Nov 13 2024
I am all about the comfort reads this week, and I’ll be blessed if I read anything as charming as this graphic novel is anytime soon! Detective Beans is a young cat obsessed with being a detective, even if that usually just takes the form of acting out his favorite movies for his mom and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/13/detective-beans-the-case-of-the-missing-hat-by-li-chen/
Nov 12 2024
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 16 2024
I’ve seen plenty of Mr Lovenstein panels and cartoons floating around as memes on social media, but it never occurred to me that these were actually part of a regular webcomic. Thank goodness for books collecting this material so that people like me can finally understand what the rest of the Internet has been going …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/16/mr-lovenstein-presents-feelings-by-j-l-westover/
Sep 17 2024
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 09 2024
What a delightful way to get kids in touch with their feelings! And this, mind you, is said by someone who has definitely given books about feelings, especially those targeted at kids, the hairy side eye, usually for being too sappy and twee. This collection of roughly 40 poems easily avoids that pitfall, while being …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/09/the-totally-not-boring-book-of-feelings-by-jolie-taylor-brandon-dorman/
Aug 14 2024
Wit is infused into every detail of this children’s book that has just as much insight for parents as it does for their precocious kids. The young girl who grumpily exclaims the title of the book on its cover has had enough. Adults are always getting away with bossing their kids around unfairly, so she’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/14/thats-not-fair-by-shinsuke-yoshitake/
Jun 26 2024
subtitled Making (and Keeping) Friends, Acquaintances, and Other Nonromantic Relationships. Jeez, who couldn’t use a guide like this? Alright, if I’m being perfectly honest: me, as I’ve never really had trouble making and keeping friends. Sure, I’ve had spectacular blow ups with best friends, but that was usually their faults, and I’m pretty good at …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/26/lets-hang-out-by-chris-duffy/
Jun 02 2024
Charlie Fitzer’s day is just about to get a lot better. As it begins, he’s divorced (his ex-wife is seeing an investment banker and sharing her fabulous vacations on her Instagram account, which of course Charlie follows), his career has descended from business reporter for the Chicago Tribune to middle-school substitute teacher (thanks to layoffs …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/02/starter-villain-by-john-scalzi/
Apr 02 2024
I didn’t realize when I picked up this title that it isn’t so much book as objet d’art, but oh, what a lovely, accessible objet it is! At only twelve pages, this solid little tome is a compact work of art, cramming in arguably two short essays on the subject of Charles M Schulz’s inaugural …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/02/here-comes-charlie-brown-a-peanuts-pop-up-by-charles-m-schulz-gene-kannenberg-jr/
Jan 29 2024
You know you’re getting old when British YA diary novels are no longer compared to Sue Townsend’s or even Helen Fielding’s oeuvre. For all that I am now an old, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of Kat Evans, the fifteen year-old girl who wants to be a good feminist even as she worries about friendships, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/29/diary-of-a-confused-feminist-by-kate-weston/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire