Manny Rayner

WHY?
I loved this witty, varied and challenging collection, as I knew I would, having read many of Manny's reviews and comments before. So why did I shell out money for a physical version?

Primarily it was because I have a visceral affection for the physical form of books, and, I suppose, for ownership of them. Having bought and read it, I found other advantages: I studied reviews I wouldn't otherwise have glanced at (especially of books I haven't read, some of which I may now read), without show more the distraction of seeing their star ratings, and I then went to the original on GR to view comments, so completing the slightly surreal circle.

There are enough GoodReads in-jokes to please those who spot them (not that I necessarily spotted them all), but they are not so numerous or noticeable as to be off-putting to those unfamiliar with GR, Manny or some of his GR friends.

Manny also tackles the "why?" question at the outset, in a Foreword explaining why he published it, and in a typically self-deprecating, Devil's Dictionary-style definition: "review, v.i. Demonstrate, through a short essay, appreciation for one's own wit."

HOW?
It's tricky to review a review, let alone such a diverse collection of reviews. Whatever I write will suffer in comparison with the source, but I'll try to conjure a shadow of its flavour.

I guess Manny could be accused of over-analysing and of taking some lightweight books too seriously and heavy ones too flippantly. I think there is some truth in that, as long as you omit "over" and "too": the insights (and fun) derived from such an approach actually demonstrate the merits of it.

WHAT?
As you'll have gathered by now, this is a collection of Manny's reviews on GoodReads. They cover the range of his styles, including: pastiche, straight, one story in the style of another, hybrid/Celebrity Death Match, reading blog, experimental, and meta/GoodRead thingumywatchit. A few examples of what you will read:

* Contrasting the "appalling tragedy" of Andersen's "Little Mermaid" with the "relentlessly upbeat" Disney version, in a single review, using strikethough text to show where Disney differs.

* Why the success of "Harry Potter" was presaged by "Animal Farm".

* A review of Proust that is a full page, but a single - and unfinished - sentence.

* "Jemimia Puddleduck", rewritten as a French trash novel (not for the children).

* A happier version of Hamlet, for "Twilight" fans.

* A spokily plausibly way of combining "1984" and "Lolita".

* A pastiche of "Dorian Grey", with two characters planning a GR review, and so analysing the story, with one observing "The epigrams are the only serious part of the book. The rest is at best melodramatic nonsense."

* "The History Boys" having a lesson in which they're discussing the meaning of their own play.

* A fascinating review of "Finnegans Wake" where Manny demonstrates his professional knowledge of software for analysing grammar to generate, not a random sequence of words, but random "words". The result is nearly, but not quite, recognisable as language, and is oddly poetic. ("It calculates statistics for the frequencies of each letter condition on the three preceding ones.")

* The New Testament is reviewed in superficially flippant tones, but is thoughtful enough that it ought not to cause offence to those who bother to read it in its entirety and consider it properly. It starts, "A wonderfully ambitious science fiction novel; the author boldly attempts to imagine what it would be like to meet an emissary from an alien culture that was both technologically, and, more interestingly, morally, far superior to our own."

* The review of the Old Testament is more straightforward, but just as thought-provoking.

I think you need a passing familiarity with the books reviewed, but you don't need to have read them all to enjoy the book. The review of the French version of "How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read" explains it well (and has the best punch line, which you'll have to get the book to see): "There are plenty of books you haven't, literally, read, but which you know well enough to discuss sensibly. In the other direction, there are books where you painstakingly went cover to cover, yet understood nothing, because you weren't sufficiently attuned to their literary surroundings."

WHEN?
Finding this will make Christmas shopping for 2013 a little easier, as I know several people who would enjoy it (even though they're not on Good Reads), plus a second collection should be published before then, so I'll be able to give them in pairs.

WHO?
After all the question sections, "Who?" is more or less required, so here's Manny's page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1834894.Manny_Rayner, and here are his shelves: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956-manny

PS
Lest all the above sound too laudatory, I do have a minor criticism: I think (almost) all non-fiction books should have an index, and although the review titles are listed in the table of contents, that doesn't include authors. It would be great if the second edition had an alphabetical index by title and author (and would thereby deserve the fifth star I was tempted to give).

A second collection is now available, If Research were Romance": http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/616889674 show less

You've probably heard of the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in the last few weeks: newspapers amazed by what it can produce, teachers worrying about how to identify students who have delegated their essays to it, software developers testing its capabilities with code, doomsayers saying doom, and some just using it for laughs.

Manny Rayner's paper (PDF HERE), documenting his conversations with Chat, is thorough, fascinating, creative, funny, accessible, and occasionally alarming.

In addition, look at show more Manny's shelf of conversations with Chat, and the many comments on each, which often include further exchanges and analysis, HERE. He also prompted Chat to compose three chatbot-human love stories: see HERE.

My conversations with Chat

They have been fewer, less rigorous, and sometimes trivial. Two stand out.

Outline of a Jeeves and Wooster story
I asked it, "Can you write the outline of a Jeeves and Wooster story. Please include some clever metaphors, as Wodehouse always did."
The result is the second half of my non-review of Sebastian Faulks' Jeeves and Wooster story, HERE.

You wouldn't think it an actual Wodehouse story, but as an outline, it's not a bad start. You could certainly use it as the basis to build and refine a more plausible lost work of Wodehouse, whether you did all the rest of the work yourself, or kept giving Chat additional prompts to evolve the output. Some of Manny's conversations take an initial response through many iterations, and with such guidance, it improves every time.

Confident inaccuracy
I asked Chat to review a short story and to include quotes relating to Biblical figures (only after I'd written my own review). It gave me five quotes, not a single one of which was in the story. Worse, it cited a page number for each one!

When I told Chat that none of the quotes were in the text, this was the reply:

"I apologize for the confusion, as a language model, I do not have the capability to verify if the quotes are present in the story or not. The story "Gimpel the Fool" is rich in Jewish symbolism and references to the Torah, the way it is depicted in my previous answer is a general understanding of how the story is supposed to be."

Chat reflecting how the story is supposed to be is worryingly arrogant!

As for how and why Chat could be so confidently wrong, it turns out Chat doesn't have access to the internet - except for the page where people can chat to it. It's a large language model (LLM), not a search engine or a virtual assistant like Alexa or Siri: it's not Googling in the background. It's been trained on a huge corpus of data, programmed with ethical boundaries, and its purpose to to compose natural language answers. Just don’t treat what it writes as true.

Your turn

If you want to chat to Chat: https://chat.openai.com/ show less

“A little over my head, but people who know about these things tell me it’s wonderful.”
Critias to Socrates about Timaeus’s book - or me about this?

How This Book Got Read and Reviewed

I came, I read, and I more-or-less conquered. (Yes, wrong classical culture, but anachronisms are part of the fun.)

Note: The book is funny and clever. This review is a conceit that merely attempts to be. Buy the book.

Socrates Sells Out?!
What are these Dialogues?

[Plateía Albert market at the east end of show more Athens, where SOCRATES has a stall and CECILY is browsing]

SOCRATES: Roll up, roll up. Learn philosophy in less time than Trump takes between rounds of golf. Get yours ‘ere.

CECILY: But isn’t philosophy meant to be difficult - and isn’t the effort required part of what makes it worthwhile?

SOCRATES: That’s a beautiful, true, and virtuous point. But with these knock-offs, you don’t need to be an academic classicist to read, enjoy, and learn. Bargain at only six drachma. Nah, make it five.

CECILY [picking up a copy]: I’m confused: are these your dialogues, Plato’s, or Manny’s?

SOCRATES: They’ll be yours if you buy ‘em, luv. I’ll do ‘alf price, just for you. Beautiful jacket you’re wearing.

CECILY: The jacket don't enter into it - or this dialogue. And you haven’t answered my question.

SOCRATES: I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition…

CECILY: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

SOCRATES: Sorry. I’m more used to asking the questions, see? That’s ‘ow these work. My pupil, Plato, wrote imagined dialogues featuring me. It shows philosophical banter in an accessible and amusing way. Later philosophers ripped off his idea. And now Manny ‘as as well.

CECILY: So who is this Manny* ? Is he another of your pupils?

SOCRATES: Nah, not in the traditional sense. He’s an educated enthusiast who downplays his own credentials, explains his intent to entertain, and adds that he’d be thrilled if the book prompts anyone to read Plato for themselves. Of course, I’d rather people read ME.

CECILY: I’ve not read you or Plato. I’m not sure I want to.

SOCRATES: Yer alright. It’s not a prerequisite. That Manny’s quite a clever geezer. And he’d be chuffed if a few readers go back to us old originals after reading his version.

SOCRATES: Anyway, hurry up. I’ve got a football match to get to. You know what Germans are like about punctuality, and as captain of the Greek team, I can’t be late.

SOCRATES: My last offer: you can have a copy for four drachma.

CECILY: I’m afraid I’ve only got Euros.

SOCRATES [snatching the cash, and handing over a book]: That’ll do nicely. There ya go.

But Seriously...

I feel as if my IQ has gone up a notch or two, and I certainly learned a great deal. Quite how much use it all is is another matter!

• Plato doesn’t put himself in his dialogues; all but one feature his teacher, Socrates.
• Don’t trust poets.
• People are often ruled by their erotic impulses. (OK, I already knew that one.)
• You can’t get away from the paedophilia that was accepted back then, but at least Plato doesn’t seem to approve.
• Plato had no respect for sophists.
• Plato was thousands of years ahead of his time in considering sign language a real language, worthy of etymological study.
• Memory** can be conceptualised as a wax tablet, or, more creatively, an aviary. It gradually fills up with birds, individually and in groups, but the birds can be hard to catch (the difference between having and possessing).
• Plato’s science was poor because he insisted on basing everything on abstract reasoning, rather than observable evidence.
• The possibility of falsehood was controversial among theoretical philosophers. Either that, or Plato was being ironic, and having another dig at base and dishonest sophists.
• We think we know what courage is until we try to define it. Often, is hard to distinguish from wisdom. Hmm. I agree with the former, but am not so sure about the latter.
• It was easier for Asimov to define three rules of robotics than to define virtue in a similar way.
• The mind is like a country, and good government leads to good mental health. Virtue all round.
• Government is also like weaving: it needs to be comfortable and strong and enduring.
• Plato was not a fan of democracy, which he thought inevitably descended into kakistocracy. He preferred a Philosopher King.
• The New Testament has much in common with Republic book 10 - as demonstrated by a reworking of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch.
• Avoid partisan divisions by having people marry those with opposing beliefs. (This one is illustrated by a stitch and bitch session, not Romeo and Juliet.)
• Socrates, like the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, was prepared to die, rather than lose his right to free speech, his right to offend.
• Socrates also believed in the immortality of the soul (so maybe death wasn’t so scary).

There’s More

The sections above are a poor imitation of the dialogues in the book. The remainder of this review comprises my additional notes.

Each dialogue has a modern title, reflecting new characters and genre (stars of page, stage, and screen), with the original as a subtitle, so you can easily Google it. Then each ends with a clear explanation of its key points, titled “But seriously…”. Fun, then educational.

The dialogues are in three groups: Beauty, Truth, and Virtue. Virtue is much the largest section, and a recurring question is why people are virtuous, or whether they merely appear to be virtuous, and that is sufficient? If you’re not caught, and there are no adverse consequences, is that ethically fine?

For example, Charmides, who was handsome, hedonistic, and popular, is reimagined meeting Oscar Wilde. There’s a pastiche of a TED talk, a chocolate factory, Twitter tactics, Madonna discussing chess, a meeting with Hamlet, and a daytime talk show, all involving numerous celebrities, real and fictional. (Godwin’s law ensures Hitler gets a mention.) It’s too clever and effective to be labelled gimmicky.

You also get an epilogue, a few cartoon illustrations, and two, yes, two excellent and comprehensive indexes (or, if you prefer, indices). ;)

Quotes and Questions

• “Arguments are to be avoided, my dear Socrates; they are always vulgar and often convincing.” (Not the actual Oscar Wilde, obvs.)
• “Knowledge is a kind of opinion, and we can tell some kinds of opinion are better than others because they are better at predicting the future.”
• “Evil is merely ignorance of the good, isn’t it?”
• “Pleasure is not an end in itself, only something that serves a purpose.” So pleasure must be mixed with wisdom. But in addition, “Physical pleasure is always mixed with pain.”
• “If you’re famous enough… your fans will read literally anything you can be bothered to write and then diligently pass it on to future generations.” (Manny’s observation on Critias: fifteen pages rambling about Atlantis that, like Kafka’s The Castle, stops mid-sentence.)

* Manny Rayner

This is a niche variant of Manny’s previous collections (see my reviews of What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante..., HERE, and If Research Were Romance..., HERE).

The first dialogue invokes Harry Potter, which is brave, given Manny’s longstanding defence of his 2* rating of the series on GR (see the spoiler in his review of the boxset, along with ~500 comments If Research Were Romance..., HERE).

Manny puts himself (apologetically) in the penultimate dialogue, but modestly omits himself from the index - the sole “error” I can find.

Recursion

This book was born of GR, and three separate dialogs discuss it. The first explores the tactics and personal costs/benefits of reviewing and like-harvesting there, while striving to stay within an ethical framework. The second tackles the cliché of not judging a book by its cover, or even its popularity. Instead, judge by the improvement it endows, rather than raw pleasure (spoiler alert: this book scores on both counts). And the third returns to the recipe for a good and popular review, rather as Plato explored the formula of good governance.

More Connections

My geeky physicist child with a serious interest in linguistics and classical culture gave me this for Mothering Sunday: a book by an older geeky physicist with a professional interest in linguistics and knowledge of classical culture (and almost everything else). Neat.

** That same child had a different theory of memory from Plato’s wax or birds. As a preschooler, they explained trying to remember something as being like looking through a box of their paintings: often it was easy to find, though a few pictures got mixed up, damaged, or lost. But if found, sometimes damaged ones could be repainted and put back in the right place. show less

I really enjoyed the previous collection of Manny's reviews (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/364286993), and this one is even better (in part, because it has a very useful index).

However, despite the 5*, I hereby beg Manny not to publish another collection! It was hard enough to write a review of the first one, and it's impossible this time.

The problem is, Manny's reviews cover so many styles, invariably witty, original, erudite, self-referential, daft, surreal, or some combination show more thereof, that anything I write will be dull in comparison.

And matters are exacerbated by the fact that several people have managed to find a clever angle to review it (Ian, Paul and MJ, I'm scowling at you in particular).

So I give up.

Buy your own copy, and see if you can write a decent review of all these reviews. And even if you can't, you will enjoy the book. It's brilliant.

Buying note: It's available at: http://www.lulu.com/shop/manny-rayner/if-research-were-romance-and-other-implaus...., but if using Lulu, make sure that one of the two Payment Types (Credit/Debit or PayPal) stays selected, otherwise the order will fail, without telling you why.

STRAIGHTFORWARD REVIEW OF A CORNUCOPIA OF REVIEWS

OK, so I admitted defeat in writing a witty and original review to rival those in the book, but I really enjoyed it, so I want to say a little about why.

This is another collection of Manny's reviews, helpfully grouped in categories, some of which are the same as before (Children, Trash, Literachuh (sic), Science Fiction, and Chess and other Geekiness), although Science and Religion is now one category, with many of the reviews being for books that overlap categories. There is also a useful index, in which God has by far the most entries (mainly because of the section about science and God).

As usual, Manny's self-deprecating, but self-referential humour is in evidence. It opens with quotes from reviews of his first collection, redacted to make them sound critical, even though they were not.

In addition, it opens with Life on Goodreads and has Unashamed Self-Promotion. These are particularly rich seams for those who have been embroiled in Goodreads for a while, and are familiar with some of the styles and characters referenced.

The variety on display is impressive and fun: you never know what you're going to read next. In some cases, the book being reviewed would be hard to guess: it just serves as a useful hook for a piece of writing. Others are pastiches, self-contained stories, mashups of characters from multiple books. In contrast, most of those in the Science and God section are fairly straightforward reviews, mostly accessible to laymen, but probably meaty enough for fellow scientists.

The final review is an anecdote explaining the title of this collection.

A few highlights (listed here as much for my own benefit as anyone else's):

* A pastiche of Kipling's "Just So" stories, coupled with political correctness and "Back to the Future".

* A review of Ted Hughes' "The Dreamfighter", that is a beautiful story in its own right.

* Elmar is almost a straight précis of the children's picture book about a patchwork elephant, with just a dash of satire.

* A beautiful tribute to E Nesbit.

* The review of "50 Shades" damns with feint criticism, "a bad book was quite a lot like another bad book".

* A noir version of "Twilight" works well. As Manny says, "Twilight mixes well with noir... virtually anything mixes with noir" but gives the exception of the Bible - and then proceeds to demonstrate noirish Bible passages.

* For "Histoire d'O", he cites Nabokov's dictum to identify with the author, rather than the characters, and uses this to imagine how the book came about.

* A mashup come pastiche of Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch; my only criticism is that it's in the "Trash" section!

* A three-way celebrity death match (mashup) of Anna Karenina, Hamlet and Jane Eyre, which works surprisingly well, throwing new light on all three.

* A two-way hybrid of The Prisoner and The Trail that has echoes of the Truman Show, and also includes an imagined final chapter of the latter.

* Simone de Beauvoir's "Les Mandarins" cleverly weaves biographical snippets of her and Sartre with the plot of the book and aspects of Manny's own life and research.

* The review of Dune stresses the importance of context and timing when interpreting a book. I find this is often a problem with sci-fi: books can seem clichéd when it's only because they were ahead of their time and the copy-cats are more familiar. However, Manny is more specific and potentially controversial: he shows how, if it were published now, it would be easy to see it as an allegory for the Middle East, oil, and the "war on terror".

* I read and enjoyed Le Guin's Earthsea books, but her only adult one I've read, "Left Hand of Darkness" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/596086862) was not enjoyable. However, Manny's passionate review of "The Dispossessed" sorely tempts me to give her another chance. She describes a "credible anarchist utopia" and the alien science has "just the right amount of background that it feels credible, but not so much that you're tempted to nit-pick". It subtly analyses freedom and promises - and changed Manny's life!

* Hitchhiker's characters discuss sequels - and (rightly, imo) decide that Adams should not have written so many.

* The analysis of Atonement, why it's so good, and particularly why Bryony is plausible, is perfect.

* Alice in 1984 seems like such an obvious pairing: I guess the skill is partly in the writing, but also in the choice of participants.

* The review of The Silmarillion is done as a list of How to Build a Truly Convincing Fantasy World.

* Manny's Feynman-esque anecdote from when he worked on a NASA project is SO cool, it's worth the price of the book alone!

* I didn't like Fforde's The Eyre Affair, but Manny's parody is far more enjoyable. Manny is a fictional character who is unpopular with Austen fans for doing an Austen parody.

The Science and God section has by far the most entries. There are some pretty esoteric books interspersed with more mainstream ones, and many of the reviews are played straight (though there are still humorous ones). This makes it a useful resource for those wanting to investigate the subjects a little more deeply, but unsure where to start, but also keeps the reviews interesting and accessible for non-scientists.

Many famous and infamous authors are covered, especially those involved in the battles between science and God, ID and evolution etc. However, The Bible and the Koran are not included. Perhaps they are too major and well-known to be needed here, or perhaps it's in part because much of the action in those reviews takes place in the comments (which are not included in any of the reviews here, presumably for copyright reasons, as well as others).

Points of note for me:

* Leaning that an ancient Roman (Lucretius) almost worked out atomic theory!

* CS Lewis defends his idea with enough imagination and force to be worth reading, even if one fails to be persuaded by his arguments.

* Fred Hoyle had some crazy views for a "proper" scientist, and is often seen as the acceptable face of Intelligent Design - which is why his books may be useful for discussion in schools.

* Francis Collins is a Christian geneticist who dismantles ID pretty well.

* A pap-mag style quiz to determine whether you're the sort of deep thinker who would enjoy Sean Carroll's From Eternity to Here.

* Finally, a wonderful set of parallels between string theory and Star Wars. Who'd o' thunk it? "The dominant String Theorists are the Empire; led by the Vader-like Ed Witten, they control the corrupt funding agencies and rule science with an iron fist. Ranged against them, we have the eccentric and charismatic Rebels... "

In conclusion, fun and erudition in equal measure, for all. show less