For someone who’s not terribly outdoorsy, I really enjoy birds. I love bird art and have somehow, over the years, amassed a shocking amount of knowledge for someone who’s never really studied birds outside of appreciating their artistic depictions. I mean, I recently made it to the Championships of the latest Birds Mini League on …
Category: Non-fiction
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/14/vintage-birds-a-guidebook-and-matching-game-by-roger-j-lederer/
Nov 12 2024
Sticky Notes by Matthew Eicheldinger
subtitled Memorable Lessons from Ordinary Moments. I’ve been kind of a mess these past few weeks, even before the dismal US election results and definitely after, so this book was a wonderful antidote for despair. It isn’t entirely perfect — the vignette about Hiking Boots made me go “yeah, sure, he wound up going back …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/12/sticky-notes-by-matthew-eicheldinger/
Oct 30 2024
Sitting On A Rock by Gary L Brinderson
Oh poetry, thou fickle siren, luring thousands of writers into your gentle-seeming embrace only to let them flounder on the sharp rocks of skill that underpin you. So here’s the deal, dear readers. Poetry is about image and emotion. Back in the day, it also used to be about form and rhyme. For better or …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/30/sitting-on-a-rock-by-gary-l-brinderson/
Oct 28 2024
Twinkle, Twinkle, Nighttime Sky by Elizabeth Everett & Beatriz Castro
This is 100% the book you should buy for any astronomy-minded young readers you have! Throughout the pages of this picture book, a diverse set of children look at and learn about the nighttime sky, with accompanying text set roughly to the cadence of the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star nursery rhyme. Whether they’re outdoor campers …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/28/twinkle-twinkle-nighttime-sky-by-elizabeth-everett-beatriz-castro/
Oct 17 2024
Gaza Faces History by Enzo Traverso
translated from the original Italian by Willard Wood. This review is going to require a lot of background on me as a reviewer so buckle up, or feel free to scroll down till you get to the parts that are primarily about this book, around six paragraphs down. When I was a girl growing up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/17/gaza-faces-history-by-enzo-traverso/
Oct 11 2024
I Will Do Better by Charles Bock
subtitled A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love. Perhaps my most popular and controversial review over on Goodreads is of an absolutely abysmal “parenting” memoir by a blogger who lost his wife in childbirth and struggled to raise their child on his own afterwards. I have genuine sympathy for his situation — with my …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/11/i-will-do-better-by-charles-bock/
Sep 17 2024
Goth Parenting by Casey Gilly & Robin Robinson
subtitled The Dark Joys of Raising Baby Bats. Readers, everything is making me emotional recently. Whether it was yesterday’s Camp Twisted Pine stabbing me in the heart again with a pain first inflicted almost a year prior, to today’s wonderful Goth Parenting reinforcing to this tired (and temporarily single) mom that I’m doing okay if …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/17/goth-parenting-by-casey-gilly-robin-robinson/
Sep 12 2024
Mindful With Me: Connecting With Your Child Through Daily Mindfulness by Sarah Dennehy
with charming illustrations throughout by Natalie Garber Martin. My middle child has a problem: sometimes when he gets frustrated, even over the most seemingly innocuous of things, he’ll have a crying, screaming, snot-filled emotional meltdown in absolutely no proportion to the triggering incident. This doesn’t happen to either of my other children, who tend to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/12/mindful-with-me-connecting-with-your-child-through-daily-mindfulness-by-sarah-dennehy/
Sep 04 2024
The Little Witch’s Oracle Deck by Ariel Kusby & Olga Baumert
subtitled Symbols, Spells, and Rituals for the Young Witch. While I’ve tried to slow down in my acquisition of Tarot and Oracle decks (I mean, really, how many does a person actually need?)(and don’t ask me how many I have, I’ve stubbornly stopped counting,) I was so pleased when this oracle deck, aimed at young …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/04/the-little-witchs-oracle-deck-by-ariel-kusby-olga-baumert/
Aug 26 2024
An Honest Woman: A Memoir Of Love And Sex Work by Charlotte Shane
Being a complicated woman who tries to deal with myself honestly, it wasn’t a surprise to me that a lot of what Charlotte Shane has to say in her memoir about sex work is stuff I’ve already thought about. Honestly, it’s stuff that most, if not all, thoughtful non-sex-worker-exclusionary feminists have grappled with too. At …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/26/an-honest-woman-a-memoir-of-love-and-sex-work-by-charlotte-shane/