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.

Day 9: London, 9 May 2013

Ah, and exciting morning (not really). Since we didn't get to the hotel until about 3:45am, we slept late this morning. I had to do laundry today, or start wearing dirty clothes. I tried various ways of using Google to find a self-service laundry nearby, but all I could ever find were Dry Cleaners and industrial laundry companies. But, thanks to our adventures on the Night Bus, I saw two different coin-op laundries that were near enough to the hotel that I figured I could get there on the bus.

I packed all of my dirty laundry, and the soap Amy bought for me on one of her treks to Tesco, into my small wheeled suitcase, and set off. The front desk confirmed that I should go right out of the hotel, then left. I really should know better than to believe any hotel employee would actually know how to get anywhere around where they work. I wound up going the opposite direction down a one-way street. This wasn't a problem walking, but it also meant that I couldn't catch a bus going in the proper direction. I also wound up walking about 3 blocks out of my way (I realized this later), and then was faced with a 3-way intersection, and had no idea which way to go.

Day 8: London and Birmingham, 8 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 7: London, 7 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 6: London, 6 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 5: Prestatyn, Talacre Beach, London, 5 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 4: Prestatyn, Portmeirion, and Lots of Northern Wales, 4 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 3: London and Prestatyn, 3 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 2: London, 2 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 1: Arriving in London, 1 May 2013

Seriously, I MEAN to keep up with this, but it just never works out properly. So, watch this space, as I plan to go back and fill in the details. I just wanted all of the days to appear in the right order on the blog when I am done.

Day 0: Leaving for London, 30 April 2013

I wound up working entirely too late on Monday night, trying to finish everything on my to-do list before being out of the office for two weeks. I failed. I did, at least, get all but one thing done, which I hope to actually finish by the end of this week anyway.

I got home around 4:30am. No sweat, I still have 9 hours before I have to leave for Deb's house in Plant City. Deb is giving Amy and I a ride to the airport, and our cars will be safe at the Plant City Gang's house (where most of the Stone Hill meetings take place), while we are away.

I reached the end of my ability to stay awake around 6:30am, so I took a bit of a nap. However, I slept a bit too long, and had to rush getting everything done after I woke up. Packing was a bit unusual since I didn't have to play "toss the cat out of the suitcase" a single time. I usually have to throw them both out several times. Nor did either of them lay on top of the clothes on the bed while I was gathering everything. Usually they have to lay on everything to make sure I take a sufficient amount of cat fur with me when I travel. I guess they knew something was up, and they were too busy sulking.

The last bit of my packing was more like throwing, sorting the electric plugs by "need vs don't need" in an effort to not take anything along unless I actually would need it. There was also a bit less time to finish than I originally planned because when I double-checked the departure time it said 6:15pm, and not 7:30pm, which it had originally been. I had completely forgot that the flight was leaving earlier!