Category: Non-fiction

What I Must Tell The World by Jay Leslie & Loveis Wise

subtitled How Lorraine Hansberry Found Her Voice Oh, y’all, I don’t even know why I’m crying. No, actually, I suspect I do: I am shamed, and for once not in a bad way, and challenged by the courage it took for playwright Lorraine Hansberry to follow her dreams and live honestly in an era potentially …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/25/what-i-must-tell-the-world-by-jay-leslie-loveis-wise/

The Ultimate Guide To Dollywood by Erin K Browne

What a delightful way to either plan for a trip to the musical icon’s theme park or to just daydream about eventually going! While this unofficial guide doesn’t go into the history of Dollywood, it’s certainly a loving look at the largest employer in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near the birthplace of living legend Dolly Parton. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/22/the-ultimate-guide-to-dollywood-by-erin-k-browne/

Vintage Birds: A Guidebook And Matching Game by Roger J. Lederer

For someone who’s not terribly outdoorsy, I really enjoy birds. I love bird art and have somehow, over the years, amassed a shocking amount of knowledge for someone who’s never really studied birds outside of appreciating their artistic depictions. I mean, I recently made it to the Championships of the latest Birds Mini League on …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/14/vintage-birds-a-guidebook-and-matching-game-by-roger-j-lederer/

Sticky Notes by Matthew Eicheldinger

subtitled Memorable Lessons from Ordinary Moments. I’ve been kind of a mess these past few weeks, even before the dismal US election results and definitely after, so this book was a wonderful antidote for despair. It isn’t entirely perfect — the vignette about Hiking Boots made me go “yeah, sure, he wound up going back …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/12/sticky-notes-by-matthew-eicheldinger/

Sitting On A Rock by Gary L Brinderson

Oh poetry, thou fickle siren, luring thousands of writers into your gentle-seeming embrace only to let them flounder on the sharp rocks of skill that underpin you. So here’s the deal, dear readers. Poetry is about image and emotion. Back in the day, it also used to be about form and rhyme. For better or …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/30/sitting-on-a-rock-by-gary-l-brinderson/

Twinkle, Twinkle, Nighttime Sky by Elizabeth Everett & Beatriz Castro

This is 100% the book you should buy for any astronomy-minded young readers you have! Throughout the pages of this picture book, a diverse set of children look at and learn about the nighttime sky, with accompanying text set roughly to the cadence of the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star nursery rhyme. Whether they’re outdoor campers …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/28/twinkle-twinkle-nighttime-sky-by-elizabeth-everett-beatriz-castro/

Gaza Faces History by Enzo Traverso

translated from the original Italian by Willard Wood. This review is going to require a lot of background on me as a reviewer so buckle up, or feel free to scroll down till you get to the parts that are primarily about this book, around six paragraphs down. When I was a girl growing up …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/17/gaza-faces-history-by-enzo-traverso/

I Will Do Better by Charles Bock

subtitled A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love. Perhaps my most popular and controversial review over on Goodreads is of an absolutely abysmal “parenting” memoir by a blogger who lost his wife in childbirth and struggled to raise their child on his own afterwards. I have genuine sympathy for his situation — with my …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/11/i-will-do-better-by-charles-bock/

Goth Parenting by Casey Gilly & Robin Robinson

subtitled The Dark Joys of Raising Baby Bats. Readers, everything is making me emotional recently. Whether it was yesterday’s Camp Twisted Pine stabbing me in the heart again with a pain first inflicted almost a year prior, to today’s wonderful Goth Parenting reinforcing to this tired (and temporarily single) mom that I’m doing okay if …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/17/goth-parenting-by-casey-gilly-robin-robinson/

Mindful With Me: Connecting With Your Child Through Daily Mindfulness by Sarah Dennehy

with charming illustrations throughout by Natalie Garber Martin. My middle child has a problem: sometimes when he gets frustrated, even over the most seemingly innocuous of things, he’ll have a crying, screaming, snot-filled emotional meltdown in absolutely no proportion to the triggering incident. This doesn’t happen to either of my other children, who tend to …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/12/mindful-with-me-connecting-with-your-child-through-daily-mindfulness-by-sarah-dennehy/