Review:
The Seeress of Kell, by David Eddings
| Series: |
The Malloreon #5 |
| Publisher: |
Del Rey |
| Copyright: |
May 1991 |
| Printing: |
May 1992 |
| ISBN: |
0-345-37759-1 |
| Format: |
Mass market |
| Pages: |
374 |
The Seeress of Kell is the conclusion of the five-book Malloreon
series and a direct sequel to
Sorceress of
Darshiva. You do not want to begin the series here (or, to be honest,
at all).
We have finally finished the relaxed tour of Mallorea, the second
continent of Eddings's remarkably small two-continent world. The heroes
have gathered all of their required companions and are headed for Kell,
where the seeress Cyradis awaits. From there, they and the new Child of
Dark must find their way to the Place Which Is No More for the final
confrontation.
By "find," I mean please remain seated with your hands, arms, feet, and
legs inside the vehicle. The protagonists have about as much to do with
the conclusion of this series as the passengers of a roller coaster have
control over its steering.
I am laughing at my younger self, who quite enjoyed this series (although
as I recall found it a bit repetitive) and compared it favorably to the
earlier
Belgariad series. My memory kept
telling me that the conclusion of the series was lots of fun. Reader, it
was not. It was hilariously bad.
Both of Eddings's first two series, but particularly this one, take place
in a fantasy world full of true prophecy. The conceit of the Malloreon in
particular (this is a minor spoiler for the early books, but not one that
I think interferes with enjoyment) is that there are two competing
prophecies that agree on most events but are in conflict over a critical
outcome. True prophecy creates an agency problem: why have protagonists
if everything they do is fixed in prophecy? The normal way to avoid that
is to make the prophecy sufficiently confusing and the mechanism by which
it comes true sufficiently subtle that everyone has to act as if there is
no prophecy, thus reducing the role of the prophecy to foreshadowing and a
game the author plays with the reader.
What makes the Malloreon interesting (and I mean this sincerely) is that
Eddings instead leans into the idea of a prophecy as an active agent
leading the protagonists around by the nose. As a meta-story commentary
on fantasy stories, this can be quite entertaining, and it helps that the
prophecy appears as a likable character of sorts in the book. The trap
that Eddings had mostly avoided before now is that this structure can make
the choices of the protagonists entirely pointless. In
The Seeress
of Kell, he dives head-first into the trap and then pulls it shut behind
him.
The worst part is Ce'Nedra, who once again spends an entire book either
carping at Garion in ways that are supposed to be endearing (but aren't)
or being actively useless. The low point is when she is manipulated into
betraying the heroes, costing them a significant advantage. We're then
told that, rather than being a horrific disaster, this is her important
and vital role in the story, and indeed the whole reason why she was in
the story at all. The heroes were too far ahead of the villains and were
in danger of causing the prophecy to fail. At that point, one might
reasonably ask why one is bothering reading a novel instead of a summary
of the invented history that Eddings is going to tell whether his
characters cooperate or not.
The whole middle section of the book is like this: nothing any of the
characters do matters because everything is explicitly destined. That
includes an extended series of interludes following the other main
characters from the Belgariad, who are racing to catch up with the main
party but who will turn out to have no role of significance whatsoever.
I wouldn't mind this as much if the prophecy were more active in the
story, given that it's the actual protagonist. But it mostly disappears.
Instead, the characters blunder around doing whatever seems like a good
idea at the time, while Cyradis acts like a bizarre sort of referee with a
Calvinball rule
set and every random action turns out to be the fulfillment of prophecy in
the most ham-handed possible way. Zandramas, meanwhile, is trying to
break the prophecy, which would have been a moderately interesting story
hook if anyone (Eddings included) thought she were potentially capable of
doing so. Since no one truly believes there's any peril, this turns into
a series of pointless battles the reader has no reason to care about.
All of this sets up what has been advertised since the start of the series
as a decision between good and evil. Now, at the least minute, Eddings
(through various character mouthpieces) tries to claim that the decision
is not actually between good and evil, but is somehow beyond morality. No
one believes this, including the narrator and the reader, making all of
the philosophizing a tedious exercise in page-turning. To pull off a
contention like that, the author has to lay some sort of foundation to
allow the reader to see the supposed villain in multiple lights. Eddings
does none of that, instead emphasizing how evil she is at every
opportunity.
On top of that, this supposed free choice on which the entire universe
rests and for which all of history was pointed depends on someone with
astonishing conflicts of interest. While the book is going on about how
carefully the prophecy is ensuring that everyone is in the right place at
the right time so that no side has an advantage, one side is accruing an
absurdly powerful advantage. And the characters don't even seem to
realize it!
The less said about the climax, the better. Unsurprisingly, it was
completely predictable.
Also, while I am complaining, I could never get past how this entire
series starts off with and revolves around an incredibly traumatic and
ongoing event that has no impact whatsoever on the person to whom the
trauma happens. Other people are intermittently upset or sad, but not
only is that person not harmed, they act, at the end of this book, as if
the entire series had never happened.
There is one bright spot in this book, and ironically it's the one plot
element that Eddings didn't make blatantly obvious in advance and
therefore I don't want to spoil it. All I'll say is that one of the
companions the heroes pick up along the way turns out to be my favorite
character of the series, plays a significant role in the interpersonal
dynamics between the heroes, and steals every scene that she's in by being
more sensible than any of the other characters in the story. Her story,
and backstory, is emotional and moving and is the best part of this book.
Otherwise, not only is the plot a mess and the story structure a failure,
but this is also Eddings at his most sexist and socially conservative.
There is an extended epilogue after the plot resolution that serves
primarily as a showcase of stereotypes: baffled men having their habits
and preferences rewritten by their wives, cast-iron gender roles inside
marriage, cringeworthy jokes, and of course loads and loads of children
because that obviously should be everyone's happily ever after. All of
this happens to the characters rather than being planned or actively
desired, continuing the theme of prophecy and lack of agency, although of
course they're all happy about it (shown mostly via grumbling). One could
write an entire academic paper on the tension between this series and the
concept of consent.
There were bits of the Malloreon that I enjoyed, but they were generally
in spite of the plot rather than because of it. I do like several of
Eddings's characters, and in places I liked the lack of urgency and the
sense of safety. But I think endings still have to deliver some twist or
punch or, at the very least, some clear need for the protagonists to take
an action other than stand in the right room at the right time. Eddings
probably tried to supply that (I can make a few guesses about where), but
it failed miserably for me, making this the worst book of the series.
Unless like me you're revisiting this out of curiosity for your teenage
reading habits (and even then, consider not), avoid.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Here's what happened in the
Reproducible
Builds effort between Sunday May 7 and
Saturday May 13 2017:
Report from Reproducible Builds Hamburg Hackathon
We were 16 participants from 12 projects: 7 Debian, 2 repeatr.io, 1 ArchLinux, 1 coreboot + LEDE, 1 F-Droid, 1 ElectroBSD + privoxy, 1 GNU R, 1 in-toto.io, 1 Meson and 1 openSUSE. Three people came from the USA, 3 from the UK, 2 Finland, 1 Austria, 1 Denmark and 6 from Germany, plus we several guests from our gracious hosts at the CCCHH hackerspace as well as a guest from Australia
We had four presentations:
Some of the things we worked on:
- h01ger did orga stuff for this very hackathon, discussed tests.r-b.o with various non-Debian contributors, filed some bugs and restarted the policy discussion in #844431. He also did some polishing work on tests.r-b.o which shall be covered in next issue of our weekly blog.
- Justin Cappos involved many of us in interesting discussions and started to write an academic paper about Reproducible Builds of which he shared an early beta on our mailinglist.
- Chris Lamb (lamby) filed a number of patches for individual packages, worked on diffoscope, merged many changes to
strip-nondeterminism and also filed #862073 against dak to upload buildinfo files to external services.
- Maria Glukhova (siamezzze) fixed a bug with plots on tests.reproducible-builds.org and worked on diffoscope test coverage.
- Lynxis worked on a new squashfs upstream release improving support for reproducible squashfs filesystems and also had some time to hack on coreboot and show others how to install coreboot on real hardware.
- Michael Poehn worked on integrating F-Droid builds into tests.reproducible-builds.org, on the F-Droid verification utility and also ran some app reproducibility tests.
- Bernhard worked on various unreproducible issues upstream and submitted fixes for curl, bzr, ant.
- Erin Myhre worked on bootstrapping cleanroom builds of compiler components in Repeatr sandboxes.
- Calvin Behling merged improvements to reppl for a cleaner storage format and better error handling and did design work for next version of repeatr pipeline execution. Calvin also lead the reproducibility testing of restaurant mood lighting.
- Eric and Calvin also claim to have had all sorts of useful exchanges about the state of other projects, and learned a lot about where to look for more info about debian bootstrap and archive mirroring from steven and lamby
- Phil Hands came by to say hi and worked on testing d-i on jenkins.debian.net.
- Chris West (Faux) worked on extending
misc.git:has-only.py, and started looking at Britney.
We had a Debian focussed meeting where we discussed a number of topics:
- IRC meetings: yes, we want to try again to have them, monthly, a poll for a good date is being held.
- Debian tests post Stretch: we'll add tests for stable/Stretch.
- .buildinfo files, how forward: we need sourceful uploads for any arch:all packages. dak should send .buildinfo files to buildinfo.debian.net.
- (pre?) Stretch release press release: we should do that, esp. as our achievements are largely unrelated to Stretch.
- Reproducible Builds Summit 3: yes, we want that.
- what to do (in notes.git) with resolved issues: keep the issues.
- strip-nondeterminism quo vadis: Justin reminded us that strip-nondeterminism is a workaround we want to get rid off.
And then we also had a lot of fun in the hackerspace, enjoying some of their gimmicks,
such as being able to open physical doors with
ssh or controlling light and music with an webbrowser without authentication (besides being in the right network).
(This wasn't the hackathon per-se, but some of us appreciated these sights and so we thought you would too.)
Many thanks to:
- Debian for sponsoring food and accomodation!
- Dock Europe for providing us with really nice accomodation in the house!
- CCC Hamburg for letting us use their hackerspace for >3 days non-stop!
News and media coverage
openSUSE has had a
security breach in their
infrastructure,
including their build services. As of this writing, the scope and impact are
still unclear, however the incident illustrates that no one should rely on
being able to secure their infrastructure at all times. Reproducible Builds
help mitigate this by allowing independent verification of build results, by
parties that are unaffected by the compromise.
(Whilst this can happen to
anyone. Kudos to openSUSE for being open about it.
Now let's continue working on Reproducible Builds everywhere!)
On May 13th Chris Lamb gave a talk on Reproducible Builds at
OSCAL
2017 in Tirana, Albania.
Toolchain bug reports and fixes
- Chris Lamb:
- Steven Chamberlain:
- Ximin Luo:
Packages' bug reports
Reviews of unreproducible packages
11 package reviews have been added, 2562 have been updated and 278 have been
removed in this week, adding to our knowledge about
identified
issues. Most
of the updates were to move ~1800 packages affected by the generic catch-all
captures_build_path (out of ~2600 total) to the more specific
gcc_captures_build_path, fixed by our
proposed patches to GCC.
5 issue types have been updated:
Weekly QA work
During our reproducibility testing, FTBFS bugs have been detected and reported by:
- Adrian Bunk (1)
- Chris Lamb (2)
- Chris West (1)
diffoscope development
diffoscope development continued
on the experimental
branch:
- Maria Glukhova:
- Code refactoring and more tests.
- Chris Lamb:
- Add safeguards against unpacking recursive or deeply-nested archives.
(Closes: #780761)
strip-nondeterminism development
- strip-nondeterminism
0.033-1 and -2 were uploaded to unstable by Chris Lamb. It included contributions from:
- Bernhard M. Wiedemann:
- Add cpio handler.
- Code quality improvements.
- Chris Lamb:
- Add documentation and increase verbosity, in support of the long-term aim
of removing the need for this tool.
reprotest development
- reprotest
0.6.1 and 0.6.2 were uploaded to unstable by Ximin Luo. It included contributions from:
- Ximin Luo:
- Add a documentation section on "Known bugs".
- Move developer documentation away from the man page.
- Mention release instructions in the previous changelog.
- Preserve directory structure when copying artifacts. Otherwise hash output
on a successful reproduction sometimes fails, because find(1) can't find
the artifacts using the original artifact_pattern.
- Chris Lamb
- Add proper release instructions and a keyring.
trydiffoscope development
- Chris Lamb:
- Uses the diffoscope from Debian experimental if possible.
Misc.
This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo, Holger Levsen and Chris Lamb &
reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC & the mailing lists.
I recently noticed that a very good way to safely read webcomics in
the bath tub is an old laptop with a big screen (e.g. a IBM ThinkPad
A-series like my 15” A31 which has a nice 1400×1050 resolution),
a water proof keyboard, the screen-alike, keyboard only driven (hence
the name) window manager
ratpoison (other keyboard driven window
managers like
wmii
or
awesome
probably will do as well as ratpoison) and a good keyboard driven web
browser which can bind or by default has bound a key to follow
<link rel="next" ... /> tags.
Like
Opera. Opera has bound the space bar to scroll one page down and
if you reach the bottom of the page to go to the next page as labeled
in the link tag. Additionally the full screen mode is helpful, too.
Or the dream browser of all
Emacs addicts,
Conkeror, which has bound
the function
browser-follow-next to
]].
(Conkeror packages will hit
Debian Experimental quite soon.)
Or the
GNOME feed reader
Liferea which has bound Ctrl-Space by default
to scroll down the content by one page and if you reach the bottom of
the content go to the next unread item.
With that equipment I can read my favourite web comics like
Questionable
Content (whose content seldomly is questionable :-) or
Ozy and Millie
(Think of a mixture of
Calvin &
Hobbes,
Peanuts
and
Kevin &
Kell) in the bath tub without drying my hands before reading the
next comic or fearing water or health damage by the combination of
water and computer. I just press one or two keys on the keyboard
floating over my lap and have a good time.
BTW: I’ve got a blue, non-branded one (
packaging reveals it as “AirTouch Keyboard”, probably
manufactured by
SanChuan Electronics, China) with swiss-german layout from
ARP Datacom (whose website
offers no permanent links and insists on session cookies
*puke*), but
those from Keysonic or
from ROCK seem to be very similar — nowadays they are also
available in
illuminated,
miscellaneous colors and
wireless, but only
IP65, probably because of the necessarily accessible
battery compartment.
But this kind of having fun still has optimisation potential:
non-flexibel water-proof keyboard (
IP67 recommended, so
those IP66
keyboards and mice recently posted at
UF LOTD are probably not
tight enough), flat screen mounted above the bath tub, etc. ;-) Or
maybe a completely water proof laptop if such thing exists —
Does
it?
One more note: In Debian
Sid and Lenny recently a new tool called
keynav has been added, which allows you to control the mouse
quickly using the keyboard only. So with Sid or Lenny, I don’t even
need an waterproof mouse or trackball if an application insists on
mouse usage. ;-)
So i have travelled to Slovakia again, for a weekend this time.
I have been painting window frames. Since i have a new iPod (4G nano,
black, yummy), i could also listen to music (Tristania, In Flames,
Kamelot). The last time, it was somewhat of a patience exercise, but
this time... I guess i got better at painting and maybe i have become
more patient, too :). It was pretty enjoyable, more than i would have
thought a work like that could be. And i am sure the music helps, too.
(The next day)
And to continue the last blog... There, i have concluded that hardship
was important factor in becoming better:
And apart from hardship... Problem is, hardship alone, if it stays the
same, is not enough to make people change. It is the change from
contentment to unhappiness, that drives people forward. Because in
that change, one starts to change, and hardship together with dynamics
helps a lot. Static, unchanging hardship will only do little to change
a person. One can get used to it, like to anything else. Like to
contentment. So an initial change can start a cascade. Like for me,
breakup caused a domino effect. The change alone brought a lot of
hardship with it, and i had to change to accomodate to it. And the
change in me provoked more changes and so on. I have learned many new
things, or, things i have learned before but went unnoticed took my
notice. And in light of such things, i had to change again, because i
knew i couldn't be happy any other way.
A human being is as good as dead, when captured in a period of
stagnation, in an unchanging moment that lasts. Only through change,
through dynamics of life, we are alive. A man that does not change is
a statue, a dead piece of matter, only useful as a memento. And that
was what i have become, and now the statue is again starting to move,
to breathe, to live. Because there is just no perfection that one
could capture in a moment. No matter how perfect a moment, if frozen,
the perfection decays, the little cracks are noticed. That is why
trying to freeze time is futile, trying to preserve. One cannot enter
the same stream twice. Life is a constant change, and this constant
change is its only manifestation. Take the change away and you take
the life away.
The past is important. The past is what resulted into present, and
present is what makes future. Every moment, in a succession of
moments, is important. But without the moment before and the moment
after, the moment does not mean anything. The moment is void, without
predecessor and successor. We move in time, and the motion is what
becomes important, not the points we moved through. They are only
important in the relation to our trajectory, not in isolation. And so
is the direction which we take, the vector of our motion, and the
shifts in direction.
There is no eternity, only the eternity of its own
absence. Immortality and death are the same, the very same
notion. Because every time we change, there is a little death and a
little birth. And immortality is only possible in
staticness. Immortality is a point in time, without motion. And
without motion, there is no life to be.
And same goes for relationships. Make a relationship immortal and you
make it die. Relationship needs a possibility of death to live. Like
humans, like every living being. Without death, there is no life. The
transition from being into non-being is essential, because it is the
precondition to change. As i have already described, every change is a
death followed by rebirth, but the entity reborn is not the one that
has died. And therefore, without the ability to die, there is no
ability to change. And death, the conventional death, as we know it,
is just a death without rebirth. Something dies, and there is nothing
more to take its place. But... The death makes others change. And
therefore, the one who dies definitively, is again reborn, as part of
those others that have died, but haven't died, but are reborn. And the
one definitely dead enters those new, reborn creatures, as a little
fraction of them. And the cycle of life is closed, and the change can
perpetuate itself.
Every day, i die a thousand times. But there are deaths that are
important and deaths that go unnoticed. And most of the important ones
are only noticed in retrospect, by a being that resulted, after many
hours, or days, or weeks or even longer. And many more deaths. We only
exist through our succession, because only what is born from us
remembers what we were. And the very moment we are born, we die again,
and a new being remembers. The memory lives on, but the beings are
already dead. And the memory changes as well, because memory itself
does not mean anything, only the being possesing it can give it
meaning. And every successive being that we become gives it a slightly
different meaning.
And so the delicate, complex dynamics of individual life are
established. Not only the living being changes itself, but the
memories of the previous beings change. There is certain gravity
toward stagnation, because often the changes are only very slight, and
the being remembers his predecessors that were fairly happy and tries
to remain so. Because the bigger the change, the bigger risk. And
therefore all beings are susceptible to stagnation, to the stasis cell
of past success. Because past success is one's own enemy, even if it
is something that is a precondition to one's own being. So we need to
learn to live with our past success, but to not try to revive it. The
effort to bring back past is a wasted, contraproductive effort. It
seems so, it is almost natural, that if there was happiness in the
past, restoring the same past will bring the same happiness. But
there, that is not true, in the light of previous paragraphs. The trap
is so obvious, that description is probably redundant, but let me do
it once again anyway, maybe because i have fallen in it so many times
already. Yes, the trap is in the stagnation, in absence of new
things. Because even if one cannot restore the original condition no
matter how much he tries, one can, and that is for sure, replicate it
very closely. And that way lies a trap, a temporary (or even
permanent) thermal death of stagnation.
(Later that day, outside, on a nearby hill)
And now, like before, there's nothing more to stand between me and
myself. I sit in the grass, alone. My being alone complements me, in a
way. There are waves in the grass, as air moves. Music is playing,
apart from the few houses i can see downhill, my only connection with
the rest of people. And this what belongs to me, this paper, this
pen. This book by Italo Calvino that Enrico Zini has given me. If on a
winter's night a traveller. But it is late summer. I can see vineyard
in distance, on a slope different from mine. I call this slope mine
because i am the one sitting there. And the time to collect the grapes
is close. And here, next to me, an apple tree, with red apples on it.
And a white butterfly in the distance, beating the air with its light,
small wings. And i blow away a tiny spider who has lost its way on my
trousers. I feel being part of all this around me, and still so
foreign. And the butterfly appears again, but it may be a different
one.
The sun shines behind my back, alhtough i sit in shade of a tree. And
neither the sun nor the tree are my enemies, or my friends. But still,
i feel sympathy for both of them, one gives me light and warmth and
the other shields me from too much of it. And the setting, the scenery
soothes my senses, my mind, my feelings. Here, i am close to the
loving mother of us, living beings, the nature. Here she is tender and
forgiving and caresses my hair and it feels good.
And these feelings, i would love to pass on, to other people, so they,
too, could feel well. But i see that this is not quite
possible. Although these lines will hopefully give something to
someone, they probably can't carry what i feel. And i would bring
someone with myself here, so they could feel it with me. But presence
of other person would spoil it, it would be something else then. Maybe
beautiful in a way, different from this one, maybe very pleasant. I
love people, and when i see them happy, it fills me with gladness.
(And in the evening, on a train...)
And here i am, moving with speed, from one place to another. The
speed, sound of loud music in my ears, the landscape drifting away. I
could say i was happy, happy in the sense of change, everything
changing around me, sun setting behind distant horizon, the train
moving through the country. The semaphore lights. In the headphones,
heavy guitar riffs competing with the roaring of the train. Cold air
blowing in my face, flowing in my hair.
And now in another train, sitting in a compartment with stranger, a
girl, trying to guess who she could be, from her dress, from what she
is reading, from cues. Who she could become. What she means to me, a
passing stranger on the path of life. I have been reading the Calvino
book till now, but i thought i could write down my thoughts before
they perish, like they do. It is fairly silent now here, even while we
are on a train. The engine and the outside are muffled, the window and
the door are closed. We are in a strange kind of privacy with this
girl, neither knowing anything about the other. I, writing this text
here, she reading some sort of magazine. Looking up from what we do at
occasions. The train is accelerating now, and the sounds are more
intense. It is a bit shaky, too. My hearing is still lightly impaired
from the loud music from the previous train.
We arrived to a station. Short stop, then another long motion. Always
toward Brno, toward my flat, toward the night and tomorrow. The girl
is reading a horse races program. Here, i intrude her privacy and
write that here. I hope she wouldn't mind. I don't have a name other
than "the girl" for her, since all the words we exchanged was me
asking whether i can sit down in the compartment and her answer. And i
suppose i won't say anything and she won't, neither. Maybe a goodbye.
And now, we share a sort of almost intimacy. Two lone people in a
compartment, tired and waiting to arrive somewhere. An invisible bond
between us, doesn't mean anything, just that element at random brought
us there together, for a short moment. Chances are, we won't ever meet
again. And still, she is almost falling asleep, with her feet up, like
if i were a trustworthy friend of old. And i feel sympathy for that, i
feel honoured by a trust given by a complete stranger. She seems
comfortable, feeling safe. And it feels good to have that trust, it
feels important. It nearly gives warm fuzzies.
(To be continued, further...)
Some of the books I read in 2005:
Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and other pieces
Bob McCulloch, My Fare City: A Taxi Driver's Guide to Edinburgh
Origen, On First Principles (translated by G. W. Butterworth)
Sin-leqi-unninni, Gilgamesh: a new English version by Stephen Mitchell
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Richard Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: from paganism to Christianity 371–1386 AD
M. A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Otto Friedrich, The Kingdom of Auschwitz
Nicholas Barton, The Lost Rivers of London: a study of their effects upon London and Londoners, and the effects of London and Londoners upon them
Anton Chekhov, The Steppe and Other Stories (translated by Ronald Hingley)
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Otto F. A. Meinardus, Coptic Saints and Pilgrimages
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
R.W.B. Lewis, Dante: a life
Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture
Arturo P rez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel
John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (second edition)
Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: the battles for Scripture and the faiths we never knew
Plato, Timaeus and Critias (translated by Desmond Lee)
Albert Camus, The Outsider
Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, Rosslyn: guardian of the secrets of the Holy Grail
Ginevra Lovatelli, Secret Rome
Dauvit Brown and Thomas Owen Clancy (editors), Spes Scotorum: Hope of Scots: Saint Columba, Iona and Scotland
Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII (translated by Walter Hamilton)
William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (The Penguin History of Europe)
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women (translated by Virginia Brown)
Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
Georges Perec, A Void (translated by Gilbert Adair)
Saul Bellow, The Victim
Franz Kafka, The Trial
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream (translated by Joscelyn Godwin)
Italo Calvino, Our Ancestors (The Cloven Viscount; Baron in the Trees; The Non-Existent Knight) (translated by Archibald Colquhoun)
Eusebius, The History of the Church (translated by G. A. Williamson)
Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria: Bashar's trial by fire
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (City of Glass; Ghosts; The Locked Room)
I have always loved 
Paolo Bonzini 
I often find myself running /sbin/route to get the IP address of the current gateway, especially when using a wireless LAN while traveling. For example, if the Internet does not work I usually ping the local gateway to see where the connectivity problem lies. I also need the IP if I want to access the routers configuration web interface. This is somewhat tedious, so I wrote 
