Dec 31 2021
In Lent, Jo Walton takes the life of Girolamo Savonarola both seriously and literally. Not only his life, the whole framework in which he lived that life: God, demons, Purgatory, the Rule of St. Benedict, the Dominican Order to which Savonarola was dedicated, his desire to create a new Jerusalem in Italy, and ever so …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/31/lent-by-jo-walton/
Dec 30 2021
There’s a live recording of a Bruce Springsteen song — “The River,” I think — with a long spoken introduction in which Springsteen talks about his difficult relationship with his father. The elder Springsteen, a veteran of World War II, didn’t understand what his son was doing with his long hair and his late nights and his …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/30/outside-the-gates-of-eden-by-lewis-shiner/
Dec 26 2021
Readers who made it through the first few unforgiving chapters of The Peripheral and went on to enjoy the rest of the book will find the beginning of Agency easier going, with the essential setup unchanged and many of the characters returning. In the main timeline sometime late in the twenty-second century, humanity has mostly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/26/agency-by-william-gibson/
Dec 24 2021
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/24/thats-dickens-with-a-c-and-a-k-the-well-known-english-author/
Dec 05 2021
“There was a dead girl in my aunt’s bakery.” There’s the first problem right away. Worst of all for the dead girl, of course, but a horrifying start to the day for Mona, the fourteen-year-old first-person narrator of A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Then things get worse. Not right away, of course; Mona partly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/05/a-wizards-guide-to-defensive-baking-by-t-kingfisher/
Nov 14 2021
I read Invisible Cities ages ago when I worked for a bookstore in Atlanta and was reading more consciously literary things. I picked it up again recently thanks to a Twitter thread. Jo Walton had been doing a series of 50 manipulated images of Venice. As she wrote, “In honour of Italo Calvino’s Le Citta …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/14/invisible-cities-by-italo-calvino/
Nov 07 2021
Circassians! The father of Allie, title character and first-person narrator of Courtney’s novel, comes from a Circassian family. They’re an ethnic group originally from the Northern Caucasus. After their encounter with an expanding Russian Empire went the way of most encounters between small peoples and the empire, the vast majority of Circassians were expelled to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/07/all-american-muslim-girl-by-nadine-jolie-courtney-2/
Nov 06 2021
For a certain kind of person, this book is a source of great joy. Fortunately, I am that kind of person, and I have kept coming back to it since I bought it in February. I first became aware of Art & Arcana when I flipped through an electronic version that came as part of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/06/dungeons-dragons-art-arcana-a-visual-history-by-michael-witwer-et-al/
Oct 09 2021
On April 21, 1990, the second through sixth places on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart of pop music were occupied by “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love” by Jane Child, “All Around the World” by Lisa Stansfield, “I Wanna be Rich” by Calloway, “I’ll be Your Everything” by Tommy Page, and “Here and Now” by Luther Vandross. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/09/piranesi-redux/
Oct 01 2021
Piranesi is a scientist, working to understand the world around him. That world may seem odd, or circumscribed, to readers, but Piranesi does not question it. It is the world, after all; the House. He does not inquire into its origins, nor try to understand its supports. Instead, he maps it. The House has Halls …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/01/piranesi-by-susanna-clarke/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire