Category: Short Takes

Three in the Rivers of London Series by Ben Aaronovitch

Winter's Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch

I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Ben Aaronovitch wrote Amongst Our Weapons to deliver one particular joke. People who recognize the source of the book’s title will expect that some variation on the joke is coming, but they will have to wait until page 287. Nightingale delivers the setup in Latin, though he …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/28/three-in-the-rivers-of-london-series-by-ben-aaronovitch/

Wrapping Up

Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. In Urs Widmer’s Der Geliebte der Mutter (My Mother’s Lover) the first-person narrator tells the story of his mother’s life, beginning with the death of her lover, many years after her own death. Erwin died as he lived best, leaning over a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/27/wrapping-up-4/

Hugo Awards 2024: Wrapping Up

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

When I read for the Hugos, I like to write a full review for each novel and novella that I finish, but I also like to finish all of my reviews from a given calendar year by the end of that year, and so here I am. There’s not a whole lot of December left, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/21/hugo-awards-2024-wrapping-up/

Hugo Awards 2024: General and Some Novellas

The logo of the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon

This is the fifth year that I have been a reader and a voter for the Hugo Award, a practice I began when I fulfilled a long-time dream and attended a World Science Fiction Convention. Finances and geography, among other things, have conspired to keep me away in the years since, but maybe I will …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/07/27/hugo-awards-2024-general-and-some-novellas/

Wrapping Up

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag

Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk. Nobel winner Tokarczuk uses very short chapters, each titled “The Time of …”, to depict life in an archetpyal Polish village from just before the outbreak of the First World War through the last years …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/30/wrapping-up-3/

Something of a Milestone

Alice looking behind the curtain

This last day of August makes five full years that we at The Frumious Consortium have had at least 10 posts every month. For a site with two principal writers, that’s no small feat. We’ve only gotten there because of Doreen’s fabulous and prolific nature, and Frumious isn’t the only place she graces with her …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/31/something-of-a-milestone/

Tales of the Squee, Pt. 2

Meddling Kids

That I am spoiled for choice among just the books that I own, to say nothing of any libraries that Berlin might have, can be inferred from the fact that in the four and a half years since I last wrote a coming attractions post, I have read north of 200 books, but only three …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/11/tales-of-the-squee-pt-2/

Wrapping Up

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,” …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/22/wrapping-up-2/

Tales of the Squee

The height of my to-be-read pile could be measured in years, if the books could somehow fit into a unified pile. And that doesn’t count a particular moving box in the basement, in which some really good books, or at least some really interesting-looking books are awaiting their turn to come upstairs. (Some of them …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/01/tales-of-the-squee/

Wrapping Up

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/21/wrapping-up/