This is my second try at writing the blog post about this book. Writing about this topic has proven more difficult than I originally thought. I thought I would lay out some tips and ideas that the book present, nicely give a few examples, and tell you to go read the book yourself. But it turns out that after finishing it, I have been pretty lost. Lost with all of the ideas presented, and everything that is discussed. This book is so saturated with content and filled with information that it is quite hard to decompose and analyse some of the ideas that this book presents. Regardless here I am going to try to do just that, and how good of a job will I do? I don’t know.

I will first tell you that you should read this book. This is a great book to start with if you want to change your mindset, think more positively, and make slow and steady progress. This book encapsulates every proven technique, and acts a lot like a manual rather than a self-help book. For me personally, the amount of information embedded in this book has made it overwhelming. Understanding of the topics is not the problem, it is the amount of the topics. You have to really think about some of those aspects in order to really remember them, that is also why I described this book as a manual. It’s a handbook. A handbook to keep on hand when you need support.

This is also accounted by the fact that this book has very short chapters. So short in fact that when I read for a longer time it annoyed me. It would constantly change the topic it was talking about, almost on a whim. Maybe for someone that is very good at changing tasks this isn’t a problem; I’m known for trying to achieve deep focus and understanding for a relatively long periods of time, rather than study on a whim (which i know works for some people). All of those points made me realise that this is a handbook, not a self-help book; while you can read it all the way through, I would not recommend it, as it is quite a chaotic experience. Get it, read what you need, and whenever needed return to it and remind yourself what you need to do in order to improve your mental health.

Mental Health. This is what this book is about, so let us talk about it. Mental health is a topic that i gladly skimmed over in my early-teenager age. I could not be bothered to understand and nurture something that i could not see. I was an impatient person. I wanted to see results. As quickly as possible. I didn’t have time to make slow improvements over time; making my habits have more quantity rather than quality was not my style; and mental health basically enforces that with all its will. I’d much preferred to stay up all night and have a decentish-quality project working, rather than work on it for weeks on end. This is a quality that is good for gigs, and jobs that do not require long-term commitment, but anywhere else, this method will burn you out, and slowly drain you. This con of mine I have tried to, successfully, fix with my Bullet Journal. By spacing out tasks mindfully I have been able to make slow, but steady, and definitely more stable, progress.

What does this have to do with this book? The point of the previous paragraph was to show you what changes that book would have helped me make if I read it before i found out about bullet journaling. This book will at its core advocate for slow and steady progress, with sprinkles of useful knowledge in-between. And it does it with all of the usual problems that people nowadays have with mental health: depression, anxiety, self-doubt, and things of this nature. This is a great starting point for someone just diagnosed, or someone that is struggling. I would not however recommend it to someone that has suffered from some issues for quite some time. A lot of the stuff from that book is, frankly, shallow, and it offers common advice. You will not find rare gems that will improve your mental health here. It’s your usual everyday advice. Although it does sometimes offer common advice from a new, fresh perspective. It might help you that way.

That is all that I have to say about this book for now. I would like to make a longer summary about it. Something along the lines of Headway or Blinkist. But that will take some more time, and I wanted to get a blog post about this book earlier.

Thank you for reading.

So why did I pick up this novel? What convinced me to break this barrier? This book has been on my radar ever since I finished the video game Disco Elysium¹, I have adored that game. Its world building was fresh, and massive. And I do mean massive. And ever since I finished that game I have been searching for a book that could give me that same sense of awe and immersion as Disco Elysium did. This game has some incredible themes, and there’s that feel of being fully immersed in a world, you know that feeling, when the writer/s do such a good job that when you stop engaging you feel like you have entered a different world.

This book is listed as a direct inspiration for the story of Disco Elysium by ZA/UM¹. And the second I realised this I knew that I had to pick up that book, and after some time I did. And I have to say that I am both delighted and disappointed. Delighted because the story is a great spin on traditional detective stories, with none of the cliché’s that those stories usually have. But disappointed because the world, while in some aspects similar, is not much like the world of Disco Elysium. It seems that ZA/UM took inspiration more from the detective, rather than the world.

Even though the book didn’t reach my expectations, it is still a story I’d recommend you read. Ditch any detective story you are currently reading and read this book.

The Plot

There aren’t going to be any spoilers other than describing the main protagonist and the setting, but if you want to read this book blindly by yourself, then stop here.

This book tells the story of Borlu; a star detective living in the fictional city of Besź, with a… I guess I could say neighbouring city of Ul Qoma, But we will get into that later. I would not say Borlu is a badly written character per se. But his writing is quite minimalistic. Not much is known about his story, or how he reached where he is. All you get to know about him is that he is a good detective, and is a good guy. And that is okay, the protagonist doesn’t have to be greatly developed for the story to be good. To be honest, quite frankly, all of the characters are not that well developed, since the characters are not the centre of the story. The focus is on the two cities. Think of it like zooming out in a film to portray the wider world². This is the main driver of the story, not the people, but the cities.

And are the two cities any good? They are excellent, the whole idea is that the two cities are intertwined, with streets being in each other, and I do mean in. One moment the street is in Besź, and in a few steps it’s Ul Qoma. But the borders between them are still closed. And it is illegal to cross them. When you do break this rule, it is called breaching. It is the worst crime that can be committed, in which case your fate is handled by a mysterious force / power called Breach. It is not really explained what Breach is until much later in the book. Because of all those complications, the cities don’t have much tourism going on, and I’m not surprised, I don’t think anyone would like to live like this. To unsee the other city’s buildings; streets even.

Mieville’s writing is minimalistic, the only proper way I think I can describe it is straightforward. It’s more expressionist than Hemingway, but not by a lot. And this does add to the story. The lack of expression and description adds to the mystery and unknowingness of what the two cities are. Throughout the book we are driven to keep reading not for the characters or the setting, but by the mystery. Which some would argue is at the core of a good detective story.

Conclusion & Mieville’s Other Works

After finishing this book, I do plan to read Mieville’s other work. This book was not good enough for me to binge read his whole bibliography, but I will pick up his other works. Please check them out as well if you like what you read here.

I will leave you with a quote from the book that made me laugh:

“Look, I’m okay to go. I’ve money. Ul Qoman money.” I’ve showed him my wallet. “I’ve got all my papers. Visitor’s badge. I know it makes you uncomfortable having me out and about, but seriously, I’d like to walk; I need to be out for a bit. It’s a beautiful Night.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? It’s raining.”

Thank You.

I always struggled to do that. Even after lots of practice, my fiction stories would come out crumbled and mediocre at best. Analysing your writing is one of the most bizarre experiences that I have encountered. When debugging code you know that you have to find an issue, something that can go wrong. But in writing, there is no wrong. It’s either a decently written story, or it’s a complete disaster that needs to be rewritten. I hope that this commitment to weekly blog posts will improve my writing somewhat.

Training your writing is a peculiar thing; the ultimate target is to write a story but that is as vague as saying: “Master mathematics”. Answering how to write a story is even harder, there are no exact guidelines to writing, no formula that you can just plug in, you have to figure out how to do this by yourself. Stephen King had a good idea in his memoir. To become a writer is to spend eight hours a day writing, something that he admitted to doing; that is the only guideline you have: write eight hours a day. The rest you have to figure out yourself.

And yet, even with all those difficulties, lots of people manage to create incredible content. There are so many good books that are engaging, and so fun to read. And still no one seems to be able to explain how it is done. There definitely has to be enthusiasm when writing content like this. There is no doubt about that. I can see it myself when writing posts. When I write posts about computer science it is easier than to write about a book. You have to love either the subject you write about, or writing itself. Maybe that is why copywriting, article writing, and such, can feel so fake, because they are made to make money, not to express creativity.