Jun 29 2021
This brilliant novel is as if you took the best parts of Blade Runner and Gorky Park and Vertigo and mashed them all together with the most tender empathy and an eye to not only singularity but also the meaning of godhood. My only complaint with this book is that I’d freaking love it if …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/29/when-the-sparrow-falls-by-neil-sharpson/
Jun 26 2021
Let me just say up front that I loved all four main characters in Utopia Avenue and didn’t want anything bad to happen to them ever. It’s a good thing I wasn’t in charge, then, as that would have made for a dull novel. David Mitchell not only had the skill to create people who …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/26/utopia-avenue-by-david-mitchell/
Jun 25 2021
This slim volume of short stories punches far above its weight class as it examines the lives of loosely connected characters in and around the turn of 21st century America. The opening story Dinner Conversation is one of the strongest, revolving around three couples out to dinner and the weight of expectations felt by the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/25/life-and-other-shortcomings-by-corie-adjmi/
Jun 24 2021
This book feels like a metaphor in search of a meaning. There’s a lot of gorgeous, elaborate, haunting imagery, but it’s ultimately not put in service to anything besides a ho-hum quest story. I almost wrote down “coming-of-age” there for quest but the protagonist is ostensibly twenty-two years old, even though she acts much younger. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/24/star-eater-by-kerstin-hall/
Jun 23 2021
Ivan IV, not yet known as the Terrible, ascended to the throne as Grand Prince of Muscovy at the tender age of three. His father, Vasily III, “was a mild-mannered prince, well-liked by the people. Unlike his more famous father, Ivan III, known to history as Ivan the Great, who conquered large territories and fought …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/23/ivan-the-terrible-by-robert-payne-and-nikita-romanoff/
Jun 22 2021
Hey, Doug, I’m reading a novel translated from the German! Ably translated into English by Tess Lewis, who’s done a really good job, in particular, of getting the song lyrics from the 1980s not quite right when the characters are explaining them to one another. What You Can See From Here is an interesting sort …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/22/what-you-can-see-from-here-by-mariana-leky/
Jun 21 2021
Oh, man, I remember being middle school-aged and what an absolute mess my friends and I could be, falling out with each other over things that seemed insurmountable back then but are such trifles in retrospect, and preferring to jump to (usually depressing, dramatic) conclusions instead of actually communicating with one another. I do not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/21/kyles-little-sister-by-bonhyung-jeong/
Jun 20 2021
It’s funny that Dennis O’Driscoll begins his interview of Seamus Heaney about North by quoting a description of it as “a very oblique and intense book” because I found it not nearly as oblique as Wintering Out or Door Into the Dark. Heaney divided North into two parts, “a first section that has poems full …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/20/north-by-seamus-heaney/
Jun 18 2021
Oh, man, this is one of those books I just want to muppet flail over. I greatly enjoyed Casey McQuiston’s debut romance, Red, White & Royal Blue but even in the closing paragraphs of my review for that novel, I was already wistfully looking ahead to this one. Which is thematically fitting, because this lightly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/18/one-last-stop-by-casey-mcquiston/
Jun 17 2021
I’ve read F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby twice, and each time I’ve been baffled by the acclaim*. Much like the critics of its time, I think the book is fine, but not much more than that. The trouble is that Gatsby is an idiot, Nick not much better, and Tom and Daisy are just …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/17/the-chosen-and-the-beautiful-by-nghi-vo/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire