There was something about book crossing, with a couple of distinctly geeky women talking about it
- I think one of them actually posted something on LJ about her being on it, possibly on my friendsfriends list, I can't remember.
China Miéville, on the the hand, seems to be a bit of a jerk. He was doing the 'I gave my English teacher a list of the things I had read and he looked at it and said 'when are you going to read some real books?' but why shouldn't people read Fantasy and SF?' rant. Maybe I was lucky with English teachers, for I was that annoying smartarse geek who used to write essays comparing Dickens unfavourably with Vonnegut. I think it helped that
a) my English teacher probably actually agreed with me
b) I got into SF via my brother's SF collection which was more at the literary end (W Burroughs rather than E-R, Miller, Herbert)
Honestly, China (if that's your real name), did you not get the f***ing memo? Have you not looked in a book shop, seen what people read on the tube lately? What they see at the cinema? Listened to all the conversations on the tube about SF and/or computers and/or other geeky stuff. I hate to echo those staples of SF conventions 'have we won?', 'what do we do now the future is here?' etc. etc., but sometimes it looks scarily like it.
I find myself in the position of being slightly put off his novel by the fact that he seems a bit of a jerk, but aside from this, the fact that I found myself reading 'the camel book' in bed instead of his book last night is probably not a tremendously good sign, though I intend to carry on with his book.
