Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
The receipt tucked away in the pages of this collection tells me that I bought it in early 1997, in Washington, DC. At that time, I would only have read Heaney’s Nobel lecture. His Beowulf, the first poetic work of his that I read, was still two years from publication. There’s another receipt in the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/23/selected-poems-1966-1987-by-seamus-heaney/
Jazzmen dropping dead in circumstances that are unusual even by their standards. Incontrovertible, if circumstantial, evidence of a real-life vagina dentata. These two sets of mysteries set the stage for the events of Moon Over Soho, events that will show readers more about Constable Peter Grant, much more about his mentor in magical policing Detective …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/20/moon-over-soho-by-ben-aaronovitch-2/
Seamus Heaney followed his longest collection, Station Island, with one of his shortest, The Haw Lantern. Like several of his other collections, The Haw Lantern has a tripartite structure; unlike the others that I have read so far, its sections are not explicitly marked. Nevertheless, the ten sonnets that Heaney wrote in memory of his …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/06/the-haw-lantern-by-seamus-heaney/
To the Land of Long Lost Friends begins with a wedding and moves quickly to a funereal subject. And it was on the way [to the catering tent] that Mma Ramotswe suddenly gripped Mr J.L.B. Matekon’s arm. “I have seen a ghost, Rra,” she said, her voice filled with alarm. He looked at her in …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/03/to-the-land-of-long-lost-friends-by-alexander-mccall-smith/
Terry Pratchett has neatly ruined Macbeth‘s opening for me — the eldritch screech of “When shall we three meet again?” answered by a nonplussed “Well, I can do next Tuesday” — but Kathryn Hunter’s contortions in her role as the witches and Joel Coen’s creepy direction do much to restore the story’s uncanny atmosphere. The Tragedy …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/30/from-page-to-screen-the-tragedy-of-macbeth/
While skittling down a different Wikipedia rabbit hole, I came upon the name of Skip Spence. He is rather obviously the model for “the legendary Skip Shaw” in Say Goodbye, where Shaw is Laurie Moss’ love interest and one of her principal antagonists. (The other two, I would say, are Laurie herself and the structure …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/28/say-goodbye-by-lewis-shiner-encore/
Fritz Leiber gave the name “swords and sorcery” to the genre that his heroes, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, did so much to define. Both elements are plentiful in the third collection of their tales Swords in the Mist, which was first published in 1968. Four stories comprise the bulk of the volume. “Adept’s Gambit,” …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/24/swords-in-the-mist-by-fritz-leiber/
Twenty years before his magnum opus on life and music and bands and fame, Lewis Shiner published Say Goodbye a shorter novel on the same themes, set in the mid-1990s rather than the 1960s. The books share more than just themes: Laurie Moss, the central character of Say Goodbye is the daughter of Mike Moss, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/21/say-goodbye-by-lewis-shiner/
The Long Sunset is the eighth book in Jack McDevitt’s series named after the Academy of Science and Technology, whose central character is Priscilla Hutchins, a pilot of interstellar craft generally known by her nickname “Hutch.” Six years ago, when I read Cauldron, I wrote: The universe that McDevitt has shown through Hutch’s … eyes …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/17/the-long-sunset-by-jack-mcdevitt/
For a year that started out with a struggle to read much of anything at all, 2021 brought numerous books that made me very happy to read, to have read, to browse repeatedly, and to go back and read bits of them again and again. Both Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and Fletcher and Zenobia …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/07/taking-stock-of-2021/
Al Singh
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Professor X
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