordtank on, it should be here on the kitchen table-- oh.' I took the back off to insert batteries, of course, and then played around with it in increasing distress and then took it upstairs to compare with the old one. Oh well. Whatever I do with it, I don't take it travelling.
But on a whim I tried the same batteries in my sister's Wordtank, which had rejected them definitely before, and Lo! this time they worked. Technology giveth and technology taketh away, blessed be the name of technology.
True, also, in Hypatia the day will come when my only desire will be to leave. I know I must not go down to the harbour then, but climb the citadel's highest pinnacle and wait for a ship to go by up there. But will it ever go by? There is no language without deceit.Which is not quite air-borne triremes, and there are no mermaids or Wild Hunts in the subway (so far) but is a start.
2. I read Moon Over Soho in January, and then again, I believe, before starting Whispers Underground, and now I've read it a third time. Each time I seem to be reading a different book. This is what comes of understated writing. Read against a background of the Midnight Mayor, to say nothing Felix Castor, I now see many more horrors than I did before. Aaronovitch is just more considerate in how he tells you about them. Which is why Aaronovitch repays reading.
He also has three plots at least going on simultaneously, and I can usually only remember the details of one and a half, whereas it's the other one and a half that get referenced in the next book.
3. But my choice for book that repays many many rereadings is Point of Dreams which I'm now going through for the fourth or fifth time. Seems to me you can only do world-building of that density by deciding all the details of your world beforehand and then slipping in only those that would occur to a protagonist living in that world to mention. Scott and Barnett are the English and verbal equivalent of Ima Ichiko: that hand in the last panel, belonging to who knows who and easily overlooked-- that watercolour remark in a speech bubble not attached to any speaker-- will prove to be very important by story's end. Only that one can read the Points series for plot alone and never register all the little side bits of information. Maybe more like what I've heard of the Final Fantasy series-- you can go straight through, fighting your fights and winning the last boss; or you can follow little side stories and back stories and learn about characters who are relatively unimportant to the main storyline.
4. My acupuncturist yesterday said 'A lot of people have been coming in saying they feel fuzzy, so it's not just you.' This was shortly after I'd hung up my jacket, taken off my hoodie, turned to hang it up and found my jacket gone- missing- vanished into thin air. It took the receptionist saying 'It fell off the hanger' for me to realize that my jacket had, yes, fallen off the hanger, and was down on the floor among the shoes.
However the fuzziness that had me losing things that were not, fortunately, lost, has finally claimed one OMFG victim. Sweeping the kitchen floor Wednesday, prior to putting out the garbage, I found a strip of plastic with prongs that I couldn't place at all. No idea what bit of packaging it might be, so threw it in the garbage bag and forgot about it. Until tonight when I thought, 'Better put the back of the new Wordtank on, it should be here on the kitchen table-- oh.' I took the back off to insert batteries, of course, and then played around with it in increasing distress and then took it upstairs to compare with the old one. Oh well. Whatever I do with it, I don't take it travelling.
But on a whim I tried the same batteries in my sister's Wordtank, which had rejected them definitely before, and Lo! this time they worked. Technology giveth and technology taketh away, blessed be the name of technology.