Miévillians discussion
Perdido Str Station Discussion
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SECTION 3: Chapters 7-9
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Um, Madam Moderator, I've added spoiler tags to the references you mentioned. They still appear in responses. Sorry.
Yes, please people, I'm really going to a lot of trouble to do those little thread headings to demarcate for readers what the content of those chapters to be discussed in that thread is.Readers following us at a slower pace, have been promised that they won't get their eyeballs singed with spoilers. I'm afraid that i'll have to delete severe spoilers should they pop up before their allocated discussion thread.
I hope no participants will take offense should that happen, because i have gone to painstaking (and very time-consuming for me) lengths to avoid spoilers appearing.
Ian, i even mentioned the (view spoiler) in the relevant section where it appears in the text discussed.
Link to the section discussing Chapters 34-36:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
The comments with spoilers re (view spoiler) are being moved here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
I haven't made as many notes on this section. I think it's because the novel is still very much in scene-setting mode. And what scenes! The new weird Victorian freak show was wonderfully ghastly, and it also serves to flesh out Lin and Isaac's friendship groups and show Isaac in a good light. He wants information, and he's politically subersive, but he does care about welfare.
Andrea wrote: "and I've got a personal joke with myself - he uses palimpsest in every book, here it is on page 71 lol. Took a bit longer to pop up in The Scar."
Ha! I was on the lookout for it too. (I first noticed it at the end of chapter 7, "the mad palimpsest of smell", which may or may not correspond to Andrea's page 71 (comment 7).)
All the quotes about Mieville's interest in Marxism, above, are really helpful. I assume that aspect will come through more strongly in garuda culture, which has been briefly explained by Ged so far.
Traveller asked (comment 2) for first time readers' speculations about Parliament with scientists investigating bio hazards. I haven't a clue - yet. And that is fine. It's just another reason to keep turning the pages.
One thing not mentioned above is speciesism. It was most obvious in section one, when Isaac and Lin's relationship is first described, and the sexual aspect is startling. However, reading this section, it struck me that amongst multicultural types, like Lin's friends, the main difference seems to be the relatively trivial aspect of food, which are a feature of chapter 8. That made me think back to chapter 1, which opens with Lin buying food, and the fact she's ordered meat giving away the fact that Isaac is there. Dietary differences are a visceral issue for Isaac ("As he watched her [eat], Isaac felt the familiar trilling of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire."). And the colourberries Lin uses for her art have a food dimension.
It may be something trivial, but I'll be on the look out for other aspects.
If you want to keep your posts here, i will request that you please use spoiler tags in them.
Bear in mind that our volumes all have different pages, Ian, so not sure what your page 222 would be chapterwise, but when we start discussing (view spoiler)[ moths, (hide spoiler)] we need to do that in chapter 29 or 30 or later- those threads are there, plus i even started a discussion on that here. :)
Link to the sections discussing Chapters 31 to 32 http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...