Book Review: The City & The City by China Mieville

I decided to read The City & The City because it won a Hugo Award. So far it has made me question the sanity of everyone who voted for it. It's made me question my own sanity for continuing to read it past the first 5-10 pages.

First, I really hate when writers feel the need to invent new words for everything. It takes the reader out of the story when they have to consult the cheat-sheet they are required to create and maintain in order to keep up with the story and the over-use of invented terminology. Sometimes this amounts to needing to create an English translation of the story while you are reading.

Another thing I find annoying is bad grammar and punctuation. This book has an over-abundance of both. Proper punctuation is sparse, and there are too many extremely short, non-sensical sentences. I had to read some sentences three or four times to figure out what the writer meant. Good punctuation would have resolved the problem.

Stupid Writers of SPAM

I found this in my SPAM folder, and thought it was too hilarious not to share. You'd think they'd bother to at least learn grammar and spelling if they're going to attempt to intimidate you with an email, and convince you to send them money.

Day 14: London and Tampa, 14 May 2013 (Tuesday)

(this is a placeholder until I have finished writing it)

Day 13: London, 13 May 2013 (Monday)

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Day 12: London, 12 May 2013 (Sunday)

So much for my trip to Cardiff. (Insert one Googol of curse words here) Now I'll just have to plan another trip to the UK. 8-)

I felt so sick I wound up staying in bed all day. I only left the room once to go downstairs to get new codes for the Internet and that was around 11pm. I just threw my jacket on over my pajamas. I didn't care what anyone thought.

Day 11: Kirkcaldy and London, 11 May 2013 (Saturday)

Another overcast and windy day in Scotland. I can see why my ancestors settled in the North Georgia mountains. The flora and fauna, landscape, and winter weather are all very similar. I woke up a bit early for me, so I took a shower. Amy opted to shower after breakfast.

The breakfast at the Dean Park Hotel was a traditional breakfast. I ordered eggs and "bacon" (we'd call it fried ham in the US), and Amy ordered haggis with hers. I have no desire to ever try the stuff.

We ventured back to the room for Amy to shower. We discovered that check-out was at 11:00 am (they neglected to tell us this when we checked in), so we had to rush a bit to throw everything back into our suitcases. This left us about two hours to wait for Amy's friend Dawn to arrive. We just sat in the bar and chatted. I don't recall a single person coming over to ask if we wanted to order anything. Just as well since we didn't. We just chatted about the weather, what time we needed to catch the train back to London, the fact that Amy didn't want to join me for the trip to Cardiff, etc.

Day 10: London and Edinburgh, 10 May 2013

We originally planned to go to Cardiff today, and Edinburgh on Saturday, returning to London late on Sunday. However, due to procrastination (and who hasn't done that?), the place Amy wants to stay was available only on Friday night and not Saturday night. So, we switched things around. Edinburgh today, leaving late on Saturday and heading for Cardiff where we plan to stay overnight, then do all of the Doctor Who stuff on Sunday. Stay tuned for how that works out.

I got up at 6:00 am this morning (those who know me will know that this isn't easy for me to do), showered, had breakfast in the hotel, and made it to the Kings Cross National Rail station 35 minutes before the 9:00am train departed. Not bad! That only required one change of trains on the Tube.

7:16am Awake, mostly. Need coffee to be sure. Catching early train to Edinburgh.