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
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
One of the other books that I picked up while in Helsinki was Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, by Piers Vitebsky. (US paperback coming in December.) He’s an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, and the reindeer people are his research specialty. The book, however, is an engrossing synthesis aimed at …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/20/noted-with-pleasure-reindeer-people/
Mike Gayle is a British novelist. He writes books that, if you were feeling snarky, you might call chick-lit that guys can read too. Less snarkily, he writes light contemporary drama. I’ll admit to a small weakness for the genre, at least in its British variant. Although the plots are wildly predictable, the details of …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/07/18/mr-commitment/
There is not much market for reviews of books published almost a decade and a half ago, so without further ado, my thoughts on The Prize, by Daniel Yergin. This evaluation is overdue because I started reading the book when I bought it, back in 1997. I put it down around page 400 (which is …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/06/06/overdue-evaluation-the-prize-by-daniel-yergin/
I suppose I should be happy that there is a recent, one-volume general history of the Hungarians. Their history is not exactly the stuff of bestsellers, even if Hungarians were crucial in everything from computers to the atomic bomb to Hollywood studios. Ten million people, give or take, speaking a non-Indo-European language in and around …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/04/18/premature-evaluation-the-hungarians/
What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it? Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, was published 20 years …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/04/06/premature-evaluation-the-fatal-shore/
Two years ago, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung began publishing a series of 50 great novels from the 20th century. It’s a good list, and I’ve been slowly reading my way through it. Emphasis on slowly. The newspaper never planned on keeping the editions in print indefinitely, and indeed, the smartly designed and inexpensive (EUR 4.90!) hardbacks …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/03/31/greatness-andante/
The Roman Empire has won significance, and its rulers became famous and mighty, because numerous nobles and sages from various countries congregated there […] As settlers come from various countries and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various instructive concepts and weapons, which decorate and glorify the royal court, but intimidate foreign …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/03/16/wisdom-of-the-ages/
What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it? Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, I’m not trying to sell a review of Grace and …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/02/11/premature-evaluation-grace-and-power/
What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it? Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, the market for reviews of revised editions of books on …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/02/06/premature-evaluation-on-the-brink-the-trouble-with-france/
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single quotation on the cover of a book is not a reliable guide to its contents. Nevertheless, when the quotation clearly comes from a review, and the review comes from a reasonably reputable newspaper, for such I imagine the Independent to be, some credence could be allowed. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/12/18/terence-this-is-stupid-stuff/
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