(no subject)

This weekend I have usefully:

* Tidied my flat. (Not completely, but recovering the last fall-out from party and packing. But very slightly better than before taking into account the bookshelf sorting I did pre-party.)
* Replied to a bunch of emails and written a bunch of thoughts
* Transferred contacts onto my new phone. (Seriously, someone out there is designing interfaces. They need to spend less time on making them white and more time on making them usable. It's still shiny, but so many little details seem so gratuitously useless[1].)
* Trimmed my beard[2].

[1] This is actually on outlook, with which the phone synchronises. I mean, it obviously has some idea of what a national and area code look like. So if you enter a phone number do you think it (a) leaves it alone (b) generalises it into a working international phone number (c) blindly prepends +44?

[2] In fact, wanting to see the full range, and in fear that my hair-and-beard trimmers, that never seemed much good on hair, would be equally useless here, I sheared it back to barely longer than stubble in less than a minute. It's still soft but in a different way. I think half-way is about right, but it does mean I know that I can maintain status quo with a quick shave every other day and a quick trim every other week, meaning it really is less work.

(no subject)

Do you ever read a book you enjoyed, only to realise half way through, that you remember a lot of the build-up but have completely forgotten whodunnit?

Of course, that's partly due to me reading some books relishingly and some books slap-dashly.

But I think it's an indicator, of the sort I was searching for before, that a book has a wonderfully conceived set-up, but the actual resolution at best appears retro-fitted.

I was thinking of this in terms of Umberto Eco, where the plots are often sufficiently obscured by the language you might have some justification for remembering the cool bits rather than the underlying plot. Although for name of the rose, I sometimes get a bit of the middle muddled (not much) but follow the underlying causes (except for the first time I read it).

But quite normal mysteries often have me thinking "huh". Which I think is basically an indication that it might be a good book, but breaks all those rules for mystery writing rochvelleth and I were listing.

That a good mystery has a moment where all those clues fall into place. And a subtle mystery might have clues you only spot the second time of reading. But a non-mystery has supposed clues that are completely indistinguishable from background and red-herrings, and you remember the book if it's interesting, but never do experience an "aha" moment, just an "oh, right" moment. And "aha" moments are good and memorable. But "oh, right" moments are just an excuse to stop writing.

I am Legend! I am Atheist! (spoilers)

( Spoilers )