cimorene

I posted a couple of weeks ago in enthusiastic praise of Soldier of the Mist. As soon as I finished it I read the sequel, Soldier of Arete. My dad said it was "Really good, but not as good as Soldier of the Mist" at the time, and I suppose I can endorse that, although it's only a little less great than the first book. It's a continuation of it, and in some ways perhaps feels like it has less action, or just less sweeping action, and like less mysterious and political things are happening? But I still didn't want to put it down, but drew it out a little because I didn't want to be finished with it.

In fact, Wolfe wrote a third book called Soldier of Sidon some twenty years after the first two, and I have it, but I didn't want to read it right away, in case it was disappointing in comparison. And it's probably appropriate to pause a bit, since he did, anyway.

However, then I had the problem that I couldn't really decide what else from my lengthy to-read list I felt like reading, because I didn't really want to read anything else. "More of this, or as close to it as possible" probably covers it. Actually I started reading a mystery set in ancient Rome, and it is more similar than most of the things high on my to-read list... but it still didn't exactly hit the spot, and I have been rereading fanfiction from my bookmarks instead.

And also, as I mentioned in my last post, I spent half a week or so reading back through the blog Retro Renovation (and then I ordered a book on the history of Finnish architectural style by the same author as our amazing Rintamamiestalo book... it's very exciting, but I anticipate it won't have the level of detail I want. What I really want is access to a massive trove of vintage Finnish advertisements and catalogs relating to home building and furnishings, and I suspect I might not even be able to find that at the library without going into Turku).