Mar 06 2024
As this graphic memoir opens, Denise Dorrance is a cartoonist living with her husband and son in London. Originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she calls her 91 year-old mom every day just to check in. Mom has been living alone in their hometown since the death of her husband five years prior. When Mom doesn’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/06/polar-vortex-a-family-memoir-by-denise-dorrance/
Jan 30 2024
subtitled Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine. After a lifetime of anxiety and self-medication, Erin Williams realized that the American health system had failed her. At best, it focused on symptoms instead of attempting to treat her as an entire person, leaving her to suffer with chronic pain and, finally, to search for …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/30/whats-wrong-by-erin-williams/
Jan 29 2024
You know you’re getting old when British YA diary novels are no longer compared to Sue Townsend’s or even Helen Fielding’s oeuvre. For all that I am now an old, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of Kat Evans, the fifteen year-old girl who wants to be a good feminist even as she worries about friendships, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/29/diary-of-a-confused-feminist-by-kate-weston/
Jul 06 2023
Did I look at the fact that Doug and I had just featured five books in a row by men before deliberately picking up this graphic novel created by a woman to read and review? Darn right I did. Bonus for it coming in my recent shipment of sale books from Penn State University Press. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/06/the-facts-of-life-by-paula-knight/
Dec 16 2022
What an absorbing, educational and ultimately devastating graphic novel depicting the artist’s own journey with cancer, from diagnosis through treatment until her own untimely end. Catherine Pioli never got sick or injured as a child, so thinks she’s finally outrun her long streak of good health when her back and shoulder pain get so bad …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/16/down-to-the-bone-a-leukemia-story-by-catherine-pioli/
Nov 08 2022
As someone who has had the most frustrating experience with the United States’ health insurance system — my insurance company refused to pay for the $200+/month asthma medication my doctor prescribed because it can… also be used to treat COPD? Cigna is garbage — I found this book deeply relatable. Theodore Bear is bipolar, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/08/bipolar-bear-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-health-insurance-a-fable-for-grownups-by-kathleen-founds/
Sep 15 2021
I honestly wasn’t sure when I started reading this book where Catherine Baab-Muguira was going with it, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure how to categorize this work now that I’m done reading it either. I do know that I finished reading this with stars in my eyes and hope in my …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/15/poe-for-your-problems-uncommon-advice-from-historys-least-likely-self-help-guru-by-catherine-baab-muguira/
Jun 14 2018
I’m one of those overwhelmingly practical (some would say dull,) people who, when asked which historical time and place I’d most want to live in, answers “Right here and now is just fine.” Don’t get me wrong, like any other closet romantic, I have a fancy for the decadent trappings of bygone Europe, with the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/14/the-royal-art-of-poison-by-eleanor-herman/
Feb 25 2018
Wonderful heroine, great setting, intriguing (but not super clever) mystery. I loved all the attention to period detail (even if my copy had some really weird lapses between the use of “thee” and “you”) and especially enjoyed the blunt way in which pregnancy and delivery are treated. As this book is set in 1800s Massachusetts …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/25/delivering-the-truth-a-quaker-midwife-mystery-1-by-edith-maxwell/
Jul 04 2015
First off, it is really weird reading a book about anorexia while fasting. There are parallels (and great divergences, of course) that really help you sympathize with the narrator even as you shy away from the excesses of control. I’ve never suffered from an eating disorder, tho I know people who have, but I have …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/wintergirls-by-laurie-halse-anderson/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire