May 24 2017
The important information on this book’s cover is the subtitle, Conversations with Robert Silverberg. Traveler of Worlds is entirely a set of interviews with Silverberg, who recently passed 80 years of age. He’s one of the grand old men of science fiction; he has attended every Hugo award ceremony; he was incredibly prolific back in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/24/traveler-of-worlds-by-alvaro-zinos-amaro/
Jun 20 2016
Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/
May 11 2016
“Did he have an interesting life?” asked a friend when I mentioned that I had started reading Einstein — His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. Yes, he did, very interesting, and Isaacson is an able chronicler. More interesting than previously known, in fact; Isaacson used sources that were newly available at the time of writing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/11/einstein-his-life-and-universe-by-walter-isaacson/
Feb 08 2016
First of all, this book is presented as fiction but is really the life story of the remarkable Aylin De Vrimel (Radomisli-Cates, tho she’s never referred to as such,) written by a cousin who clearly hero-worshipped her. The prologue, presenting Aylin’s funeral after her mysterious death, is written in an embarrassingly maudlin way; fortunately, the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/08/aylin-by-ayse-kulin/
Jan 12 2016
I purchased The Art of Travel on the way out of town during a spring break beach trip. The options at the Baylor Bookstore (the prep school, not the university), were limited to the sorts of things high schoolers either should read (such as Night by Elie Wiesel) or must read (insert Shakespeare title …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/01/12/the-art-of-travel-by-alain-de-botton/
Sep 04 2015
Just shy of halfway through Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson relaxes and lets her characters — her immediate family, for this is a memoir — tell their stories without too much authorial interference. Before that, the set pieces feel a bit like set pieces, and it has a sense of an author putting on …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/04/life-among-the-savages-by-shirley-jackson/
Jul 04 2015
So I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms (due to Personal Issues,) but my greatest takeaway from this novel is, in the end, who can explain these things? I’m not sure if that was A. Manette Ansay’s point (and if it was, I completely missed it) but I felt …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/good-things-i-wish-you-by-a-manette-ansay/
Jul 04 2015
So how to describe this book without devolving into a slew of Personal Issues that had me sobbing so hard at points in the book that I had to set it aside and just cry from the relief of knowing that someone, somewhere, experienced the same pain and came out intact and even, dare I …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/one-life-my-mothers-story-by-kate-grenville/
Apr 30 2015
The back of the dust jacket of So, Anyway… by John Cleese gives the book an unofficial subtitle, “The Making of a Python,” and indeed, that is what all but one of the book’s chapters describes. There are a few flash-forwards, or asides regarding later events, but the bulk of the story concerns what happened …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/30/so-anyway-by-john-cleese/
Dec 25 2014
This is a fascinating story, in a way that only a true story can be. It is the story of a young man for whom ambition was the guiding force in his life from earliest boyhood. To hear Caro tell it, Johnson was planning to be president when he was just a boy growing up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/25/the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-the-path-to-power-by-robert-caro/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire