The twists are quite clever, and the main character really is, as promised, like an alternate universe Buffy if she’d retired to the suburbs. A somewhat slight book, but not an unintelligent piece of escapist fiction.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/13/carpe-demon-demon-hunting-soccer-mom-1-by-julie-kenner/
Dec 11 2014
Game Changer by Mihir Bose
Mihir Bose is a terrific investigator, resourceful, thorough and intrepid. The amount of work he’s put into uncovering the facts and organizing the data is just astonishing. I only wish his writing skills were up to that standard. Beyond even the silly mistakes that appear more a result of slapdash composition than anything else, the chapters which involve large numbers of people — with the chapters on satellite rights and the formation of the league being particularly notable for this — are excruciatingly tedious and unnecessarily complicated reads. Not everyone can write a sports book as consistently engrossing as Moneyball, but a more demanding editor would have given us a superlative book, instead of this one, that alternately delights and drags, educates and irritates. Terrific if you’re looking to learn more about the English Premiere League but of little appeal to the casual reader.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/11/game-changer-by-mihir-bose/
Dec 08 2014
A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714 by Mark Kishlansky
The introduction conveys the author’s enthusiasm for the study of this period, but the expectation of excitement rapidly peters out in what amounts to a rather dull narrative. Nevertheless, this was a time of tremendous change and development in British history. Aside from the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution, this was also the period during which Britain became the supreme maritime power in the world, and it was also the period during which England and Scotland formally united into the modern nation of Britain. The extraordinary scientific developments of this period are omitted; this book focuses exclusively on political developments, and I found it rather dry reading. But it is an educational if not exactly fascinating account.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/08/a-monarchy-transformed-britain-1603-1714-by-mark-kishlansky/
Dec 08 2014
Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly
Did you know there was an Association of Poles in India? Did you even have the faintest idea that there had been Poles by the thousand in India during the Second World War and in the first few years afterward? I certainly didn’t, and I know a thing or two about Poles and Poland.
Which is to say that I figured right in my previous notes about Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly when I wrote that there would be “more for me to just enjoy in the other four-fifths of the book, as Kelly tells a story of what happened to members of his family.” Kelly, a historian at the University of Southampton, applied his professional training to the Polish side of his family. His narrative centers on his great-grandparents who settled in the eastern part of interwar Poland, in Hruzdowa, a small settlement in what is now northwestern Belarus. That’s a part of the interwar republic that went to the USSR under the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and following the Soviet invasion in 1939, Kelly’s forbears were deported in April 1940. His great-grandfather Rafał was most likely captured and taken prisoner by the Red Army. His great-grandmother, along with her two daughters, was packed into a railroad car and taken, along with thousands of other Poles from the borderlands, to serve the state in Kazakhstan.
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/08/finding-poland-by-matthew-kelly/
Dec 05 2014
Parkinson’s Disease: A Guide for Patients and Families by William Weiner MD, Lisa Shulman MD, and Anthony Lang MD
A good source of information with a surprisingly optimistic outlook on a really terrible neurological disorder. There is still no cure, but there are drug treatments that can alleviate the symptoms. I hate to dwell on such an irrelevant detail, but there was significant commentary on the effects of Parkinson’s on the patient’s sex life. Well, hello, I have no sex life and have never had a sex life; am I supposed to regard that as a medical problem and seek treatment for it? Silliness aside, there was a lot of interesting stuff about the brain and the nervous system, and contrary to what is popularly believed, there is NO evidence at all that stem cells have any therapeutic effect. There was a long and detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of various drug treatments and surgical treatments; this was probably the most useful information in the book. The causes of the disease remain unknown. I wouldn’t say this book prepared me for med school, but it did educate me considerably.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/05/parkinsons-disease-a-guide-for-patients-and-families/
Dec 03 2014
The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss
What to say that Laura hasn’t already?
This story is a week in the life of a minor character, minor in Rothfuss’ other works, that is, and I think that it’s a good example of a writer doing something interesting because he doesn’t feel constrained to follow that larger story. It isn’t trying to be the story of someone who changed the world (though Auri might have, and might yet, just not so as anyone else is likely to notice), it’s not an epic quest, it’s not a clash of great principles or even much of a clash at all. Among all of the things that this story is not, the story takes the freedom to be just what it is.
Auri lives under the library and other parts of the city from Rothfuss’ other novels, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear. She was apparently once a magician and now leads a furtive, precarious existence. It’s not clear whether her heightened sense of objects and their belonging is real, whether it’s the result of whatever mishap led to her underground life, or whether that’s a meaningful distinction at all in the context of the story.
Naming, sorting, placing: these are magical tasks, and that is what she spends most of her days and nights doing. There are rituals within her life, and her life as a whole is also a ritual.
Rothfuss says in the afterword, “I let the story develop according to its own desire. I didn’t force it into a different shape or put anything into it just because it was supposed to be there. I decided to let it be itself.” I’m glad that he did, and I’m glad that he has the market clout to get an unusual story like this one into print. I wouldn’t want this off-kilter tale of heightened attention to be the only kind of fantasy book around, but I am glad that it is there and stretching the boundaries of what publishers will print just a little bit.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/03/the-slow-regard-of-silent-things-by-patrick-rothfuss-2/
Dec 02 2014
The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan
Fun, funny at times, and even occasionally touching. Hits its mark perfectly for its intended audience, and isn’t bad at all for those of us a couple of decades past that. The Mark of Athena is much the same, and brings the overall story closer to completion. I am taking a break before going much further into The House of Hades; my inner 10-year-old is tired.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/02/the-son-of-neptune-by-rick-riordan/
Nov 30 2014
Skin Deep (Simeon Grist #3) by Timothy Hallinan
Was actually pleasantly surprised by this! Picked it up for free way back when I started using the Kindle app and never got around to reading it, so didn’t really expect much when I cracked it open. The beginning didn’t really do anything to dispel doubt (especially since this book was written as the first in the series but was published as the third,) but once Simeon gets hired by the TV producers, the book really gets going. It’s intelligent, raw LA gumshoe noir, with a good mystery at its core and a heartbreaking coda.
Personally, I was a bit leery of the fact that Simeon seems to have a bit of the yellow fever, but his attraction to East Asians seems more a matter of aesthetics — the way some PIs have a weakness for blondes — than a post-colonial buy-in to the myth of the submissive Asian woman. It was also refreshing to read an early 1990s period piece with all its talk of DOS computers and Dynasty references. I’m really looking forward to reading more of his stuff.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/30/skin-deep-simeon-grist-3-by-timothy-hallinan/
Nov 28 2014
New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 by Susan Brigden
A pretty good account of what has to me always seemed like the most exciting and inspiring era of English history. There was a lot more discussion of Irish history than I looked for in a book about Tudor England, and there was almost no discussion at all of the cultural achievements of the Renaissance, but the religious tensions and conflicts of the time were thoroughly covered, and this seems to have been the chief theme of this work. Goethe’s Faust was for some reason heavily discussed, even though Goethe was not English and was not a Renaissance figure. Much attention was also given to court intrigue; like most such histories it is rather top-heavy in its focus on the upper classes. The “New Worlds” the title refers to seem to characterize the religious reformation rather than the actual New World; most enterprising Englishman at that time apparently thought of North America as little more than a potential pirate base from which to attack Spanish America. Yet England lives on; God save the Queen.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/28/new-worlds-lost-worlds-the-rule-of-the-tudors-1485-1603-by-susan-brigden/
Nov 27 2014
King Rat by China Miéville
Having read Perdido Street Station first, I’m fascinated to see how some of the themes are present here in nascent form. PSS is by far the superior book, but King Rat is a worthwhile entry to the urban fantasy oeuvre: grimy and bold and honest, if mean. It’s also a great take on the Pied Piper fairytale, though I felt it was a bit unfinished in its mythology. It was also pretty nice to not have a gratuitous romance thrown in, and I really liked the political underpinnings, even if I found the musical dénouement a wee bit juvenile in its description of bass. Not a book for the weak of stomach, but a modern fairytale worth reading for everyone else.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/27/king-rat-by-china-mieville/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire