{"id":53,"date":"2012-05-14T14:32:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T14:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/?p=53"},"modified":"2012-08-15T03:06:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T03:06:11","slug":"apparently-he-has-a-book-where-there-are-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/apparently-he-has-a-book-where-there-are-two\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently he has a book where there are two cities and they, like, overlap. That\u2019s what I heard anyway, and if someone else had written it maybe that would matter.<\/p>\n<p>I used to respect Jerry Holkins&#8217; opinions when it came to book recommendations. I&#8217;ve added to my library substantially over the years according to his suggestions. I would never have started reading the &#8220;Kingkiller Chronicles&#8221; series if not for he and Mike gushing about &#8220;The Name of the Wind&#8221; on their site. But I was genuinely surprised by this revelation today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The City and the City&#8221; is easily my favorite novel of 2009, and still ranks in my top ten favorite novels of all time. Now, I&#8217;m not someone who regards China Mieville as a <em>god<\/em>, (I stopped halfway through &#8220;Kraken&#8221; because I got bored with the story) but I haven&#8217;t found a novel as beautifully constructed and told as &#8220;The City and the City&#8221;. I have never felt this supposed &#8220;smugness&#8221; that Jerry seems to feel when reading Mieville&#8217;s works, but I can&#8217;t help but think some portion of that is <em>projected<\/em> as opposed to <em>interpreted<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I can understand someone saying they don&#8217;t like a work, or that a particular author isn&#8217;t appealing. Sure. Fine. I can absolutely accept that. The same goes for me regarding a great many novels and authors. But for Jerry to suggest that a certain novel is somehow <em>irrelevant<\/em> just because he refuses to wrap his mind around it takes a level of arrogance that I simply cannot fathom.<\/p>\n<p><strong>tl;dr &#8211; No one gets to crap on &#8220;The City and the City&#8221;. Not even Tycho.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/penny-arcade.com\/2012\/05\/14\/the-verge\">Penny Arcade<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently he has a book where there are two cities and they, like, overlap. That\u2019s what I heard anyway, and if someone else had written it maybe that would matter. I used to respect Jerry Holkins&#8217; opinions when it came to book recommendations. I&#8217;ve added to my library substantially over the years according to his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[111,24,114,115,113,116,117,112],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-literature","tag-author","tag-china-mieville","tag-jerry-holkins","tag-novels","tag-penny-arcade","tag-science-fiction","tag-storytelling","tag-the-city-and-the-city","post_format-post-format-quote","last-post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}