Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I read These pages, rolled from their printing-press With a rotary hum.—Once again Do I behold those last and polished drafts That many a wild scene describe, Acts the more connected to themes And th’ arguments of the plays. The …
Category: Autobiography
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/20/lines-composed-a-few-yards-from-schlachtensee-with-apologies-to-w-w/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/23/off-to-the-wabe/
Jun 19 2019
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Becoming really is that good. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from the beginning. There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/19/becoming-by-michelle-obama/
May 27 2019
Hoisted from comments: Father Boyd
Imagine my surprise! “Hi, Doug, I don’t comment on my own books usually. But this is Eastertide. Bless Me, Father (5 books and 3 TV series) was a best-seller in its day, the 1970s. I didn’t expect is to be selling as many copies in 2019. And thousands watch the TV series on Youtube each …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/05/27/hoisted-from-comments-father-boyd/
Apr 05 2019
Border by Kapka Kassabova
I’ve been to this border before, though I’ve never been to the particular corner of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece that Kapka Kassabova visits. “But the initial emotional impulse behind my journey was simple: I wanted to see the forbidden places of my childhood, the once-militarised border villages and towns, rivers and forests that had been …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/05/border-by-kapka-kassabova/
Feb 08 2019
A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka by Lev Golinkin
How did A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka turn out to be such an impossibly good book? I picked it up more or less on a whim during a visit to Texas — ok, memoir of leaving the Soviet Union as a kid and growing up in the States, could be interesting — and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/08/a-backpack-a-bear-and-eight-crates-of-vodka-by-lev-golinkin/
Dec 20 2018
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Two years and some-odd weeks ago, Donald Fucking Trump — aided by the Russian government along with its witting and unwitting stooges, boosted by an FBI director he soon fired, slavered over by a national press that apparently couldn’t help itself any more than it could help spending more time on his opponent’s e-mail practices …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/12/20/what-happened-by-hillary-rodham-clinton-2/
Oct 14 2018
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
It often happens that the very best books are hardest to write about. I discovered TNC’s blog fairly early in his tenure at The Atlantic, and I made sure to keep coming back. Time zones — I lived in the South Caucasus at the time, even further from US schedules — meant that I missed much of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/10/14/we-were-eight-years-in-power-by-ta-nehisi-coates/
Apr 22 2018
How Not to Be a Professional Footballer by Paul Merson
Absolutely cracking depiction of the lifestyle of a professional English footballer in and around the 1990s. Paul Merson is an Arsenal legend whose off-the-field antics were just as noteworthy as his sporting accomplishments, tho perhaps in a far different context. Merse is a larger than life figure who was as well known for his ebullient …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/22/how-not-to-be-a-professional-footballer-by-paul-merson/
Oct 10 2017
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
How to review a book by one of the most polarizing politicians of recent memory describing an election campaign and aftermath that still elicit strong feelings from large swathes of the electorate? If you think Hillary Clinton is the devil incarnate, I’d be very surprised that you’d even consider reading this book, and then I’d …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/10/what-happened-by-hillary-rodham-clinton/