Oct 01 2024

Ayo’s Adventure: Across The African Diaspora From Afro To Zulu by Ain Heath Drew & Erin Robinson

Happy October, readers! With Black History Month starting in the UK, what better time to explore a book on Africa and its diaspora?

Ayo is a young boy in America whose parents are doing a wonderful job teaching him about his heritage. While he’s proud to be a Black American with a rich generational history in the United States, he’s also tapped into the positive influences of Africa and its impact worldwide. As he’s falling asleep one night, his drowsy brain takes him on an A to Z journey through some of the major historical highlights and cultural contributions of the African diaspora worldwide.

A begins with Afro, before bouncing to Braids, hair issues that, while nominally linked to the USA in the book, are a concern for every Black person who’s ever been made to feel less than respectable for having natural hair. The book then swings down to Trinidad & Tobago to celebrate Calypso music before heading to Mali to explore Dogon culture, and from then on to the rest of the world.

Well, not the entire rest of the world: there’s precious little in Europe or Asia. While the African diaspora in Asia only gained a significant toehold in the 21st century, it does seem a little odd from a truly global perspective that no mention of their impact in Europe is made here. But that’s fine: this is a picture book from the United States, after all, and it covers so much elsewhere, especially on under-reported places in South America!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/01/ayos-adventure-across-the-african-diaspora-from-afro-to-zulu-by-ain-heath-drew-erin-robinson/

Sep 30 2024

UFO Mushroom Invasion by Shirakawa Marina

translated and edited by historian Ryan Holmberg as part of Smudge, “a line of vintage horror, occult, and dark fantasy manga”.

Honestly, this was rad and creepy all at once. The original manga was published in 1976, and has been translated and repackaged here for English-speaking audiences, with illuminating essays and notes to boot. Shirakawa Marina loved both space stories and Japanese folklore, and combines them with aplomb in this tale of alien horror.

Aoki is on a hiking trip with his classmates when he hurts his leg, necessitating that he and one of his teachers, Sada, stay overnight in a remote mountain cabin while the rest of his class returns to Shizuoka. That evening, a great crash rouses Aoki, Sada and their elderly host. The adults are shocked to find that a UFO has crashed nearby. After telling their host to go get help, Sada puts Aoki on his back and goes to take a closer look at the crash site. Despite Aoki’s pleas, Sada doesn’t want to get too close, just in case the UFO actually does pose a threat.

Nearly twelve hours later, government officials come to secure the crash site. Sada and Aoki are whisked away to a facility where they discover, to their dismay, that the truth is being covered up. Aoki’s visiting mother and sister laugh at his story of a UFO, repeating the official line that it was just a meteorite. But when the news starts reporting that other “meteorites” have been falling all over Japan and the rest of the world, Aoki and Sada both suspect that that UFO was just the herald of a far greater menace to humanity than they’d ever imagined.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/30/ufo-mushroom-invasion-by-shirakawa-marina/

Sep 29 2024

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Mein litauischer Fürherschein — My Lithuanian Driver’s License — carries the subtitle “Ausflüge zum Ende der europäischen Union,” “Excursions to the End of the European Union.” He means one of the geographic ends of course, not the demise of the Union. I’m not sure I would have chosen Lithuania as the end of the Union either, since it’s nestled between Poland and Latvia. Depending on how you look at things, Estonia or Finland would have the better claim to being the end of the EU in this direction. Still, Lithuania’s frontier is part of the Union’s external boundary with direct links to Russia (westward, oddly enough) and Belarus (eastward), which turns out to be Ackermann’s relationship with Lithuania.

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Ackermann moves with his wife and young children from Berlin to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in the early 2010s. He is part of Germany’s sizeable apparatus of cultural diplomacy, though he is far from a functionary. Getting there requires a little backstory. In 1992, the first year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some idealists led by Anatoli Mikhailov founded the European Humanities University in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. At the time, Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, Belarus was not a dictatorship, and the moment seemed ripe to bring pan-European teaching and values into the former socialist bloc. EHU grew to include programs in the humanities, in modern and classical languages, and, somewhat incongruously, information technology. Anyway, democracy took root less well in Belarus than in other post-Soviet countries; the bureaucracy eventually decided that an independent university that was European and humanistic was not what they wanted, and they used various forms of chincanery to push it out. In 2004, Belarus revoked the EHU’s accreditation. In 2005, the university re-established itself in Vilnius with support from the Lithuanian government, the European Commission, Nordic countries and various foundations.

By the time Ackermann arrives, EHU has settled into the peculiar existence of a university in exile. Most of the students are from Belarus; some of the faculty commute from Minsk to Vilnius to teach. The powers-that-be in Minsk — that is, the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko — cracked down enough to push the university across the border, but not enough to prevent both students and faculty from continuing to have a university. Ackermann himself has a position financed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), a public body that supports scholarship from and about Germany around the world. He’s integrated into the mission of the EHU, but his external support means that he’s insulated from the financial struggles that many of his students and colleagues face.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/29/mein-litauischer-fuhrerschein-by-felix-ackermann/

Sep 28 2024

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

One of the things that science fiction writers have learned how to do in the 206 years since Frankenstein was first published is how to bring their readers along with the new elements of the world that they put into their stories. Most of the time, they take care to make the fantastic elements plausible within the world portrayed by the story, and largely consistent once the rules of the game are laid out. I can’t fault Shelley for not following this practice, exactly, since in some ways she wrote the genre of science fiction into being with Frankenstein, but the stacking one implausibility on top of another throughout the novel kept kicking me out of the story to the point that I really never went back in.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The general tale is well-known enough to need very little rehearsing: Victor Frankenstein, scientist, arguably mad, takes various parts of various bodies, and uses secret knowledge that he has discovered to infuse the parts with life. Only after all of this work does Frankenstein realize that the creature is not, to put it mildly, aesthetically pleasing in his appearance. Horrified by his creation, he runs away; when he returns the creature has fled the lab. Frankenstein collapses, and when he has been nursed back to health he does not care what has happened to the creature. Several things happen, one of which is that the creation murders Frankenstein’s younger brother. He begins to wreak vengeance on Frankenstein’s whole family. Victor confronts him in the high Alps near Chamonix, and the creature extracts a promise that Frankenstein will create a mate for him and they will depart from Europe and leave Victor and his family in peace. (Neither seems to consider that this second creature might have a will and desires of her own.) Victor reneges on his promise, and the creature continues his vengeance, killing more who are near and dear to Frankenstein. Victor then turns the tables and pursues the creature to the ends of the earth. The whole is set within a framing narrative of an Arctic explorer writing letters back to his sister in England, under the supposition that his letters will somehow find their way back even if he and his crew perish. Frankenstein has pursued the creature into this uttermost north; on the expedition’s ship he survives long enough to tell his tale and then expires. The creature is last seen in the distance, headed even further north.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/28/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-2/

Sep 27 2024

Heebie Jeebies by Matthew Erman & Shelby Criswell

There isn’t anything super innovative about the plot of this terrific middle grade graphic novel, but the storytelling choices that the creative team have made give it a truly profound 21st century edge.

Blue literally lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Their mom works multiple crappy jobs to make ends meet and they’re constantly bullied by a trio of mean kids. At least they have their best friend Herschel, who got held back a grade and is obsessed with his Cranky the Quillhog video game. Herschel might not be the brightest but he’s loyal and sweet. When he stands up to the bullies, the latter claim that they’re only picking on Blue because Blue could be rich like them, too, if only Blue had the gumption. Apparently, the Amberline School is built on buried treasure that hunters have been seeking for decades. Maybe Blue could be the one to finally find it.

Lured by the siren call of no longer having to struggle so hard, Blue decides to break into the school one night with faithful Herschel at their side. Despite a fairly thorough search, the friends are discouraged at finding no clues to where the treasure may be, at least until new groundskeeper Madison shows up for her shift. She’s seen some really spooky things at Amberline since she’s started, but she’s prepared to take care of a few ghosts… or so she thinks. Soon enough, Blue, Herschel and Madison will have to join forces if they want to unearth the treasure and escape the curse of Amberline alive.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/27/heebie-jeebies-by-matthew-erman-shelby-criswell/

Sep 26 2024

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, Pt. 3

One of the many astonishing things that Richard Rhodes does in The Making of the Atomic Bomb is to match the tone and pace of each of the major sections to their theme. It’s common enough in good novels, but uncommon in non-fiction, and vanishingly rare in a non-fiction work of this size and scope. The third and final part is just two long chapters, one on the Trinity test and the other on Hiroshima. They are tales of awe and terror. The middle section takes eight chapters to show the immense logistical effort to create what was necessary to build the first bomb, including wholly new cities and one of the world’s largest industrial plants, all in secret and in competition with everything else urgently needed to win the war. Those chapters are methodical, urgent, but also bureaucratic, tales of memos and transfers. The first section is all about understanding the atom, about the excitement of discovery. Words like “surprise” and “joy” recur throughout this part, as scientists take unusual experimental results and try to make sense of them, or propose theories about matter that can be tested, and then devise experiments to find out.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“As his protégé James Chadwick said, [Ernest] Rutherford’s ultimate distinction was ‘his genius to be astonished.’ He preserved that quality against every assault of success…” (p. 36) Rhodes details how Rutherford’s first experimental astonishment led to discoveries in radio waves that, for a time, put him ahead of Marconi. He went on to discover radioactive half-life, the difference between alpha and beta particles, to put forward the theory that an atom’s mass is concentrated in its nucleus, to co-develop atomic numbering, and to lead the laboratory that discovered the neutron. Those are some astonishing astonishments.

“[Niels] Bohr learned about radiochemistry from [George] de Hevesy. He began to see connections with his electron-theory work. His sudden burst of intuitions then was spectacular. He realized in the space of a few weeks that radioactive properties originated in the atomic nucleus but chemical properties depended on the number and distribution of electrons.” (p. 67) Within a year Bohr wrote a three-part paper titled “On the constitution of atoms and molecules” laying out an important step forward in modeling atomic structure, one that is still taught as a gateway to more complex models.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-3/

Sep 25 2024

The Very Patient Gus Davis by Laurie Trumble Davis & Marjorie van Heerden

Who doesn’t love a French bulldog? With their compact size, sweet faces and affectionate natures, Frenchies are some of the cutest pups around!

Our hero Gus Davis is an adorable Frenchie whose best friend is his owner Bean. When she comes home from the store one day, Gus immediately sniffs out that she has cookies in her shopping. Bean tells him that he has to wait till after dinner, and tho Gus does his best, he just can’t help wanting to grab a quick treat beforehand. Waiting is so hard! Luckily for him, Bean is a dog owner who is as good-hearted as she is wise, and makes sure he has plenty of other things to distract himself with while he’s waiting for dinner to finally be ready. Will all these distractions be enough, tho, for hungry little Gus?

This is a terrific picture book on patience and resilience that will help teach young readers a very important life skill. Being able to amuse oneself while waiting is a valuable coping mechanism, and it’s lovely that Bean is shown as actively helping Gus to figure that out. It’s also really nice that patience is shown as something that you can practice in everyday moments, for even small rewards like watching a beautiful sunset. As with many other good habits, patience is the kind of muscle that only grows stronger with training and use.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/25/the-very-patient-gus-davis-by-laurie-trumble-davis-marjorie-van-heerden/

Sep 24 2024

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by Manu Larcenet

When the lovely publicist at Abrams Comics pitched this graphic novel adaptation to me, I made him laugh by replying, “I’ll be honest: I desperately hated The Road but am wildly curious to see what Manu Larcenet brings to the story. He can’t make it worse!” You can read my original review of the source material here, and an even more accurate examination of it by another critic I admire here. And no, we’re not being contrarian: that Emperor genuinely has no clothes!

Even so, I love a good graphic novel, and was super happy to crack open this volume. Because a lot of times, even when I hate an author’s writing, I can recognize that there’s still a pretty great story hiding inside the irritating mannerisms. Stripped of Cormac McCarthy’s tedious prose style, I wanted to see whether the plot still worked as entertainment — nvm the issues with narcissism, allegory and genre that I’ll get to briefly later on in this review.

To my immense relief, Manu Larcenet knocks it out of the park with this graphic adaptation. I do admit that I didn’t recognize the ending as being the same as it is in the novel, but that could also be because I was rolling my eyes too hard to remember all the details back when I was reading the original in 2011. I have no doubt that Mr Larcenet was absolutely faithful in this telling, a commitment underscored by the passionate and illuminating letter he included at the end of this volume. He wrote it as a pitch to Mr McCarthy, and begins by talking about how much he loves the atmosphere of the book and the ways he enjoys drawing the contrasts it portrays. All he wants to do with his proposed graphic adaptation, he says, is to draw Mr McCarthy’s words.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/24/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-by-manu-larcenet/

Sep 23 2024

Rise Of The Spider by Michael P Spradlin

This first book in The Web Of The Spider series for middle grade readers could not come at a more relevant time!

Young Rolf von Heusen is eleven years old in the spring of 1929. His main interests are football and palling around with his friends Ansel and Joshua. He thinks that his hometown of Heroldsberg, Germany is the most wonderful place in the world.

His older brother Romer does not share the same perspective. At fifteen, the once athletic and studious teenager has lost interest in both school and football. Instead, he starts hanging out with some brown shirted newcomers to town, Hans and Nils, who are opening up a youth branch of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party. They try to sell it to Rolf and Ansel as a character- and skill-building group, like Boy Scouts, but the younger boys are immediately suspicious of the lack of adult guidance and supervision. Besides which Ansel’s dad, a newspaper reporter, often talks about politics at the dinner table and loathes the Nazis with a passion.

The von Heusen dinner table hasn’t been the most tranquil place in the world lately either, with Rolf’s toy manufacturer father and Romer getting into constant fights about the state of both the economy and the country. When their father learns that Romer has joined the Nazi Youth, he goes ballistic. But it’s another discovery that Rolf makes about his brother that could tear their family apart for good.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/23/rise-of-the-spider-by-michael-p-spradlin/

Sep 21 2024

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

Everybody who’s anybody among Berlin’s dead craves an invitation to Frau Altenshul’s salon. She has devoted her afterlife — much as she had devoted her life — to beauty, whether that was beautiful music, beautiful art, or the simple beauty of conversation among like-minded people. Max Liebermann was a painter who had lived a long life, and he is a regular visitor to the salon; more than that, he can call Frau Altenshul a friend. His indifference to the social jockeying that continued after the end of mortal life is just part of what keeps him high in her esteem. She also values his long experience, the openness of his discussion, and his passion for art.

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

The dead of Frau Altenshul’s salon are still attached to this world because they met their ends violently. Untimely ripped from life, they are unable or unwilling to go to their final rest. They can see the world as it is, and the world as it was at the time of their death, but as Lange depicts this afterlife they are unable to affect the material world, and they are also unable to develop themselves further. They are stuck in between. Or are they?

Liebermann and Altenshul hear that an acclaimed pianist, Rudolf Lewanski, has come to Berlin. He was a rising star of the musical world before the Nazis shot him at age 28 in the occupied Polish city of Łódź. As has become clear in the novella’s initial chapter, the visitors to Frau Altenshul’s gatherings are all Jewish, and they all perished in the Holocaust. Lewanski is a particularly unquiet ghost; since his death, he has wandered the continent, a few weeks in London, a few months in Prague, here and there, never still. Frau Altenshul tries to persuade him to stay in Berlin, saying that in the new era — the book was published in 1986 and seems to take place roughly about that time — he has nothing more to fear in the city.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/21/das-konzert-by-hartmut-lange/