Random Thoughts

Are LLMs finally becoming actually useful for… stuff?

Yes, of course, LLMs are pretty good at programming now, but I’m talking about being able to ask them stuff in general. My use case is the Emacs book handling package — I want to be able to check whether there’s any books from an author I’ve missed. This is an unexpectedly hard thing to determine (click on the preceding link for details).

People have been nattering on about how awesome the latest Claude is, so I had a look today — and I briefly got very enthusiastic. Because I hit m to search for missing books (i.e., books I don’t have) by Georgette Heyer. She’s a good test case, because she’s written so many books that it’s genuinely a tedious job to try to find out this stuff manually — and I know that I’ve got most of her books.

What I do is ask the LLM “list all books by AUTHOR, but exclude these books: “. Results:

Wow! The Transformation of Philip Jettan!? I don’t have that book! *sounds of shopping* I’m not sure why it’s listing the other three, because I have those, and I told Claude so:

And I don’t understand why it listed four books, but then said it didn’t find anything? But this is almost good! Almost useful! So I started writing this blog post, which was going to go “whoho! LLMs rule now! etc!”.

But then I hit m again, just to check, and:

(And so on and on.)

*sigh* It listed all the books — no filtering. OK, m again:

Now it listed just nine books — eight of which were on that list.

So my momentary enthusiasm here was just another FALSE ALARM!

My impression is that LLM fans only have experience with using LLMs interactively — the LLM says a lot of bullshit, and then you correct it, and then it says “oh, you’re right!”, and then these fans get a warm, fuzzy feeling and are really impressed. It’s a great sleight of hand. Using the API this way (where you only give the LLM one try) really lets you see how unreliable these things are.

While I’m here, I might as well check with other models again… Here’s gemini-2.5-flash:

OK, it lists just one book, and one I have. (But not the one I don’t have; the Jettan thing.)

Perplexity:

It lists The Reluctant Widow four times? Well, it includes Philip Jettan, but all the other ones are on the list.

ChatGPT 5.2:

No Jettan, but it has a whole lot of books from the list.

So… nope.

One thing that’s changed since the last time I checked like this is that there are no hallucinations? These lists used to have some mixed in, but I can’t stop any obvious ones, at least.

I guess I’ll have to check again in six months to see whether things have improved.

Somewhat Bemusing Similes (Part IX)

So … is her pleasantness like the varnish over the hard cynicism oak veneer, and then there’s an (unstated) softer emotional core that’s akin to the plywood? Or is the hard shell of cynicism like the soft plywood, and the pleasantness is hard like the oak veneer?

OR WHAT!?!

I may have fallen slightly behind on my magazine reading

Are all books on Goodreads 3.59?

Whenever I look up a book on Goodreads, it feels like I see the same number every time. No matter whether the book was awful or awesome, the Goodreads rating apparently remains stubbornly the same.

Or is that just my memory playing tricks on me?

I read a lot of books this year, and I had Emacs record the Goodreads rating for every book. So now I have data! Behold:

OK, my memory shouldn’t be relied on, but it wasn’t that far off — the mean rating of the books I read was 3.86, but the spread is pretty small — 90% of the books are between 3.4 and 4.5.

It seems like this is a smaller range than on imdb, but perhaps that’s more to do with the range on imdb being 9 and it being 4 on Goodreads.

Let’s math it… If you have a 90% spread of 1.1 on Goodreads, you’d expect a 90% spread on imdb to be 2.5, while it’s… 3, according to Google. Well, that’s not really a huge difference.

But you almost never see ratings charts like this on Goodreads. Because you rarely have brigading going on there, while on imdb it’s pretty common — whenever a movie goes viral for being soooo bad (in one forum or another), you have all these morons going on imdb and rating pretty mid movies “1”. (Or “10” in the opposite case.)

You almost never see a book on Goodreads that has a different shape than this: More than 60% of the votes are going to be 3 or 4 stars.

But do ratings matter? Well, I’ve found that an imdb rating of 6 or less is a pretty solid indication of the movie probably being naff. But so is a rating of 7.5 and up — then it’s either been brigaded, or it’s some mid movie that nerds are totally into. So an imdb rating of around 6.3 is usually a good indicator of the movie being spiffy.

Before I started the book blogging project last year, I assumed that the same would be the case for Goodreads ratings, but… not really? Yes, you have the same nerdiness effect:

Fantasy books, for instance, have a way too high rating. Most of these books were totally mid, but almost all of them have a rating above 4. I.e., fantasy readers have pretty bad taste.

I mean, they’re really enthusiastic about their hobby.

Science fiction readers are similarly enthusiastic, but not to the same degree.

Literature readers, on the other hand, are more realistic — most books are kinda mid.

And perhaps a bit surprisingly — mystery readers are also pretty realistic in their assessments.

OK, these data sets are pretty small, of course, so perhaps I’ve just chosen Totally Fantastic fantasy books to read, and Pretty Mid mystery books? It’s possible, of course. But my conclusion from this is that you should subtract one point from fantasy book ratings, and half a point from science fiction books. If you want a more realistic score.

But overall, I found myself agreeing with the Goodreads score more often than I thought I would. I guess I’m not as contrarian when it comes to books as I thought I am.

Let’s see… can I torture this insignificant data set some more?

That’s how many books per genre I read (or skipped; I dropped 15 of these books mid-reading). I thought the literature/junk ration would be lower…

And I didn’t think my recency bias (heh heh) was that bad, but there you go.

Book Club 2025 Redux

When I started the Book Club 2025 blog series last January, I didn’t really mean to read so many books this year. But it turns out that having a venue to bloviate about what I’d just read somehow made reading books more compelling? It’s the (somewhat) performative aspect of it all, too — not that anybody much actually read these posts. It’s just that doing anything “in public” makes one more obsessive, right?

But the major reason for “why all these books” is because I’ve been feeling under the weather a lot, especially the last half of this year. I think I’m better now? Possibly? It’s also led me to up the trash quotient of what I’ve read a lot, because reading a mystery novel is about the lowest energy setting I have — it’s a lot more relaxing to read a stupid book than to watch a stupid TV show. Watching TV takes more energy.

I’d say my normal literature to trash quotient is 1:2, but this year it’s been more 1:8.

Before I get to the all-important List Of Books, I feel a whole bunch of blathering coming on, because it’s been three days without blogging! My god!

About My Methodolody:

I’ve set aside this portion of the main bookshelf for unread books. There’s, let’s see, 6×3=18 of these cubbies, plus one overflow cubby (not shown here). So that’s, like, 20×18=360 unread books, roughly. When I want to read a book, I go and stand before this shelf, and I feel like I’m at a bookstore that caters to my tastes, which is a very nice feeling.

This is after this year’s reading…

… and at the start of each new year, I compact the books down and to the left. So the bottom left cubby here has the oldest unread books, and the topmost right has the newest. Tu vois ?

So I read about two hundred books (*gulp*) this year — so why isn’t the shelf half empty now!? Because I bought 130 new books.

*sigh*

Well, that’s just what happens when you read a book — it reminds you of other books you might want to read, like All Other Books By This Author, which is a refrain of mine…

Seems to be correct — three and a half cubbies (including the overflow one) have been emptied, and that’s about 70 books… The math is mathing!

Thrilling, I’m sure. Which brings me to more blathering about:

Or rather, lots of people on Twitter talking about what “counts” as “reading a book”.

I just find the entire thing so weird, because I like reading books. It’s like having a discussion about what counts as eating a cake.

“No! Cupcakes don’t count!”

“No! All real cakes are marzipan cakes, and marzipan makes me throw up, so if you eat more than four cakes a year, you’re not savouring the cake!”

“No! All true cakes are made from granola, and give you healthy digestion! If a cake doesn’t improve your digestion, it’s nothing to brag about.”

And here I’m just posting pictures of cakes because I like cakes and I think it’s fun talking about the cakes? Why would anybody consider posting pictures of cakes as being a brag?

But of course, people have these hangups about reading books. Here’s my working hypothesis: Many people don’t really enjoy longform reading, so they invent strange rules (“only Greek philosophy books count”). This has two effects: 1) Whenever somebody else says “I read this book”, they can protect their own egos by saying “that doesn’t count”, and 2) by limiting what “counts” to books to “hard” books, they can feel better about not reading many books, since reading books is hard work.

It’s pretty transparent and somewhat circular logic.

This thread (well, sort of thread) by Joyce Carol Oates about “life changing books” is also apposite — some people have such melodramatic views of literature: They read a book, and if they can’t post “literally life changing” afterwards, it’s not worth it, or something.

Most books are pretty mid, of course. That’s fine — of the following books, 15 were so bad that I abandoned them after starting to read. And I have no compunction about dropping books — there’s an approx. infinity number of good books out there, and a second spent reading something you don’t enjoy is a second you could have been spending on something you do enjoy.

Many people feel differently, and that’s fine. “Perhaps if I persevere, I’ll start liking it? WHAT IF IT TURNS OUT THAT THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!” Well, you’re only going on odds. The likelihood of the last part of the bad book you’re currently reading is going to be great is smaller than the likelihood that some other random book is going to be great.

And it’s not about “hard” books vs “easy” books at all. My approach makes you a more fearless reader — you can start reading any book, no matter whether you think you’re going to like it or not, and no matter how “hard” it looks. If it turns out to have been a bad choice, just go on to the next one.

The one bad thing about this is that sometimes I find myself thinking “eh… am I enjoying this book sufficiently? How about now? Now then?” which is not ideal.

But these books are good. I’ve stashed away last year’s books, and these were the ones that I thought I could remember enjoying particularly much. I may be misremembering, of course. I mean, I wouldn’t want to double-check by clicking on the links down there.

Year	Author	Title	Goodreads
1977	Robert Barnard	Death of an Old Goat	3.53
1974	Georgia O’Keeffe	Some Memories of Drawings	4.34
2021	Elizabeth H. Bonesteel	Arkhangelsk	4.17
2021	Pet Petterson	Mitt Abruzzo	3.9
1931	P. G. Wodehouse	Doctor Sally	3.69
1987	Paul Auster	In the Country of Last Things	3.91
1988	Charles Reznikoff	Poems 1918-1975	4.48
2022	James S. A. Corey	Memory’s Legion	4.37
2012	Louise Penny	Still Life	3.9
1968	Lawrence Block	Here Comes A Hero	3.68
2020		The Paris Review 234	3.29
1968	Georgette Heyer	Powder and Patch	3.57
1984	Marian Babson	Paws For Alarm	3.3
1990	Marian Babson	Past Regret	3.46
1830	Stendhal	The Red and the Black II	3.86
1933	P. G. Wodehouse	Heavy Weather	4.25
1970	Iris Murdoch	The Sandcastle	3.83
1996	Lois McMaster Bujold	Cetaganda	4.17
2025	Charles Stross	A Conventional Boy	4.28
2004	Alexander McCall Smith	In the Company of Cheerful Ladies	4.09
2021	Mur Lafferty	Station Eternity	3.7
1990	Marian Babson	In the Teeth of Adversity	3.51
2007	John Brandon	Arkansas	3.72
1983	Robert Barnard	School for Murder	3.56
1953	Samuel Beckett	The Unnamable	4.0
2020	Ben Aaronovitch	Tales from the Folly	4.03
1966	Lawrence Block	The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep	3.75
2024	Rachel Cusk	Parade	3.58
2024	Steven Brust	Lyorn	4.41
2024		The Paris Review #250	3.30
2012	Brandon Sanderson	The Emperor’s Soul	4.38
2022	Helen DeWitt	The English Understand Wool	4.08
2011	John Barnes	Daybreak Zero	3.59
1998	China Miéville	King Rat	3.56
2012	Ursula K. Le Guin	Finding My Elegy	4.03
2005		McSweeney’s #17	3.71
2014	Michael Cunningham	The Snow Queen	3.08
2008	Helle Helle	Ned til hundene	3.66
1980	Marian Babson	Line Up For Murder	3.55
1993	Roberto Bolaño	De romantiske hundene	3.95
2014	Bing & Bringsværd	London 2084	2.93
2015	Umberto Eco	Numero Zero	3.17
2014	Elizabeth Moon	Deeds of Honor	4.34
2021	Tor Eystein Øverås	Fakkelen er tent!	4.5
1995	Robert Barnard	The Bad Samaritan	3.61
1935	P. G. Wodehouse	The Luck of the Bodkins	4.06
1980	Marguerite Duras	L’été 80	3.51
2022	Richard Porter	The Moon and The Echo
2022	Lois McMaster Bujold	Penric’s Labors	4.28
1926	Wallace Thurman	FIRE!!	4.37
2025	Seraphina Nova Glass	Nothing Ever Happens Here	3.53
1990	Robert Barnard	A City of Strangers	3.45
2020	Jandek	The Rays Of Light That Did Not Illumine	4.04
2007	Anne Holt	1222	3.35
2012	Unni Lindell	Djevelkysset	3.49
2002	Jill Paton Walsh	A Presumption of Death	4.02
1992		The Paris Review #122
1984	Richard Stevenson	On the Other Hand, Death	3.92
1997	Anne Holt and Berit Reiss-Andersen	Løvens gap	3.48
1956		The Paris Review #13
2018	Ursula K. Le Guin	The Books of Earthsea	4.46
1986	Richard Stevenson	Ice Blues	3.89
1959	René Goscinny & Jean-Jacques Sempé	Le Petit Nicolas	4.14
1991	Annie Ernaux	Passion simple	3.92
2000	Helen DeWitt	The Last Samurai	4.11
2019	Amy Hempel	Sing to It	3.64
1996	Nan Goldin	I’ll Be Your Mirror	4.64
1992	Richard Stevenson	Third Man Out	4.1
1989	Elizabeth Peters	Naked Once More	3.91
1980	Marion Chesney	Regency Gold	3.43
1936	P. G. Wodehouse	Laughing Gas	3.88
	Rex Stout	Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men	4.22
1981	Barbara Michaels	Someone in the House	3.67
1966	Thomas Pynchon	The Crying of Lot 49	3.69
1964	Philip Larkin	The Whitsun Weddings	3.9
2024	Ken MacLeod	Beyond the Light Horizon	4
1984	M. C. Beaton	The French Affair	3.56
1986	M. C. Beaton	To Dream Of Love	3.79
1986	M. C. Beaton	Those Endearing Young Charms	3.58
2024	M. C. Beaton and R. W. Green	Death of a Spy	3.81
2024	Cherie Priest	The Drowning House	3.43
1970		The Paris Review #251	3.73
2007	Brandon Sanderson	The Well of Ascension	4.38
2020	Emi Yagi	Diary of a Void	3.5
1982		The Paris Review #84
2025	Anthony Horowitz	Marble Hall Murders	4.37
2022	David Sedaris	Happy-Go-Lucky	4.17
2023	Diane Williams	I Hear You’re Rich	2.6
1995	Richard Stevenson	Shock to the System	4.07
1996	Dag Solstad	Professor Andersens natt	3.39
1997	Lao Tzu	Tao Te Ching	4.29
1984	Joanna Russ	Extra(Ordinary) People	3.73
1965		The Paris Review #34	3.5
1937	P. G. Wodehouse	Summer Moonshine	4.1
1996	Tore Renberg	Matriarkat	2.68
2021	David Sedaris	A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)	4.21
2004	Roberto Bolaño	2666	4.21
2004	C. J. Cherryh	Forge of Heaven	3.9
2009	Lois McMaster Bujold	Horizon	4.06
1992		The Paris Review #124
2014	Emma Healey	Elizabeth Is Missing	3.71
2008	Chip Kidd	The Learners	3.58
2017	Martha Wells	All Systems Red	4.13
2009	Bob Fingerman	Connective Tissue	3.44
	M. C. Beaton	A Governess of Distinction	3.77
2025	Ben Aaronovitch	Stone & Sky	4.25
2004	Catherine Asaro	Irresistible Forces	3.52
2023	Lars Sjunnesson	Åke Jävel: Kuken	5
1913	Marcel Proust	À la recherche du temps perdu — Du côte de chez Swann	4.16
2021	Charles Stross	Escape from Yokai Land	3.92
2021	Jen Campbell and Adam de Souza	The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers	4.15
1998	Phyllis Gotlieb	Flesh And Gold	3.39
1903	P. G. Wodehouse	Tales of St Austin’s	3.46
2011	Sara Gran	Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead	3.7
	Lizzy Mercier Descloux	Desiderata	3.64
2020	Lawrence Block	The Burglar in Short Order	3.84
2023	Richard Stevenson	Chain of Fools	3.85
2015	Jaakko Pallasvuo	Scorched Earth	4.31
2021		The Paris Review #236	3.67
1994	A. J. Orde	Long Time Dead	3.83
2017	Karl Bartos	The Sound of the Machine	4.28
2024	Tony Tulathimutte	Rejection	3.81
2015	Guro Skumsnes Moe	Ville hester lim på hjertet
2003	Claire McNab	Blood Link	3.91
2017	Mercedes Lackey	Pathways	4.1
1959	Grace Paley	The Little Disturbances of Man	3.94
2024	Miranda July	All Fours	3.44
1968	Barbara Michaels	Ammie, Come Home	3.98
1992	Mary Gentle	Grunts	3.51
1993	M. C. Beaton	The Glitter and the Gold	3.8
1996	Lev Raphael	Let’s Get Criminal	3.79
	Bertolt Brecht	Fatzer	3.57
1905	Jack London	The Love of Life
2001	J. T. LeRoy	The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things	3.63
1987	Paul Auster	The New York Trilogy	3.86
1989	Tove Jansson	Rent spel	3.89
1994	Caroline Stevermer	A College of Magics	3.71
2003	Anne Holt	Sannheten bortenfor	3.60
1990	Lois McMaster Bujold	The Vor Game	4.27
1996	Elizabeth Alexander	Body of Life	3.70
2007	Ben Katchor	The Dairy Restaurant	3.60
2001	Julie Hecht	Was this man a genius?	3.72
2018	Martha Wells	Artificial Condition	4.25
2016	Camae Ayewa	Fetish Bones	4.46
2024	Chris Heath	Pet Shop Boys. Annually. 2024	3.80
1996	David Foster Wallace	Infinite Jest	4.25
1987	Lois McMaster Bujold	Borders of Infinity	4.26
1986	Lois McMaster Bujold	The Warrior’s Apprentice	4.27
2018	Mercedes Lackey	The Hills Have Spies	4.04
	John Morgan Wilson	Simple Justice	4.15
2025	Per Petterson	Du er hjemme nå	3.83
1939	P. G. Wodehouse	Uncle Fred in the Springtime	4.21
1961	Janet Frame	Faces in the Water	4.02
1958	Lawrence Ferlinghetti	A Coney Island of the Mind	4.16
1995	Jonas Gardell	Frestelsernas berg	3.39
1993	Kjersti Ericsson	Katten stryker seg inntil oss	3.00
1998	Richard Stevenson	Strachey’s Folly	3.78
1993	Jeff Noon	Vurt	4.04
2001	Geir Gulliksen	Våkner om natten og vil noe annet	3.49
2000	Joan D. Vinge	Tangled Up in Blue	3.67
1955		The Paris Review #10
1962	Ann Bannon	Beebo Brinker	3.68
2025	Thomas Pynchon	Shadow Ticket	3.79
2000	Marian Babson	To Catch a Cat	3.79
1960	Rex Stout	Three at Wolfe’s Door	4.1
2004	Anne Holt	Det som aldri skjer	3.56
2006	Stephen McCauley	Alternatives to Sex	3.41
2024	Robert Aman	Serier för vuxna	4.16
2003	Joe Pernice	Meat Is Murder	3.41
2003	Storm Constantine	The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure	4.23
2002	Marian Babson	The Cat Next Door	3.54
1991	Robert Barnard	A Scandal in Belgravia	3.79
1999	Robert Barnard	A Murder in Mayfair	3.54
1991	Eileen Myles	Not Me	4.28
1993	Iain M. Banks	Against a Dark Background	4.1
1987	Marian Babson	Reel Murder	3.5
1952	Agatha Christie	They Do It With Mirrors	3.78
1939	Agatha Christie	Murder Is Easy	3.77
1988	Robert Barnard	At Death’s Door	3.48
2025	Anne Holt	Diamanter og rust	3.98
2025	Agnes Ravatn	Doggerland	4.15
2017	Samuel Hasler	The Gob
1988	Lynda Barry	The Good Times Are Killing Me	4.2
1928	Georgette Heyer	Helen	3.28
1963	Muriel Spark	The Girls of Slender Means	3.65
1997	Jan Erik Vold and Steffen Kverneland	Ikkje
1996	Alice Notley	The Descent of Alette	4.31
2025	Chris Fink	Forage Like A Bear	4.59
1981	Edward O. Phillips	Sunday’s Child	3.56
2025	Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff	Your Name Here	3.74
2018	Martha Wells	Rogue Protocol	4.24
2025	Raymond Biesinger	9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off	4.65
1974	Lawrence Block	Make Out With Murder	3.46
2018	Martha Wells	Exit Strategy	4.37
1949	Agatha Christie	Crooked House	4.08
1988	Joe Keenan	Blue Heaven	4.15
1942	Agatha Christie	The Body in the Library	3.81
2024	Robert Jackson Bennett	The Tainted Cup	4.3
1957	Tarjei Vesaas	Fuglane	4.14
1969	Jan Erik Vold	Kykelipi	4.03
2025	Robert Jackson Bennett	A Drop of Corruption	4.49
1982	Robert Barnard	Death and the Princess	3.46
1939	Agatha Christie	And Then There Were None	4.27

*phew*

This year, I’m gonna read more comics and watch more movies.