As a relatively uninformed reader of The Odyssey — one trip through it unaccompanied while traveling across Central Europe in the mid-1990s; I don’t even remember which translation I read, only that I was mesmerized — I was happy to read all of Emily Wilson’s introductory material before embarking on the poem itself. What is known about Homer, and the poetic tradition from which the two Homeric epics emerged? What are contemporary discussions concerned with when they take on the intersection of archeology, linguistics and literature that The Odyssey presents? I was glad to have her set the scene and sketch the surroundings, and to state up front what her main decisions about translating the epic would be: all in iambic pentameter, as the natural meter of English epic verse, and the same number of lines as Homer’s Odyssey. This was all in 2022, well before this summer’s movie version was even a gleam in Christopher Nolan’s scriptwriting eye. Her Iliad was also the first one that I found I could read. I had bounced off of several others through the years, and I read hers in about three weeks.
All of which piqued my interest in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, a collection of essays about translating and classical literature. The book contains 13 essays — seven of which were published elsewhere, as far as I can tell — along with an introduction, an afterword, and suggestions for further reading. Wilson writes in her introduction that all were thoroughly revised and reworked for this publication. I do wish that Wilson and her publisher had included the information about original publication with the essays themselves, instead of burying them on the copyright page, because when she writes something like “Stoicism is having a moment” (p. 132), I would like to know when in the twenty-year period of writing that moment was had, or whether I should presume it includes the 2026 moment of publication. The fine print reveals that “Chill Out with the Stoics” was first published in The New Republic in 2010. The essay’s second sentence mentions a book that was published in 2016, so its inclusion was clearly part of the revision process, and the moment has apparently lasted more than a decade and a half, which seems to me a bit long for a moment, but maybe a classicist sees things differently.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/30/crossing-the-wine-dark-sea-by-emily-wilson/
I can’t believe August is already coming to a close, dear readers, or how cool it’s started getting out at night already. June and July were awfully hot, and I’m surprised August hasn’t been more of the same. While I’m glad it’s not worse, I’m also not super looking forward to colder weather already.
One book I am looking forward to, however, is Mackenzie Reed’s brilliantly titled adult debut I Hope This Email Finds You In Hell. This genre-blending urban romantasy satire revolves around Brie Benson, who does not love her job as receptionist at a life insurance company. Between the recent death of her parents and her mind-numbing daily routine, she’s learned to compartmentalize well.
Until, that is, she walks in on her uptight but undeniably hot boss Luke performing an exorcism on Debra from accounting. Luke reveals that he’s the latest in a long line of demon hunters and swears Brie to secrecy. Brie accepts, but when her emotional support coworker goes missing — presumably abducted by demons — she persuades Luke to let her accompany him on his rescue mission. Trouble is, that mission involves plumbing the depths of hell, which Brie discovers has uncanny parallels with the corporate monstrosities and bureaucratic nightmares she’s already familiar with. Will she and Luke be able to fight their way through the underworld, rescue their colleague and repair the torn veil between worlds, all while battling the attraction growing between them?
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/28/tantalizing-tales-august-2026-part-four/
Even writing down the title of this post enrages me, because this entire experience has been an exercise in pedantry that makes me get all Ben Affleck exclaiming “Fictional characters!” in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. We at The Frumious Consortium don’t usually credit translators in post titles, but in this case it feels very necessary, as Emily Wilson’s choices are stamped all over the work. Which is fine, great even! But given the source materials and publishing conventions and the recent controversies, writing the title this way feels like referring to Ultimate Spider-Man as “Spider-Man by Stan Lee, translated by Brian Michael Bendis.” I freely acknowledge that that might be an iykyk reference but I am sick to the teeth of this book and this drama, yet feel obligated to write about it and hopefully, after today and my subsequent newsletter, never treat it as the main subject of a piece again.
Yes, this grumpy ass attitude is going to permeate the rest of this review, sns. I think I would be more inclined to generosity if Ms Wilson had displayed a similar munificence of spirit in addressing the recent Christopher Nolan movie that also adapted this ancient story. I guess this is going to be both a review of her translation of this book as well as the film that she’s so bizarrely tied herself to, via her vituperative yet media-illiterate criticism of it. Feel free to bail on this review at any time, dear reader, or check out Doug’s far less annoyed perspective.
Anyway, here’s a lot of back story as to where I’m coming from with my review. I’ve been obsessed with Greek mythology since I was probably about eight years old, if not earlier: coincidentally the same age as Ms Wilson’s own discovery of the canon. Along with superheroes (which you know I will continue to reference in this review,) they were my favorite thing to read about. As a child, I read about both A Lot, and continue to read about each probably more than the average adult does nowadays.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/27/the-odyssey-by-homer-translated-by-emily-wilson/
with vibrant colors by Fabi Marques.
For the longest time, I thought this was a graphic novel for Middle Grade readers, likely due to its cover. It is very much a Young Adult+ story tho, revolving as it does around five young people who are sent away from Cuba to evade Fidel Castro’s regime. Operation Peter/Pedro Pan was a perhaps not all that well-thought-out, real life mission to airlift kids to “safety” out of Cuba, led by the undoubtedly well-intended Catholic priest Father Bryan Walsh.
The five kids at the heart of this book all come from different situations. Rosa, the eldest, waits tables at a cafe while her parents eagerly welcome Castro’s attempts to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Eugenio dreams of studying art in Prague with his love Tomas, while his younger brother Joaquin seethes for reasons never fully explained. Wilfredo, the youngest, wants to be a musician just like his dad. And Antonia, whose voice carries the main narrative, is the pampered daughter of a lawyer who very much disapproves of Castro and passes that disdain on to his child.
We Are Pan does the best job it can to describe what it felt like to live in Cuba right before Batista fled, through Castro’s takeover and into the years beyond, as the liberation forces turned into an oppressive regime of its own. The kids all have differing experiences before they get on those planes, but most of them are sent by families scared of losing them to what they see as worse fates at the hands of the new government. Arriving in the United States is disorienting, as the kids are mostly split up while waiting for the rest of their families to make it over. The scenes with the kids doing their best to adjust and survive in the US were the most touching, for me.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/26/we-are-pan-by-andre-r-frattino-yasmin-flores-montanez/
It has been a draining year, y’all. There have been so many high points (Arsenal winning the league! My babies starting another year of school!) but also so many low points (my mysterious ongoing health issues, creeping fascism, and now the death of actual angel Dolly Parton included.) I’ve had to let so many things, primarily artistic, fall by the wayside. So far this year I’ve done a grand total of two art classes, when I used to do them almost weekly.
So when the lovely publicist at Adams Media (hi, Cindy!) offered me this title, I jumped at the chance! Something small and low pressure like this seemed like the perfect way to ease myself back into a regular creative practice. And now that I’ve had the chance to try it out, dear reader, I can assure you that this has been absolutely therapeutic in allowing me to enjoy making art once more.
The book itself fits the Cute ‘n’ Cozy name of the series perfectly. At about four inches square, it’s compact and easy to throw into an art kit. The forty-five black and white line illustrations inside feature both bold patterns and more intricate designs, all revolving around the theme of autumn and the harvest. Gaynor Carradice has drawn some lovely little scenes here, featuring the charming anthropomorphic animals that she’s especially good at.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/25/fall-harvest-mini-coloring-book-by-gaynor-carradice/
With US Open fever getting underway, what better time to look at a delightfully retro kids’ book about tennis star Arthur Ashe — namesake of the main arena at the world’s largest tennis stadium — and the very personal effect he had on at least one family in the 1970s.
Our unnamed protagonist loves tennis and especially Arthur Ashe, who has a one-handed backhand just like her dad does. She and her dad love both playing and watching tennis together. But sometimes, our heroine has a bad day on the court, and her brain starts bouncing up and down like a tennis ball that she can’t get under control. And sometimes she has a bad day at school, with her schoolmate Timmy bugging her — the only Asian person there — for attention in increasingly irritating ways.
When Dad suggests that they take a break during a particularly frustrating passage of tennis, our heroine asks if she can get glasses like Arthur Ashe too. As they try on several pairs at the store, Dad tells her about all the ways in which Arthur Ashe is a hero, both on and off the court. Soon, she’s reconsidering her approach to both tennis and Timmy, and discovering the power of both courtesy and self-control.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/24/swing-by-james-yang/
I picked up A Parish Chronicle because I had never read anything by Halldór Laxness, and this looked short enough to be a low-investment place to start. Mission accomplished, then, for the publisher Vintage Classics, who issued the book as part of their “Brief Encounters” series, which they flag as “Short books. Timeless stories.” Other authors in the series include Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, J.G. Ballard, Roberto Bolaño, Mikhail Bulgakov and Italo Calvino, and that’s just from the first three letters of the alphabet. The works chosen for these authors are also not the obvious ones, by and large. It’s nice to be in the target audience: people who might like to take a flyer on a big literary name without committing to one of the major works. Joyce but not Ulysses; Toni Morrison but not Beloved (though that one is fewer than 400 pages); Melville but not Moby-Dick. Thus with Laxness, I didn’t have to dive in at the deep end with 500+ pages of Independent People; I could sample the 112 page of A Parish Chronicle.
The parish in question is Mosfell, which Laxness portrays as an out of the way place in western Iceland, somewhat on the way from Reykjavik to the northern coast. It may have been such in the mid-1800s when the bulk of A Parish Chronicle takes place, but in fact it is all of 12 kilometers east of the capital. Travellers occasionally pass through, bringing news of weather and sheep from other places, those two topics being the main items of interest in and around Mosfell. The locality was the site of the burial mound belonging to Egill Skallagrímsson, a saga poet. When Christianity came to the country, his remains were exhumed and brought to a church. Whether his bones — reputed to be inhumanly large — are still located somewhere in or near the church is difficult to say.
If you look at Mosfell now, you would think that the church had been there on the hill, its steeple silhouetted against the clouds, since ancient times. This, however, is not the case. Again and again this church disappeared from the hill. Over and over, it was thoroughly erased from the pages of history and omitted from the laws of God and man, failed to appear in written documents, was neglected in oral tradition. (p. 2)
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/22/a-parish-chronicle-by-halldor-laxness/
This was a weird day to start the English Premier League season, but Arsenal are top of the league, y’all! My internal calendar is all messed up now, lol. But we have some great books for you this week, including an upcoming thriller (also) set in London and written by one of my favorite podcasters — which is saying a lot because I have a really hard time concentrating on podcasts!
Jonathan Sims of The Magnus Archives is back to terrify readers with his latest novel, The Burn Line. London is suffering through the hottest summer on record when five travelers on the Tube are trapped deep underground one morning. These five people unwittingly become witnesses to something so profoundly disturbing that when they manage to return to their ordinary lives, they can’t remember exactly what it was they saw. All they know is that it was monstrous… and hungry.
But ordinary life isn’t as comfortably normal as they’d been used to. Each of them keeps losing time, and friends abruptly go missing. Something, it seems, is stalking them from the shadows. The five will have to reunite in order to figure out what’s happening to them and its connection to what they saw that day on the train, before something horrific can emerge from below to swallow the whole world.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/21/tantalizing-tales-august-2026-part-three/
adapted for the format by Scott Peterson, and illustrated by wife and husband duo Veronica and Andy Fish.
Y’all, when I tell you that I ugly cried my way through the end of this graphic novel, I super mean it. I had to sit back on the couch and take several deep breaths in order to fully recover from that ending. And I’ll be the first to tell you that it isn’t a perfect book — I still have lots of Questions! — but it is an astonishingly moving graphic novel adaptation that talks about some really important subjects, including what we owe not only to our children but to all children.
The premise is this: thirty-ish years ago, there was a kid’s TV show called Mister Magic. Countless kids would tune in to watch the magical adventures of six youngsters, none older than ten, who were known as the Circle Of Friends. The child actors enjoyed colorful, imaginative adventures under the benevolent eye of the title character, who taught them how to be good children.
But an on-set accident abruptly shut down production of the show. With seemingly no footage surviving, the show became almost an urban legend, even as numerous fans swore that they’d watched it religiously. A new podcast, however, claims not only to have brought the cast members back together for interviews but that a new iteration of the show is finally on the horizon.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/20/mister-magic-the-graphic-novel-by-kiersten-white/
subtitled …And What REALLY Happened.
Forgive me for saying this in an incredibly brainrotted manner, but I highkenuinely feel that this book should be in every library accessible to American children. Preferably in physical format, for even as an adult, I did not have an easy time navigating the digital version. Regardless, this slender volume is so smart and informative, and vivid in its illustrations and design, that it definitely deserves to be widely available to young readers.
In this book, Christy Mihaly tackles some common myths about the United States of America’s early days. From the idea that the original colonists settled on uninhabited lands to the misconception that the unamended Constitution affirmed that all people should have basic equal rights, Ms Mihaly quietly dismantles all sorts of common fallacies about the USA’s beginnings. Not only does she present the multifaceted truth, she also examines how some of these fables came to be, whether it’s John Smith lying about his relationship to the far more famous Pocahontas for clout or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow taking a lot of poetic license when depicting Paul Revere’s ride (tho admittedly for far more high-minded reasons.) A lot of these untruths aren’t malicious, but the more widespread they become, the more likely their listeners are to believe tales of romance and heroism that are far removed from what actually happened. People love stories and we love mythologies, and many of us especially love black and white, hero vs villain narratives. Ms Mihaly gently corrects the record while acknowledging that her carefully researched and presented book might make a lot of readers uncomfortable in its commitment to the far less romantic truth.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/19/americas-founding-myths-by-christy-mihaly-marta-sevilla/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire