Dec 22 2017
Time for some short takes, to mostly clear the desk for the coming year. The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest. In the fourth of her five Clockwork Century novels, Priest takes a stab at telling her story mostly from the point of view of an unsympathetic narrator. Rector Sherman is an addict, hooked on the “sap,” …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/22/wrapping-up-2/
May 10 2017
The Fifth Season is a very bleak book. It is riveting, engrossing, engaging, compelling, thought-provoking, and more, but it is also very, very bleak. When I was finished, I picked up a slim Soviet-German comedy (not an oxymoron!) by way of lightening the mood. The Fifth Season begins with a mother still tending the body …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/10/the-fifth-season-by-n-k-jemisin/
Apr 23 2017
Where to even begin with The Foundation Pit? The author, Andrey Platonov was born in Russia in 1899, the son of a railway worker, and later worked as a land reclamation expert. He was a fervent supporter of the Russian Revolution; during the 1920s he supervised the digging of wells, construction of ponds, and draining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/23/the-foundation-pit-by-andrey-platonov/
Dec 21 2016
Both reading and writing have slowed significantly since November 8, and not only because of the election, though that has certainly played a major part in my slowdown. Time for some short takes, to clear the desk for the coming year. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I read this in the summer, and I’ve been searching …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/21/wrapping-up/
Feb 10 2016
One of the advantages of picking up twenty books for about twenty bucks in a Humble Bundle is the chance to get to know new authors at low cost. (I’m a long way from a good lending library in English, so no-cost is not much of an option for me.) The Bundle that I picked …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/10/the-agonizing-resurrection-of-victor-frankenstein-by-thomas-ligotti/
Jan 12 2016
I purchased The Art of Travel on the way out of town during a spring break beach trip. The options at the Baylor Bookstore (the prep school, not the university), were limited to the sorts of things high schoolers either should read (such as Night by Elie Wiesel) or must read (insert Shakespeare title …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/01/12/the-art-of-travel-by-alain-de-botton/
Dec 20 2015
For those of us in love with the history of Architecture, there are a myriad of scholarly works, photo essays, and the like, many of which are unexceptional reading. But, if there was a book that introduced “out of the box” thinking to 20th century architectural concepts, this is probably it. A classic from 1981, I imagine most …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/20/from-bauhaus-to-our-house-by-tom-wolfe/
Aug 15 2015
I wasn’t inclined to like the novel itself, but the really cool interactive app made this worthwhile for me. I loved the film posters and publicity photos I uncovered that way (and that creepy diary!) tho the audio clips were more hit and miss. If I never have to encounter the tedious and whiny Love …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/15/night-film-by-marisha-pessl/
Aug 11 2015
Deeply moral and achingly romantic, this is a book about a woman inadvertently reaching into the past to try to fix problems in her marriage to a man she desperately loves. Rainbow Rowell is a terrific writer of dialog and characters, and though Landline felt a bit shallow in places (by which I don’t mean …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/11/landline-by-rainbow-rowell/
Jul 24 2015
While this book didn’t have the same “Wtf, did that actually just happen?!” plot twists that are a Sanderson hallmark (I mean, I knew what would happen to Lessie and who Mr Suit had to be pretty quickly,) this was definitely a solidly entertaining, if not downright excellent projection of progress in Scandria (is that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/24/the-alloy-of-law-mistborn-4-by-brandon-sanderson/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire