liveblogging a book: The City and the City

[ritaxis]

I was a little disappointed when the Potlach book of honor turned out to be a China Mieville one. I bounced so hard off the one books of his I tried to read that I was fairly certain I didn't want to go there again. So I've been dragging my feet about getting The City and the City -- if I thought hard about it I suppose I could say I left it till late so it would be fresh in my mind -- and I just got it today. My first thought when I had it in my hand was "good, it's not as long as that other one," not so much because it's a busy week for me all told but because that meant I wouldn't have to spend too much time in a Mieville book . . .

Dear dog and all that is canine, this is a disgusting way to begin a book. And yeah, I get that it's supposed to be harsh and awful, but you know, the dead naked woman with smeared makeup and horrible wounds found under a discarded mattress in a squalid crime-ridden neighborhood?

Not edgy. Not daring. Not revelatory. It's trite and I don't like it and it disposes me ill towards what follows. I have contracted to read it and take it seriously, but I really resent it and I resent my fellow potlatchers who voted for it instead of any number of other books.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I found Un Lun Dun a masterwork that drew me in and led me to buy other works by the same author.

It was as if someone read Soul Survivor and bought a bunch of other stuff with my name on it. Any merit of the rest of the work is overshadowed by the unfair comparison to the standard of what was read first.