Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
The Hugo Award category that’s presently known as Best Related Work began in 1980 as Best Non-Fiction Book, and in 1999 became Best Related Book. In 2010 the name took its modern form, as fans recognized that the field of science fiction and fantasy is a diverse one, and sometimes award-worthy work comes in an …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/30/hugo-awards-2024-best-related-work/
A hotel, especially a grand one in the center of a major metropolis, can be its own world. Vicki Baum opens up one such world in Menschen im Hotel (lit. “People in a Hotel” but published under the better title of Grand Hotel), telling interlocking stories of people in Berlin’s finest hotel over the course …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/23/menschen-im-hotel-by-vicki-baum/
Through most of the first six books in the Rivers of London series, a rogue magician known as the Faceless Man has been leading the mystical branch of the Metropolitan Police on a merry chase. Well, not so merry for his many victims. But he’s a formidable practitioner, and while Peter Grant, Nightingale, and company …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/16/lies-sleeping-by-ben-aaronovitch/
How much fury fits into 142 pages? Monika Maron tells her readers from the very first sentence that Herbert Beerenbaum dies, so a good bit of Stille Zeile Sechs (Silent Close Number Six — “Close” in the sense of a small cul-de-sac street, with six as the house number) is finding out who he his, how …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/15/stille-zeile-sechs-by-monika-maron/
I was glad to see that enough Chinese fans nominated works for this year’s Hugos that a fair number of works and people from China made it to the list of finalists. There are two short stories, one novelette, and two novellas in the long-established fiction categories, plus one in best graphic story, two in …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/08/hugo-awards-2024-best-short-story/
When I sat down to read City of Bones it was just what the doctor ordered: an immersive fantasy adventure that wasn’t too terribly obvious, but that wasn’t exploding with structural or thematic ambition, not trying to expand the genre or blow the reader away with stylistic genius. That willingness to let the book be …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/07/city-of-bones-by-martha-wells/
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 …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/02/starter-villain-by-john-scalzi/
The writing of Jozef Czapski persuaded me to read Proust, and the writing of Marcel Proust persuaded me to stop. Czapski noted that Proust wanted popular success, and that one of the first translations of Proust into Polish had made him popular in that language, in part by rendering his famously extended sentences into more …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/19/the-way-by-swanns-by-marcel-proust/
Some twenty years after publication, The Cold War no longer matches its subtitle, “A New History,” but it remains a useful book about the conflict that shaped international politics for nearly half a century and, not incidentally, came close to ending human civilization. It is useful in a number of ways. First of all, it …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/12/the-cold-war-by-john-lewis-gaddis/
By the early 1960s, Vasily Grossman was in an odd position with the authorities of the Soviet Union. He had been a recognized writer starting in the 1930s, and as a war correspondent he was both beloved by regular troops and honored by the state. His novels were serialized in major newspapers, and his time …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/11/an-armenian-sketchbook-by-vasily-grossman/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire