Category: Review

Reading Backwards by John Crowley

Reading Backwards by John Crowley

There are still 148 copies available of this gorgeous, autographed collection of John Crowley reviews from 2005 to 2018. It’s a lovely object, a reminder of what the making of books, even commercially published books, can be as a craft. I’m even a little sorry that the dust jacket betrays that this book has actually …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/14/reading-backwards-by-john-crowley/

The City & The City by China Miéville

Don’t read the second sentence of this post. Don’t read the sentence that comes before this one. In this world, we do not acknowledge italics. Italics are the only text there is. If you see something written in another way, avert your eyes, unsee and unread before it is too late. We have some leniency …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/10/15/the-city-the-city-by-china-mieville/

Movie review: Kingsman: The Secret Service

This combines James Bond-like debonair spying (including some very nice toys) with a Quentin Tarantino-esque love of joyful violence (there is a massacre that is practically an exercise in interpretive dance), leavened with a lisping Samuel L. Jackson and random humor. Not a great film, not a horrid film, just an entertaining film, one that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/29/movie-review-kingsman-the-secret-service/

The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) by Ainslie Hogarth

I can’t remember where I came across mention of this book, but it was obviously enough to get me to buy it and read it. Of course, that happens a lot, which is why my to-be-read collection on my Kindle just broke 300 books. Tangents, aside, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/29/the-boy-meets-girl-massacre-annotated-by-ainslie-hogarth/

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/27/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-2/

Modern Romance: An Investigation by Aziz Ansari

Honestly, this is just a superlative book on what it’s like to date and be in a relationship in the present day. Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg conduct studies and review data to bring a comprehensive but still accessible (in large part due to Mr Ansari’s humor and personal anecdotes) overview of modern romance. They …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/03/modern-romance-an-investigation-by-aziz-ansari/

TRUST by Jodi Baker

  Series: Between Lions (Book 1) Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: BookBaby (October 3, 2015) Language: English ISBN-10: 0986431710 ISBN-13: 978-0986431715 Publisher’s Description TRUST is a young adult, mythological, urban fantasy thrill ride about the darkly fantastical, supernatural Museion that has secretly protected humanity’s greatest treasures for millennia, and Anna, the sixteen-year-old New York girl who …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/21/trust-by-jodi-baker/

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

The moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason. That’s how Seveneves begins, and it pulled me right in. I stayed up until 3am last night to finish this 867-page hard science fiction novel, to the point that my eyes were watering and my cat was giving me the stinkeye for keeping …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/24/seveneves-by-neal-stephenson/

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

I skipped a good sixty or seventy pages of this book in the hope that jumping ahead would prevent me from pronouncing the Eight Deadly Words, but in the end it didn’t. As the copyright page tells any reader, “The novel What Makes Sammy Run? was originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1941. Copyright …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/14/what-makes-sammy-run-by-budd-schulberg/

The Three: A Novel by Sarah Lotz

I’ll be honest with you – I have no idea how this book ended up on my TBR list. But there it was on my Kindle in the pick-me-pick-ME section, and so I read it. There’s a lot of… well, lukewarm is the best word to describe the reviews I’ve come across for this book; …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/16/the-three-a-novel-by-sarah-lotz/