Category: General

A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: the mid 1990s!

Emily's photo of her bookcase shows her copies of all the Diana Wynne Jones books to be read in the readthrough. Many are tattered.

In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read The Crown of Dalemark, Stopping for a Spell, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland! Seriously, this was quite a lineup for a short month: it included our first ending of a series, our first collection of shorter …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/18/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-the-mid-1990s/

A Song for You and I, by K. O’Neill

on the cover of A Song for You and I by K O'Neill, two smiling figures lean against eachother on a flowering hillside. One plays the fiddle and one holds a bow, as a pegasus flies above them

A Song for You and I, the enchanting new graphic novel by K. O’Neill, is now available! As in O’Neill’s previous graphic novels, such as the Tea Dragon trilogy and The Moth Keeper, lush and quiet worldbuilding is balanced with characters who are searching for meaning in their own lives, finding connection with each other …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/05/a-song-for-you-and-i-by-k-oneill/

A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: The early 1990s!

Emily's photo of her bookcase shows her copies of all the Diana Wynne Jones books to be read in the readthrough. Many are tattered.

In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read Castle in the Air, Aunt Maria, A Sudden Wild Magic and Hexwood! Honestly, it was a big month. Those are some hefty ones, and I think Hexwood is among her very best. It’s a high bar! Castle …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/19/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-the-early-1990s/

A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: The late 1980s!

Emily's photo of her bookcase shows her copies of all the Diana Wynne Jones books to be read in the readthrough. Many are tattered.

In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read Howl’s Moving Castle, A Tale of Time City, The Lives of Christopher Chant and Wild Robert! It was fun to revisit Howl after the Ghibli film version became so popular, and Wild Robert was entirely new to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/07/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-the-late-1980s/

Detective Beans & The Case of the Missing Hat by Li Chen

I am all about the comfort reads this week, and I’ll be blessed if I read anything as charming as this graphic novel is anytime soon! Detective Beans is a young cat obsessed with being a detective, even if that usually just takes the form of acting out his favorite movies for his mom and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/13/detective-beans-the-case-of-the-missing-hat-by-li-chen/

Kill Shakespeare: First Folio by Anthony Del Col, Conor McCreery & Andy Belanger

Nothing screams “this was written by men” more than having Juliet Capulet (lately of Romeo & Juliet) assure Othello that he is not a villain. Lol, like hell. Iago may be just as much a bad guy as Othello, but Desdemona is still dead! Murdered for no reason! Even if she’d been cuckolding her husband …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/08/kill-shakespeare-first-folio-by-anthony-del-col-conor-mccreery-andy-belanger/

Merry Christmas

Luke 2:1-14, Anglo-Saxon: Soþlice on þam dagum wæs geworden gebod fram þam casere Augusto, þæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod. Þeos tomearcodnes wæs æryst geworden fram þam deman Syrige Cirino. And ealle hig eodon, and syndrige ferdon on hyra ceastre. Ða ferde Iosep fram Galilea of þære ceastre Nazareth on Iudeisce ceastre Dauides, seo is genemned …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/25/merry-christmas-2/

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/24/thats-dickens-with-a-c-and-a-k-the-well-known-english-author-2/

Hugo 2022 Chat

Doreen Sheridan: We should have a conversation about the Hugos and edit that and post on the site, because lol. Doug Merrill: Sure! I was thinking about writing up my reactions, but joint reactions would be even better. Looking at the longer list of statistics, I was so glad that Light from Uncommon Stars scraped …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/08/hugo-2022-chat/

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

“There was a dead girl in my aunt’s bakery.” There’s the first problem right away. Worst of all for the dead girl, of course, but a horrifying start to the day for Mona, the fourteen-year-old first-person narrator of A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Then things get worse. Not right away, of course; Mona partly …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/05/a-wizards-guide-to-defensive-baking-by-t-kingfisher/