Recent reading

[troisoiseaux]

Read Peter Stenson's Fiend, in an attempt to jolt myself out of my recent reading slump via reverse psychology— I kept starting books only to give up after a chapter or two, and since picking books that I thought I would like clearly wasn't working, I decided to try one that didn't appeal to me; "a group of meth addicts tries to survive a zombie apocalypse" is definitely a premise that fit the bill. To my surprise, I actually liked it! (At least until the ending, which was just so bleak.) A punchy little novel, less than 200 pages; I finished it in under 24 hours. It's definitely more graphic than is normally my cup of tea, but it had an unexpected undercurrent of - heart, I guess? - that won me over— so much so, I felt like the last act pulled the rug out from under my feet even though it was the most predictable outcome in the world. For a while, there, I really thought they were going to make it :(

Thus successfully un-slumped, read T. Kingfisher's Swordheart, which like many of her novels is about a capable but underestimated woman and a sad warrior mutually pining while on some sort of quest. The sad warrior in this case is not, as they usually are, a disgraced paladin, but he is immortal and cursed (he's tied to/"is" a magical sword inherited by the aforementioned capable woman) and haunted by his past, so good enough. Set in the same world as Kingfisher's Clocktaur War duology and Sad Paladins Find Love Saint of Steel books - the Temple of the White Rat is featured prominently in this one, which I enjoyed - but stands on its own. A charming, low-stakes read.

Started reading The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, and it is already just, so much. It's statistically unlikely that Frank Lloyd Wright actually holds the dubious honor of being the single most annoying person who ever lived - the number of people who have ever lived is, after all, very large - but he's probably in the running. The number of Victor Hugo references that I was expecting in a biography of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is zero; the number that I've encountered is significantly higher than that, since Wright was apparently a big fan, and met his first wife at a Les Miserables-themed costume party. (He went as Enjolras.)

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I've just gotten to the part in the Svetlana Alliluyeva book where Svetlana's gotten sucked into the world of the Taliesin Fellowship, and OH my god. Frank Lloyd Wright is already dead but his creepy architecture cult marches on!

[troisoiseaux]

My takeaway from the Svetlana Alliluyeva book is that she lived such a weird and tragic life but oh my god the whole Taliesin interlude takes the cake. Just... what an absolutely insane plan, on Olgivanna's part. "I need to finance my architecture-and-spiritualism cult, so I'm going to lure in Stalin's daughter and pressure her to marry my former son-in-law by emphasizing the fact she has the same name as his dead wife/my dead daughter" ma'am WHAT.

[osprey_archer]

And it worked!!! At least for a while! Long enough that the son-in-law bilked Svetlana for a lot of money (although a lot of it apparently went to his own private farm and not Taliesin? Falling down on your duties to the cult, son-in-law). As if she didn't have ENOUGH to deal with in her life, Jesus.

[mme_n_b]

Good. No matter how big a jerk got that money they definitely deserved it more than any kid of Stalin's.

[copperfyre]

I’m sorry, WHAT??? I have so many questions. People are just so damn weird sometimes.

[troisoiseaux]

History is definitely stranger than fiction.

[lunabee34]

I'm glad you got your reading mojo back.

[troisoiseaux]

So am I! (Although my GPA, maybe not so much... I didn't get much done this weekend besides reading for fun.)

[lunabee34]

Ha! I hear you.

I lazed around and read this weekend instead of grading.

[chestnut_pod]

I know basically nothing about Frank Lloyd Wright and am considering reading that book just to learn how bad he could possibly be…

[troisoiseaux]

To be fair, so far he's just mostly annoying along the lines of an overconfident late-teens-to-early-20-year-old with very little self-awareness - like, "WHY won't you let me, a very young adult with no architectural training, design your building?" and "it's everyone's fault but mine that I'm not doing great at engineering school" - but I know about the whole "cheating on his wife(s)" and "starting a architecture school cult" stuff that will come later, so I'm not feeling particularly disposed towards a generous view.

[rose_griffes]

Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) really does have a story pattern for several of her books... which is fine, because I LIKE the pattern. And I haven't read that one yet, so it's going on my list, yay!

[troisoiseaux]

It's so very specific, and (I find it) very charming! I like having her books to fall back on in the same way I like Golden Age murder mysteries— you can pick one at random and still have a pretty good idea of what you're going to find inside.