Feb 25 2017
“Schiller’s Wallenstein is so great that there is nothing else like it.” — Goethe How’s that for a blurb? Goethe didn’t just offer praise, he directed the premiere of all three parts of Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy. The third, Wallenstein’s Death (published as Wallenstein II, as the two previous plays comprise the first volume), comes from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/25/wallenstein-ii-by-friedrich-schiller/
Feb 23 2017
Going back to books that I read and enjoyed ages ago can be a hazardous thing. What if the Suck Fairy has paid a visit in the meantime? Should I just let those happy memories lie undisturbed? I, Robot certainly offered the opportunity. The book that collects nine Asimov stories was first published in 1950. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/23/i-robot-by-isaac-asimov/
Feb 22 2017
An Acceptable Time strikes me as unusually autumnal for a young adult novel. Meg, the heroine of A Wrinkle in Time, has moved off-stage in this, the fifth novel of the Time quintet. Her daughter Polly shares the spotlight with her parents (Polly’s grandparents), Alex and Kate Murray, doctors of physics and chemistry, respectively. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/22/an-acceptable-time-by-madeleine-lengle/
Feb 04 2017
The best thing about zipping through Wikipedia’s entry on these two plays by Friedrich Schiller — the first volume of Schiller’s Wallenstein plays comprises Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp) and Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini) — was learning that Goethe directed both premieres. (He also directed the premiere of the trilogy’s third part, but I am still …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/04/wallenstein-i-by-friedrich-schiller/
Jan 03 2017
Owen Hatherley places Landscapes of Communism at an intersection of several modes: serious but not academic architectural criticism; political and social history, as reflected in a region’s built environment; companion for both travellers and residents; and thoughts on living in cities shaped by different social systems. Hatherley writes early on that he uses the term …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/03/landscapes-of-communism-by-owen-hatherley/
Jan 02 2017
Twenty books into Discworld, Terry Pratchett has set up enough pieces of furniture in the various fictional rooms on the Disc that moving just a few of them around is bound to produce something interesting. In Hogfather, he has Death, Death’s granddaughter Susan, a member of the Assassins’ Guild who’s too good at what he …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/02/hogfather-by-terry-pratchett/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/02/taking-stock-of-2016/
Dec 21 2016
Both reading and writing have slowed significantly since November 8, and not only because of the election, though that has certainly played a major part in my slowdown. Time for some short takes, to clear the desk for the coming year. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I read this in the summer, and I’ve been searching …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/21/wrapping-up/
Nov 02 2016
Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels of the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, came late to the English-speaking world. Baptism of Fire, the third novel in a long narrative about Geralt, about wars overwhelming the world that he knows, and about a child of prophecy, was published in Poland in 1996. It was published in English in 2014, by …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/02/baptism-of-fire-by-andrzej-sapkowski/
Nov 01 2016
One of the descriptions of Neil Gaiman that has stuck in my head is “reasonably facile writer.” He used the phrase in a New Yorker profile back in 2010, and there’s a British self-deprecating quality to the description, but there’s more than a little truth to it, too. Gaiman writes quickly, and with reasonable facility, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/01/the-view-from-the-cheap-seats-by-neil-gaiman/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire