December 2017 archive

Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas

Listening in on Conversations with Stalin involves stepping back into numerous vanished worlds: one in which Communists were imprisoned by kings’ secret police forces; where Communism is new and for large numbers of people a source of hope; where the inner workings of the Soviet Union are largely unknown; where Yugoslavia exists as both a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/conversations-with-stalin-by-milovan-djilas/

A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

In A Taste of Honey Kai Ashante Wilson tells a love story spanning decades in a fantastic world that looks much like the ancient Mediterranean. One of the lovers is a soldier from an empire that resembles Rome, the other is a young member of a noble house in a North African polity. (I don’t …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/a-taste-of-honey-by-kai-ashante-wilson/

Premature Evaluation: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

I first came to Vasily Grossman via excerpts in Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale‘s amazing book about how ordinary Soviet soldiers experienced the Second World War. That prompted me to pick up A Writer at War, dispatches and stories that he wrote while working as a journalist near the front. I thought it was one of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/06/premature-evaluation-life-and-fate-by-vasily-grossman/

The Sinner by Petra Hammesfahr

Y’all that was messed up. I’m a fan of mysteries from way back and have read or watched nearly every type of depravity imaginable, and the reason why Cora Bender, innocuous middle-class housewife, slashes the throat of a stranger on a crowded beach still strikes me as fuuuuuuucked up, even as it is thoroughly convincing. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/06/the-sinner-by-petra-hammesfahr/

Morning Star (Red Rising #3) by Pierce Brown

This book was so great that I spent long stretches of it messaging a friend who’d also just finished it my reaction gifs (I haven’t yet figured out how to include same in these reviews, so lucky you.) I had so many feelings about how emotionally vulnerable and grand and brave this book is, how …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/04/morning-star-red-rising-3-by-pierce-brown/