2016 — 15 April: Friday
Cuppa in hand, I take a moment to contemplate1 a couple of pretty little tits flitting about among the beginnings of pink cherry blossom in search of tasty chitin-wrapped nibbles of breakfast.
[Pause]
I shall stick to my cereal. That ought to see me through until my lunch date, at least.
I've only ever written...
... one book review (and I did that as a personal favour to the author ["Daedalus"] — a long-time hero of mine). How naive I am. I actually read, and thought about, his book before writing my tiny review. It seems that's not the way to do it! Not the way at all:
Most elements of the art of the book review serve the purpose of making the reviewer look more intelligent or erudite than the author whose work is under review. There is The Omitted Subject: "For all its merits, this book about the South Pole suffers from the lack of any discussion
of the North Pole." And there is The Book the Author Should Have Written: "By focusing on the South Pole, the author misses the opportunity to discuss a far more important subject: the Equator."
These and other tricks of the book reviewing trade are centuries old. The proof is Edward Copleston's "Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the Art" (1807).
Sounds like a cousin of Maddox's 2nd Law if you ask me.
Nailed it...
... in a single sentence:
Most people think there is plenty wrong but that the EU is worthwhile nevertheless.
Well done, that man. (Martin Kettle.) And to hell with the right wing press. They will always tell you what's wrong, and — most important of all — who to blame. Rarely do they bother mentioning how to fix it.
A fascinating typescript...
... has recently surfaced in the Zurich Central Library. Koestler's original manuscript of "Darkness at Noon". Like everyone else, it would appear I only read what now seems to have been a clumsy translation. It's quite a saga. (Link.)
Clarification: I didn't mean to imply that everyone has read the thing. But all readers worldwide of the book have only ever been presented with this translation, based on the version Koestler re-typed from memory after misplacing the original. It was wartime; there was an awful lot going on...
Perils of being...
... a completeist, of any ilk, in today's world. Back in 2000 (or shortly after) I bought a CD called "The 'Rough Guide' to Klezmer". At the time, I dumped it onto minidisc (better not to ask). It's still there, on "r361". A couple of years later, I (reluctantly) moved into the wondrous world of Windows and put behind me 13 years of RISC OS computing. I got interested in the (to me) new-fangled art of ripping CDs to MP3 format. At some point I ripped my Klezmer CD. I know I did 'cos my music "database" says I did (and when has that ever been wrong? Better not to ask.)
I also know I re-ripped the CD (at a much higher bit rate) soon after I'd retired. (Proof, of a sort, being here.)
Last night, as I mentioned, erm, last night, I found a batch of unripped CDs. They include (you guessed it) one called "The 'Rough Guide' to Klezmer". But this CD dates from 2011 and has a completely different set of music tracks on it. Which is just as well as... I can find no trace of the original MP3s ripped, and re-ripped, from my original CD. I shall take no hasty action but, instead, adjourn for lunch.
[Pause]
Call off the bloodhounds!
The lost sheep were hiding under "K" for "Klezmer". (Of course!) My mistake had been to look under (1) "Compilations", followed by (2) "R" for "Rough Guide", and finally (3) "W" for "World music" before giving up for a bit.
However, in a slightly sinister development serving only to confirm the perversity of the Universe, Len — who had kindly been keeping an "offsite backup" of my music for safekeeping on what had originally been a strangely-partitioned 3TB or 4TB Verbatim drive that he bent to his evil will under Windows 7 — now knows that he cannot read this backup under either Windows 10 or Linux. This is, in a sense, better to know than not to know. But it's hardly good news. I gather he's been scanning, then re-partitioning, and finally re-formatting since I left him this afternoon. My malign effect on technology travels with me, it seems.
I've finished (and very much enjoyed) "The Graveyard Game" and now must impatiently wait for #5 in the series to show up. Gives me time to catch up on some long-overdue CD ripping, and to ponder the mysteries of a ripping tool ("Asunder") that doesn't seem inclined to allow me to correct obvious errors in the track metadata that it fetches from CDDB. That sort of thing would irritate me, though only if I were a completeist (of course).