whine

( My god, my email. )

In other news I finished Iron Man: Extremis (the novelization) and it was really bad. More on the badness in some upcoming post, but like, the main thing I took away from the novel was that wow, what a waste of Maya. ( Spoilers )

Actually that was kind of my thought after IM3, too, bring back Maya.

I also finished the Pre-Raphaelite Language of Flowers, which was a nice little book. I've been reading a lot of art nonfiction books and I've come to really appreciate well-printed and photographed paintings. In some books the people look positively jaundiced, which is, okay, a little unfair because the paintings themselves are often quite old and many of them have actually lost paint and the green is showing, but it's creepy.

Things I'd never realized before: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood really liked painting red-haired women, if these paintings are in any way representative. Beautiful red-haired women. Some paintings have objects/backgrounds that don't even have any meaning or function except to accompany beauty. This is slightly disappointing, because I really love the stories that symbols and backgrounds often encode (sometimes hilariously compressed, like medieval painting). The beauty standards are almost shockingly modern to me too.

As for the actual language of flowers, it was interesting but I don't think I'll be able to remember them! Rose for...er, love. Forget-me-not is self-evident. Lilies for Mary and purity etc. Erm. I have to reference the book.