Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Previously blogged at A Fistful of Euros, though that is now largely lost to link rot.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
Jo Walton answers the question posed by the title for a bit more than 100 books in this collection of brief reviews devoted to re-reading. As I read through, I enjoyed thinking of how the emphasis could fall on each of the words in the title, although the cover design clearly places it on the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/12/what-makes-this-book-so-great-by-jo-walton/
In the second Discworld novel, The Light Fantastic, Rincewind saves the Disc, not quite by accident but certainly not through great forethought and cunning action, either. The Disc appears to be hurtling toward a great red star in such a way that collision is imminent, and the only way to prevent the Disc’s annihilation is …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/09/the-light-fantastic-by-terry-pratchett/
People who were annoyed by the cliffhanger ending of Wolfhound Century should definitely wait the six weeks or so until Radiant State is published before reading Truth and Fear. Peter Higgins hasn’t solved the middle-book problem, but it’s clear that he conceived and wrote the three books of the Wolfhound Century tale as a single, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/06/truth-and-fear-by-peter-higgins/
This was a hoot. As the back cover says, “the Reduced Shakespeare Company‘s classic farce” presents, after a fashion, all 37 plays and does something to with the sonnets in just over 90 minutes of stage time. They do the comedies all at once, in a bit
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/05/the-complete-works-of-william-shakespeare-abridged-by-adam-long-daniel-singer-and-jess-winfield/
I suppose it would be smart to wait until I got to the part where Italy can properly be said to be Mussolini’s before writing about a book called Mussolini’s Italy, but my progress through this volume has been so slow — “deliberate” would be a kinder word, if less accurate — that I might …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/03/premature-evaluation-mussolinis-italy-by-r-j-b-bosworth/
Third time wasn’t the charm. I’ve tried twice before to read Buddha’s Little Finger, and it just didn’t catch with me. This time around was no different. Usually I describe reading Viktor Pelevin with a short monologue accompanied by hand gestures. “It’s like somebody opened up your brain” — both hands held together to form …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/02/buddhas-little-finger-by-viktor-pelevin/
I’m about a quarter of the way through Truth and Fear (concurrent with more Discworld, The Iliad – to see whether it captures me the way The Odyssey did, and in a modern translation since I bounced right off of Chapman’s, and probably some other things that rise to the surface of the to-be-read piles), …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/28/vlast-and-cool-and-dangerously-sympathetic/
The Whisper of the River follows Porter Osborne, Jr. to college in the city of Macon, Georgia, in the late 1930s. It also follows Run with the Horsemen, the first book of Ferrol Sams’ semi-autobiographical trilogy. Young Osborne, improbably known as Sambo, grew up as the only son of a planter in rural Georgia in …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/23/the-whisper-of-the-river-by-ferrol-sams/
Sometimes it’s nice to be squarely in the middle of the target audience. Although I am not sure whether anyone would have said ex ante that the audience for a police procedural set in an alternate history Russia with fantasy and science fiction elements was much more than just me. But Peter Higgins went and …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/19/wolfhound-century-by-peter-higgins/
I’ve read the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, several times, but I had never taken the plunge and dived deeper into the series. I missed them, somehow, when they were new and I was devouring almost all the fantasy in sight. Then I was overseas for a while and doing my best not …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/15/mort-by-terry-pratchett/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire