Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. In Urs Widmer’s Der Geliebte der Mutter (My Mother’s Lover) the first-person narrator tells the story of his mother’s life, beginning with the death of her lover, many years after her own death. Erwin died as he lived best, leaning over a …
Category: Fabulous Ones
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/27/wrapping-up-4/
Dec 24 2024
That’s Dickens with a C and a K, the Well-Known English Author
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 …
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/
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/
Sep 26 2024
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, Pt. 3
One of the many astonishing things that Richard Rhodes does in The Making of the Atomic Bomb is to match the tone and pace of each of the major sections to their theme. It’s common enough in good novels, but uncommon in non-fiction, and vanishingly rare in a non-fiction work of this size and scope. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-3/
Jun 02 2024
Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Charlie Fitzer’s day is just about to get a lot better. As it begins, he’s divorced (his ex-wife is seeing an investment banker and sharing her fabulous vacations on her Instagram account, which of course Charlie follows), his career has descended from business reporter for the Chicago Tribune to middle-school substitute teacher (thanks to layoffs …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/02/starter-villain-by-john-scalzi/
May 05 2024
Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters by Lars Gustafsson
The title — The Death of a Beekeeper — lets readers know right away that this will not be an overly cheerful novel. It is a moving story, eventually a beautiful one in its slightly off-kilter way. Which is only fair because the beekeeper, one Lars Lennart Westin, often called “Wiesel,” is a slightly off-kilter …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/05/der-tod-eines-bienenzuchters-by-lars-gustafsson/
Apr 14 2024
Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
“What kind of a life do you lead where you find yourself building a dog of bones?” (p. 2) Marra asks herself, though of course she knows. It’s the readers who want to know how she has come to this distinctly creepy, slightly mad pass. And she’s come to it wearing a cloak of owlcloth …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/14/nettle-and-bone-by-t-kingfisher/
Apr 13 2024
Mothers and Other Monsters by Maureen F. McHugh
How can it be that there are only two collections of stories by Maureen F. McHugh? And now I have read them both. She has published two more novels that I haven’t read yet, but after that I have to hope for a new book, which as far as I can tell has not happened …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/13/mothers-and-other-monsters-by-maureen-f-mchugh/
Apr 07 2024
After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh
The cover of After the Apocalypse looks crinkled and dog-eared, as if the calamities within its pages have begun to seep out into the world beyond. The clock on the book’s cover is set to a few minutes after midnight, a reminder that after the worst has happened, things go on for at least some …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/07/after-the-apocalypse-by-maureen-f-mchugh/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
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Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire