SECTION 1: Chapters 1- 3

[Ian]

Could we please continue any gender discussion in Section 8?

[Andrea]

of course :)

[Ian]

Andrea wrote: "of course :)"

You are such a stirrer. I hope you celebrated Australia Day with us today.

[Ian]

Here's a medley of Yiddish songs for the discerning listener:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3zhtD...

[Andrea]

Ian wrote: "Here's a medley of Yiddish songs for the discerning listener:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3zhtD..."

thank you :)
I intend to learn Yiddish with my older son, when he is done with French, Italian and German. He's already knocked off Japanese and Spanish. We're going back to our ancestral roots ;)

[Andrea]

Ian wrote: "Andrea wrote: "of course :)"

You are such a stirrer. I hope you celebrated Australia Day with us today."

nah, it was Auckland Anniversary Day here. We went to Wellington to settle in younger son in his new home. Thus we are now childless after 25 1/2 years. Feels very very strange.

[Cecily]

Traveller wrote: "...We must be careful that we (we, as in we as a society in general- i'm not addressing present company at the moment) don't become so prescriptive in our accusations of sexism that writers will be unable to produce anything natural after a while. Already there has been suggestions from critics that a novel has to follow a certain "recipe" to be deemed not sexist.

I personally think that's a load of balderdash and does feminism more harm than good. "

Exactly.

[Cecily]

Annie wrote: "...I don't see romance in their future. Mutual affection yes."

I don't see romance either, but I do see a frisson: just the smidgen of a possibility of something that will almost certainly never happen.

[Traveller]

Cecily wrote: "Exactly. "

I'm glad that you agree, Cecily. Everyone who knows me well knows that i am a feminist- i've done quite a few book critiques from a feminist viewpoint, but anything that is taken to too far extremes is not a good thing IMO, and that goes for religion, lifestyle, ideology, everything.

Unfortunately it is the extremists of many religions and ideologies who do the most harm to the mainstream of the same religions and ideologies.

[Deano]

Think I've just knackered this book before I've really started
I'm listening to this one
And look about on line to see if I could find a list of characters.
Found a synopsis all good there
Then a setting bit......
Thinking that's fine get a bit of detail on setting.....???!!!! Wt???
So now I know what I don't think I should know !!!
Oh man have I messed up or what ??

[Traveller]

Hi Deano.
What we do here in this group, to avoid getting spoilers ahead of time, is that we usually start with an introduction where we just say stuff while we're starting the book, or getting ready to read it, like here https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/....
But I see we did a lot of just member's chatter in that thread, so of course not very helpful to someone new to the group and who starts the book after ward like you now.

In any case, usually, in that thread, I or whoever else is 'leading' the discussion, will tell the other members up to where they should read before joining the first spoiler thread, since we take the books in small sections, and then post spoilers only about the sections that we have already read, as we go along.

So for instance this thread that you have posted in, will be the first spoiler thread, and it deals with Chapter 1-3 as you see in the thread heading.

But I would discourage you from reading Wikipedia synopses about books before you've read the book.- the are full of spoilers, unfortunately.

Now that you mention you would like a pointer to the list of characters,and would just briefly like to know what a book is about, I've realized that we should do that as well- we never do a list of characters before we start a read, but doing it makes so much sense!

I'm going to work on getting that worked into the format of how we do book discussions.

I'll do one for this book in the next day or so, just to get started on the idea!

Deano, did you read any spoilers about the ending of the book?

[Deano]

No just about the perception of where the two city's are to each other.
A character list would be very helpful for me as I'm useless at names and having unusual names is even worse.
Thanks

[Traveller]

There are quite a lot of "twists" in the plot, so don't worry too much if you haven't read spoilers about what actually happens in the story.
The weirdness of the two cities is something you would have picked up on soon enough, in any case. :)

Character list coming up soon.

[Deano]

Thanks again

[Traveller]

The main character and narrator is Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad.
He has a side-kick who helps him, a female policeman by name of constable Corwi of Beszel.

Beszel seems a bit like your average European city and what helped me to distinguish it, is that the name sounded a bit German or Swiss or Swedish to me.

The other city, Ul Qoma, sounded a bit more Eastern to me, and from what the book tells us, I guess it is perhaps a bit more Eastern, judging by it's pretty architecture, - the spires and domes and copulas of the buildings.

Later on in the story, we meet detective Qussim Dhatt of Ul Qoma.

There's also an archeological dig located somewhere between the two cities that is a part of the story - you know, the typical place where they dig under the ground to find artefacts out of the past.

I'm going to have to go back on my notes for this book a bit, since it's been a while,and I can't remember all the names associated with the dig, and then I'll post some more.

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Traveller wrote: "Beszel seems a bit like your average European city and what helped me to distinguish it, is that the name sounded a bit German or Swiss or Swedish to me."

No, not at all North European. That 'sz' combination is pure Slavic. Which makes sense as it puts the cities on the border of Eastern Europe/Western Asia (though, we've discussed location elsewhere, and there are certainly other clues that would lead you in different directions!)

[Traveller]

Sz combination is not just East European, but yes, it is East European as well. Keep in mind that for instance Hungary was once part of the Hapsburg empire and German was spoken there.
If you have a look at this list, http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/mater... ,
you will see that the sz is used in Hungary,and Poland (both of which have Germanic influences) and not even really in quite a few of the other slav languages.

Sz and tz is very much a Germanic use, though admittedly with the Germanic, it is more tz or z on its own than sz.

Still, the point was that Beszel appeared more Western to me and Ul Qoma more Eastern.

As in Europe/Eurasia vs Middle East.

[Traveller]

For Germanic use of sz, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typograp...

German ß

The German Eszett (also called the scharfes S (sharp s)) ß is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. There is no general consensus about its history. Its name Es-zett (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) and the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today’s typefaces. Since German was mostly set in blackletter typefaces until the 1940s, and those typefaces were never set in uppercase, a capital version of the Eszett never came into common use, even though its creation was discussed since the end of the 19th century. Therefore the common replacement in uppercase typesetting was originally SZ (Maße → MASZE) and later SS (Maße → MASSE). The SS replacement is currently the only valid spelling according to the official orthography in Germany and Austria. For German writing in Switzerland the ß is omitted altogether in favour of ss. Since 2008 the capital version (ẞ) of the Eszett character is part of Unicode and appears in more and more typefaces. The new character has not yet entered mainstream writing. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) includes the capital ß since 2012. Since the end of 2010, the Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen (StAGN) suggests the new upper case character for 'ß' rather than replacing it with 'SS' or 'SZ' for geographical names.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Traveller wrote: "For Germanic use of sz, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typograp...
"

Er, no. You seem to have actually missed the way the ß is used. It's pronounced as a double S, and is frequently written that way. It's never an s-z combination.

[Traveller]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "For Germanic use of sz, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typograp...
"

Er, no. You seem to have actually missed the way the ß is used. It's pronoun..."

I know how it is pronounced, I have German relatives, and do speak the language a little bit. For the influence of sz in the written language, please see post 118 above. Also, the Slavs are from Eurasian origin, with some Goth and Germanic influences.

The Mongoloid empire once encompassed parts of both Europe and Asia, just as the Soviet empire encompassed parts of both continents, hence Eurasia.

Actually, for languages, one needs to go back to Indo-european.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Eur...


See also:
http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_indo...

[Traveller]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Which makes sense as it puts the cities on the border of Eastern Europe/Western Asia (though, we've discussed location elsewhere, .."

...but in any case, back to the actual point:
Yes, I do remember where we placed it, but all I said above, was that the Swiss sound of the name helped me remember the city and distinguish it from the other city.

People like me who have trouble remembering names often find it useful to hang those names on a mnemonic 'peg', a crutch to help you remember the name and more easily distinguish it from other names.

[Deano]

How's that archived then?

[Traveller]

Deano wrote: "How's that archived then?"

Um, what in particular are you referring to, Deano? (So many posts been flying around...)

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

I guess he's asking where the discussion about location would be. And I haven't a clue :-( Somewhere in all these The City & The City Discussion threads — but we have more than a dozen of them.

[Traveller]

I think it was further on in these spoiler threads. Yes, a lot of discussion going on here.