Jul 26 2023
Between watching Arsenal play in person (twice!) and the Women’s World Cup, it has been a satisfyingly sports-mad week for me. Why not keep the streak going with this adorable graphic novel featuring anthropomorphic animals getting together to play baseball? The Fernwood Valley Fuzzies are enjoying the start of their off-season before they figure out …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/26/fuzzy-baseball-vol-5-baseballoween-by-john-steven-gurney/
Jul 17 2023
My eldest child has had his computer taken away from him this summer so he’s been spending a lot of free time not only re-reading his Diary Of A Wimpy Kid books, but also pestering me about my opinions of them. I’ve been trying to get him to read some new books, to no avail, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/17/the-meltdown-diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-13-by-jeff-kinney/
Jul 03 2023
Stories Of Food, Love, And Donkeys From A Life Between Cultures. With a foreword by Dr Jane Goodall. I am so glad Azzedine T Downes’ friends persuaded him to write a book about his travels, because this memoir is amazing! Funny and thoughtful, it’s a wonderful debut and hopefully the first of many more fascinating …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/03/the-couscous-chronicles-by-azzedine-t-downes/
Jun 26 2023
The fourth in Neil Boyd‘s Bless Me, Father series finds the irascible Father Duddleswell laid up with lumbago just as the priest with whom Duddleswell began his career settles in for an extended visit. Father Abe — most definitely not Father Abraham, with seven sons — is getting on in years, but still sly and not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/26/father-under-fire-by-neil-boyd/
May 11 2023
It’s fitting that there’s an entire section on relatability in this part-cartoon, part-essay treatise on struggling with the muse. Skip To The Fun Parts is so deeply relatable for any creative who’s ever suffered from self-doubt — so, every creative — that it feels like Dana Jeri Maier has been watching me try to work …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/11/skip-to-the-fun-parts-cartoons-and-complaints-about-the-creative-process-by-dana-jeri-maier/
May 02 2023
This is a sweet collection of affirmations featuring Beth Evans’ cute blobs telling you that someone is always in your corner, even if they don’t know you and you don’t know them. Because it’s true, innit? There are millions of people like Ms Evans who genuinely care about the well-being of others. We may not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/02/thinking-of-you-but-not-like-in-a-weird-creepy-way-a-comic-collection-by-beth-evans/
Apr 30 2023
The title of Katja Berlin’s book translates as Things for Which Women Have to Justify Themselves, and the cover shows a circle divided into four equal parts. They are labeled “Only children,” “Only career,” “Children and career,” and “No children and no career.” She is the creator of a pointedly humorous set of graphs that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/04/30/wofur-frauen-sich-rechtfertigen-mussen-by-katja-berlin/
Mar 28 2023
with the absolutely delightful subtitle: Bees Are So Amazing and You’re About to Find Out Why. I am 100% the target audience for this humorous non-fiction book extolling the benefits and wonders of bees. Heck, I even wrote a hybrid role-playing/board game, Honey Hex, that benefits the National Wildlife Federation’s efforts to protect pollinators. In …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/28/omfg-bees-by-matt-kracht/
Feb 04 2023
Just write the fun parts. Take a science fiction premise — that evolution ran differently on an alternate earth giving rise to kaiju (Godzilla and company, I didn’t know the term before I had heard of this book) — and just write the fun parts. That’s The Kaiju Preservation Society. The parallel earths, two among presumably …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/04/the-kaiju-preservation-society-by-john-scalzi/
Jan 12 2023
This might be one of my last reviews of this series, and not due to any change in the quality of the book. Quite the opposite: it feels like my reviews are becoming static because the content is so consistent from volume to volume. That said, I don’t actually feel like this latest collection is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/01/12/the-loud-house-vol-17-sibling-rivalry-by-the-loud-house-creative-team/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire