a flat universe

[calimac]

It's the third night of Hanukah, and I had my mother and my mother-in-law over for dinner and fed them latkes. (This is easy for me to do, as I don't eat the things myself, so I am purely disinterested.) Inevitably, B. also had her mother and mother-in-law over at the same time; that's just the way these things work.

Among my presents are a new pair of shoes which promise not to have the laces come undone every twenty minutes, because they don't have any laces; a recording of Arvo Pärt's Fourth Symphony, which I'm going to wait for just the right introspective moment before playing for the first time; and a novel titled How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (Pantheon).

Have you heard of this? Not only hadn't I, I also hadn't heard of any of the authors who wrote blurbs for it on the back cover, either, though I have heard of an author that one of them compares Yu to, that being Richard Powers, though I can't say I really know anything about Richard Powers. Yes, there are a lot of reviews online, some of which describe it as "Douglas Adams collides with Douglas Coupland," which helps a bit more, but what I can't tell without more digging is how, if at all, this book has struck the knowledgeable SF community. Often enough, uninformed outsiders are enthralled to discover they can write a novel in which everyone on earth dies except one couple who happen to be named Adam and Eve, or - in this case, as it's apparently a time travel novel - that you can go back in time and shoot your own grampaw, and isn't that a paradox, gee whiz? Other times, of course, they get it right, like George Orwell or George R. Stewart. Which will this be, I wonder ...

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem with shoes W.T.F.!?!?!
Did you ever find out why?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There was a post on this subject, I think on Making Light though I can't find it now, saying that whether shoes stay tied is a function of the comparative handedness of the first and second halves of the knot. (If that doesn't make sense, you'd have to find the post.)

Anyway, I tried reversing the handedness of one half of the knot, and the shoes came untied even faster.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Isn't it also partly the laces themselves? How flexible they are, and how slippery?

I've had the Yu out from the library but haven't managed to read it yet. (I tend to have 20+ books out at a time.) I'm not optimistic, due to some silly thing that Yu supposedly said in some interview somewhere, but I don't recall where I found out about it -- possibly in James Nicholls' LJ.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not quite awake: james_nicoll

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I think bibliofile is on to the problem with many modern laces. Those made from synthetic fibers tend to be slippery and slide themselves out of the knot. Cotton laces on the other hand, do tend to stay knotted. I myself get so annoyed with the self-un-tying laces that I prefer shoes with Velcro closures.

[gold-alarm.livejournal.com]

because they don't have any laces

I LOLed.

[benjd.livejournal.com]

I think you meant uninterested, not disinterested.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, I mean disinterested. If I were uninterested, I wouldn't care about making the latkes. As it is, I can make them with care but disinterest, since I'm not salivating over them myself.

[benjd.livejournal.com]

If the subject of potential interest is your eating them, then you are uninterested, not disinterested. Because you don't like latkes, you are not interested--hence, uninterested--in eating them. From your response, I guess the subject of potential interest was actually the making of the latkes. You are disinterested in the making of them--fair enough.