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 best thing about zipping through Wikipedia’s entry on these two plays by Friedrich Schiller — the first volume of Schiller’s Wallenstein plays comprises Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp) and Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini) — was learning that Goethe directed both premieres. (He also directed the premiere of the trilogy’s third part, but I am still …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/04/wallenstein-i-by-friedrich-schiller/
Owen Hatherley places Landscapes of Communism at an intersection of several modes: serious but not academic architectural criticism; political and social history, as reflected in a region’s built environment; companion for both travellers and residents; and thoughts on living in cities shaped by different social systems. Hatherley writes early on that he uses the term …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/03/landscapes-of-communism-by-owen-hatherley/
Twenty books into Discworld, Terry Pratchett has set up enough pieces of furniture in the various fictional rooms on the Disc that moving just a few of them around is bound to produce something interesting. In Hogfather, he has Death, Death’s granddaughter Susan, a member of the Assassins’ Guild who’s too good at what he …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/02/hogfather-by-terry-pratchett/
In reading, as in so many things, 2016 did not end quite the way I had reckoned it would. About halfway through the year I noticed I was near the end of several series, with more on the to-be-read shelf that I could knock out and clear space. That bookcase nearly full, double shelved, so …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/02/taking-stock-of-2016/
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By Doug Merrill in Alternate History, Autobiography, Children's, Doug, Fantasy, General, Germany, Mythology, Philosophy, Politics, Science Fiction, Short Takes, Young Adult
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December 21, 2016
Both reading and writing have slowed significantly since November 8, and not only because of the election, though that has certainly played a major part in my slowdown. Time for some short takes, to clear the desk for the coming year. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I read this in the summer, and I’ve been searching …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/21/wrapping-up/
Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels of the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, came late to the English-speaking world. Baptism of Fire, the third novel in a long narrative about Geralt, about wars overwhelming the world that he knows, and about a child of prophecy, was published in Poland in 1996. It was published in English in 2014, by …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/02/baptism-of-fire-by-andrzej-sapkowski/
One of the descriptions of Neil Gaiman that has stuck in my head is “reasonably facile writer.” He used the phrase in a New Yorker profile back in 2010, and there’s a British self-deprecating quality to the description, but there’s more than a little truth to it, too. Gaiman writes quickly, and with reasonable facility, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/01/the-view-from-the-cheap-seats-by-neil-gaiman/
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way puns. Several somethings, actually, in Roger Zelazny’s seasonal romp, A Night in the Lonesome October. Those things are not to be confused with the Things in the Mirror, the Thing in the Circle, the Thing in the Wardrobe, the Thing in the Steamer Trunk, or …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/11/a-night-in-the-lonesome-october-by-roger-zelazny/
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, ending more than four years of terrible war in Europe. First as Armistice Day and later as Remembrance Day, European (and Commonwealth) countries even now commemorate the end of the First World War nearly a century after …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/05/the-vanquished-by-robert-gerwarth/
The cover gives it away, I thought. And so does the text on the back cover! Readers are being set up for a murder mystery, but whodunit, or rather whatdunit, is clear from the very beginning, if not before. I was all set to be cross at having the mystery solved before it had even …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/04/feet-of-clay-by-terry-pratchett/
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