Sep 30 2020
This powerful picture book is a wordless recreation via metaphor of the author’s family’s journey from Vietnam to Canada at the end of the Vietnam War. Only two at the time, Thao Lam remembers little of the events themselves, but has taken her mother’s story and crafted it beautifully for this children’s book. Working in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/30/the-paper-boat-a-refugee-story-by-thao-lam/
Oct 21 2018
Every now and then, I like to read a book that is of interest mainly to specialists. Malte Rolf’s work uses the parades and other mass events in the Soviet Union as a lens for examining how that society developed over the course of its existence. Celebrations reveal a great deal about a society — what …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/10/21/soviet-mass-festivals-1917-1991-by-malte-rolf/
Sep 12 2018
London: A Life in Maps began as a volume accompanying an exhibition at the British Library in 2006. (The exhibit lives on in virtual form at the Library’s web site.) The book was first published that year, and when it kept selling for more than a decade, revised for a new edition published in 2017. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/12/london-a-life-in-maps-by-peter-whitfield/
Sep 08 2018
“‘This is bullshit,’ I mumbled, through tears of exhaustion and frustration. The chances of the 4×4 climbing the snowy Goderdzi Pass were as slim as the likelihood that the bus stop at the summit was the prize I so desperately sought. Why was I still doing this after fifteen years, why couldn’t I stop?” (p. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/08/soviet-bus-stops-volume-ii-by-christopher-herwig/
Sep 04 2018
Since June 1 of this year, and through October 28, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford have been displaying an extraordinary selection of items from their Tolkien collection. The original map of the Lonely Mountain, complete with pointing hand and runic inscription. Watercolors by Tolkien of Hobbiton, of Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug, of the Eagles, of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/04/tolkien-maker-of-middle-earth/
Jul 10 2018
So I thought that reading this on my Fire would be superior to reading on my Paperwhite but the sketches weren’t formatted very well for Kindle so meh. I did really like the idea, tho, that you could find clues in the sketches to help you solve the mystery (why yes I was a Cam …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/10/the-con-artist-by-fred-van-lente/
Apr 23 2018
The Secret Lives of Color fairly leaped off the display table at me. Once I had it in my hands, I had to own it. The book itself is an argument for books as tangible objects, thanks to the efforts of designer James Edgar and the production team at Penguin who all made it such …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/23/the-secret-lives-of-color-by-kassia-st-clair/
Mar 07 2018
I should not have taken as long as I did to get through China Miéville’s novella, The Last Days of New Paris. The main story is less than 180 pages; the afterword tacks on another 15 or so, and I mostly did not read the notes that are appended afterward. That the words “get through” …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/07/the-last-days-of-new-paris-by-china-mieville/
Mar 20 2017
There are not a lot of words in this book of photography, and the subject is laid out right there in the title. Soviet Bus Stops sounds like it could be terribly dry, almost a parody of narrow history, but no, it’s a glimpse into an interesting and vanishing world. Photographer Christopher Herwig bicycled from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/03/20/soviet-bus-stops-by-christopher-herwig/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire