Impromptu Poll and In The Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
1) O flist, I need your help. Y'all are a literate bunch or you wouldn't be hanging around my LJ. What, in your opinion, is Shakespeare's most exciting play?
2) I recently read In The Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. Larson, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is known for writing nonfiction and being Very Very Good at it. He's responsible for The Devil In The White City, which remains one of my favorite true crime books, Thunderstruck, and Isaac's Storm. In The Garden of Beasts, a chronicle of the American ambassador to Berlin during the rise of the Third Reich, is along his typical lines-- two storylines, two "heroes," wound around each other and intersecting as he tells a much larger story-- but for some reason, it doesn't feel very much like Larson. It's uncharacteristically dry, for one thing. Larson has always held my interest more or less effortlessly, even when going on about architecture, but he lost me a few times in the chapters that were solely about Dodd's diplomatic efforts, and I couldn't quite follow the Soviet Union's efforts to recruit Martha as a spy. I dunno. It's still a very interesting book about a very interesting period, but I can't recommend it quite as wholeheartedly as some other things he's written.
ETA: ONE MORE THING. Should I do an intro post? I know that some of you (Katie. Eleanor. Priscilla. Puck) know far more about me than you're probably comfortable with, but there's a ton of people from RATS who... know my name is Kat. And probably that I'm a lady. And that I love writing about family. And possibly that I'm ace. But not much else. WHAT THINK YOU, flist?
2) I recently read In The Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. Larson, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is known for writing nonfiction and being Very Very Good at it. He's responsible for The Devil In The White City, which remains one of my favorite true crime books, Thunderstruck, and Isaac's Storm. In The Garden of Beasts, a chronicle of the American ambassador to Berlin during the rise of the Third Reich, is along his typical lines-- two storylines, two "heroes," wound around each other and intersecting as he tells a much larger story-- but for some reason, it doesn't feel very much like Larson. It's uncharacteristically dry, for one thing. Larson has always held my interest more or less effortlessly, even when going on about architecture, but he lost me a few times in the chapters that were solely about Dodd's diplomatic efforts, and I couldn't quite follow the Soviet Union's efforts to recruit Martha as a spy. I dunno. It's still a very interesting book about a very interesting period, but I can't recommend it quite as wholeheartedly as some other things he's written.
ETA: ONE MORE THING. Should I do an intro post? I know that some of you (Katie. Eleanor. Priscilla. Puck) know far more about me than you're probably comfortable with, but there's a ton of people from RATS who... know my name is Kat. And probably that I'm a lady. And that I love writing about family. And possibly that I'm ace. But not much else. WHAT THINK YOU, flist?