What if people took Plato’s Republic seriously enough to attempt putting it into practice? What if two of those people were the Greek deities Apollo and Athena, who have the power to make Plato’s implausible starting conditions real? Those are the premises underlying The Just City by Jo Walton. The Olympians, as Walton describes them, …
Category: Politics
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/27/the-just-city-by-jo-walton/
Dec 27 2015
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
In which I read a book simply because it has won the 2015 Man Booker prize, and am somewhat disappointed. I read just about everything on the 2015 Man Booker short list because I wanted to. This was one of the ones I didn’t read, and now I’m regretting a bit that it won, because …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/27/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-2/
Oct 31 2015
Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuscinski
I had been thinking how terribly young the soldiers were that Ryszard Kapuściński wrote about in Another Day of Life when he brought me up short by noting that they were the same age as many of the fighters in the Warsaw Uprising at the end of World War II. Alexander Hamilton raised an artillery …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/31/another-day-of-life-by-ryszard-kapuscinski/
Oct 28 2015
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Between the time when Ryszard Kapuściński saw the revolution in Iran in 1979 and when Shah of Shahs, his book on the subject, was published in 1982, his home country of Poland lived through its own revolution, one that started with strikes at a shipyard in the northern port of Gdańsk but collapsed as the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/28/shah-of-shahs-by-ryszard-kapuscinski/
Oct 19 2015
The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski
By the time Ryszard Kapuściński returned to Ethiopia, the revolution had already swept Emperor Haile Selassie from power. He engaged in something like journalistic archaeology, digging up the people of the Palace from where they had gone to ground to avoid execution in the violence that followed the revolution. The Emperor reads as if it …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/19/the-emperor-by-ryszard-kapuscinski/
Jul 27 2015
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
I had so many problem with this book! And so many compliments for it, too! First, the good bits: G Willow Wilson’s politics are solid and smart and she clearly knows what she’s talking about regarding the Middle East and class and social distinctions. I also really liked her ventures into metaphysics, theology and, with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/27/alif-the-unseen-by-g-willow-wilson/
Jun 04 2015
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Reading Europe In Autumn was more disorienting than usual for an alternate history. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the protagonist of this story set in a slightly-alt near-future Europe could easily have been a slightly-alt me, and not just in the sense that the author had created a sympathetic figure …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/04/europe-in-autumn-by-dave-hutchinson/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/27/to-be-read-1/
Apr 19 2015
Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos
One of the hazards of getting a blurb for your book from someone who has written a great book on a closely related subject is that it invites comparisons. Age of Ambition — subtitled Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China — has a blurb from Peter Hessler, whose three books on contemporary …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/19/age-of-ambition-by-evan-osnos/
Mar 04 2015
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
Wasn’t this great fun? The front flap of The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, summarizes the set-up: “A half-goblin, the youngest son of the emperor, has lived his entire life in exile, far form the imperial court and the deadly intrigue that surrounds it. But when his father and three half-brothers, who are heirs to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/04/the-goblin-emperor-by-katherine-addison/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire