Wednesday reading - blades and blood
What I've been reading
I read On Edge: Backroom Dealing, Cocktail Scheming, Triple Axels and How Top Skaters Get Screwed, a memoir-cum-tell-all by a gay Mormon medium-time figure skater turned Olympic figure skating judge whose main claim to fame is that he was a witness when Marie-Reine LeGougne infamously confessed to doing a deal with the Russians over the gold medal in pairs' figure skating in 2002. I found his clunky writing style (even with a co-writer) endearing enough when he was talking about his own childhood and career, but it gets boringly grudgy in the last third as he details his failed attempt to supplant the ISU, even though I agree with one of his premises (that the ISU are stunningly corrupt) if not the other (that the ordinals system of scoring was perfect and should never have been replaced, even in a less underhanded, backroom way). Still, you have to take your tell-alls as you find them.
I also read Johnny Weir's autobiography, Welcome to My World, which apparently came out way back in 2011. I am a fickle and dilatory fan, I know. It is highly entertaining, though!
I read Midwinterblood, this year's Printz Award winner (best YA). It's linked vignettes stretching from the near future back into the medieval past on a mysterious Scandinavian island, so a lot of things I love thrown into a blender on high. It works pretty well, all told.
What I'm still reading because it's rather lengthy
War & Peace, obvs.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, where there are
comment(s)
I read On Edge: Backroom Dealing, Cocktail Scheming, Triple Axels and How Top Skaters Get Screwed, a memoir-cum-tell-all by a gay Mormon medium-time figure skater turned Olympic figure skating judge whose main claim to fame is that he was a witness when Marie-Reine LeGougne infamously confessed to doing a deal with the Russians over the gold medal in pairs' figure skating in 2002. I found his clunky writing style (even with a co-writer) endearing enough when he was talking about his own childhood and career, but it gets boringly grudgy in the last third as he details his failed attempt to supplant the ISU, even though I agree with one of his premises (that the ISU are stunningly corrupt) if not the other (that the ordinals system of scoring was perfect and should never have been replaced, even in a less underhanded, backroom way). Still, you have to take your tell-alls as you find them.
I also read Johnny Weir's autobiography, Welcome to My World, which apparently came out way back in 2011. I am a fickle and dilatory fan, I know. It is highly entertaining, though!
I read Midwinterblood, this year's Printz Award winner (best YA). It's linked vignettes stretching from the near future back into the medieval past on a mysterious Scandinavian island, so a lot of things I love thrown into a blender on high. It works pretty well, all told.
What I'm still reading because it's rather lengthy
War & Peace, obvs.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, where there are
comment(s)