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 …
Category: Germany
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/21/wrapping-up/
Oct 05 2016
The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, ending more than four years of terrible war in Europe. First as Armistice Day and later as Remembrance Day, European (and Commonwealth) countries even now commemorate the end of the First World War nearly a century after …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/05/the-vanquished-by-robert-gerwarth/
Sep 16 2016
Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller
This spring I went to Weimar. It’s a good weekend outing from Berlin, about three hours by train, and it’s lovely in May. The park on the Ilm, in particular, is splendid, with views and points of interest coming in and out of sight just as Goethe had intended. His country house, where he lived …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/16/die-rauber-by-friedrich-schiller/
May 25 2016
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Soon after reading The Collapse was just the right time to pick up Europe at Midnight, Dave Hutchinson’s second book set in a Europe that kept right on collapsing after 1989 and, by the unspecified date of the story, sends more than 500 entrants each year to the Eurovision Song Contest. Europe at Midnight splinters …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/25/europe-at-midnight-by-dave-hutchinson/
May 12 2016
The Collapse by Mary Elise Sarotte
In The Collapse, Mary Elise Sarotte engages in a very close examination of the events in East Germany that led up to the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and a nearly minute-by-minute analysis of the day itself. Not quite an eyewitness to the events herself, though she is of an age …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/12/the-collapse-by-mary-elise-sarotte/
May 11 2016
Einstein — His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
“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/
May 05 2016
The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood
As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/
Dec 20 2015
From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe
For those of us in love with the history of Architecture, there are a myriad of scholarly works, photo essays, and the like, many of which are unexceptional reading. But, if there was a book that introduced “out of the box” thinking to 20th century architectural concepts, this is probably it. A classic from 1981, I imagine most …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/20/from-bauhaus-to-our-house-by-tom-wolfe/
Nov 06 2015
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
So you get to the one part in the book (and anyone who’s read it will know what I’m talking about) and you stop, stunned. And you go back and you read the last part over again. And if you’re me, and essentially a British schoolgirl at your core, like Maddy you burst into uncontrollable …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/06/code-name-verity-by-elizabeth-wein/
Jul 27 2015
Simple Storys by Ingo Schulze
Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist Poland, Andrzej Sapkowski produced The Time of Contempt. Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist eastern Germany, Ingo Schulze produced Simple Storys (the plural is not correct in German either; it’s symptomatic of the anglicisms and pseudo-anglicisms that entered the language at that time). The two books could hardly be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/27/simple-storys-by-ingo-schulze/