Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead …
Category: Doug
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/24/thats-dickens-with-a-c-and-a-k-the-well-known-english-author-4/
Dec 22 2024
Landschaften nach der Schlacht by Juan Goytisolo
What was good about Landschaften nach der Schlacht (Landscapes After the Battle)? Well, it’s short. It’s also written in short sections, which I tend to appreciate when I’m reading in German. Looking through the table of contents, I don’t think that I see any sections longer than five pages; most of them are two or …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/22/landschaften-nach-der-schlacht-by-juan-goytisolo/
Dec 21 2024
Hugo Awards 2024: Wrapping Up
When I read for the Hugos, I like to write a full review for each novel and novella that I finish, but I also like to finish all of my reviews from a given calendar year by the end of that year, and so here I am. There’s not a whole lot of December left, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/21/hugo-awards-2024-wrapping-up/
Dec 14 2024
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
For most of my time reading Mrs Dalloway, I wrestled with the eight deadly words: I don’t care what happens to those people. The novel begins with a relatively famous opening line, “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” It tells stories of numerous people on one day in midsummer London of 1923, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/14/mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/
Nov 17 2024
Das Lied von der russischen Erde by Michael Thumann
Any book about current events eventually becomes a book about history, and a bit of a historical object itself. If it’s a good one, its insights will transcend the immediate period of its writing, illuminating its subject over a longer period, showing readers how the long term looked at a particular time. Michael Thumann’s Das …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/17/das-lied-von-der-russischen-erde-by-michael-thumann/
Nov 16 2024
A Season of Knives by P.F. Chisholm
Sir Robert Carey is the very model of an Elizabethan courtier; he has skills equestrian, pedestrian and deductional. He’s met the Queen of England and he’s won the fights he chronicles, in England and in Scotland, and some in Lands Debatable. He’s well acquainted, too, with matters barely ethical; he understands corruption, both the venal …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/16/a-season-of-knives-by-p-f-chisholm/
Nov 03 2024
A Famine of Horses by P.F. Chisholm
The same friend who, ages ago, recommended I read Dorothy Dunnett suggested I pick up books by P.F. Chisholm, and this is how bookish friendships are sustained over decades. We don’t always like the same things — Little, Big left her cold — but she seldom goes astray when she says she thinks I will like …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/03/a-famine-of-horses-by-p-f-chisholm/
Oct 14 2024
Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold
After two Vorkosigan books that are outliers in the larger series — Shards of Honor because it was the first; Ethan of Athos because it’s about an unusual planet — Brothers in Arms returns to what I think of as the main sequence of the saga: books about the life of Miles Vorkosigan. Brothers in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/14/brothers-in-arms-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Oct 13 2024
The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin
What’s the difference between a very long online discussion and a labyrinth? What if the thread is started by someone called Ariadne? “I shall construct a labyrinth in which I can lose myself, together with anyone who tries to find me — who said this and about what?” (p. 1) What if the participants all say …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/13/the-helmet-of-horror-by-victor-pelevin/
Oct 12 2024
Die Physiker by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Dr Miss Mathilde von Zahnd runs one of the most renowned, and one of the most expensive, private psychiatric clinics in all of Switzerland. The enormous fees paid by the rich clientele — in the stage notes before the play proper, Dürrenmatt speaks of moronic millionaires, schizophrenic authors, arteriosclerotic politicians — have enabled most of the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/12/die-physiker-by-friedrich-durrenmatt/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire