Sep 09 2022
Author Christina Soontornvat wasn’t sure whether anyone would care about her experiences with middle school, but was eventually persuaded to write about one of the most cringe episodes of her own pre-teen career in this wryly moving graphic novel. I’m so glad she did. It’s not easy being one of the few Thai people in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/09/the-tryout-a-graphic-novel-by-christina-soontornvat-joanna-cacao/
Apr 12 2022
Adrian “The Colombian Cannon” Molina is obsessed with football and dreams of being recruited to Nottingham FC. He knows he has talent, but he also knows he has a lot of work to do despite being a part of the Bogota Condors, Colombia’s premier U17 football team. During an exhibition match against England’s Regents United, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/12/world-class-by-jay-sandlin-patrick-mulholland-rebecca-nalty-justin-birch/
Apr 08 2022
Oof, this is a gut punch of a book, that tackles not only how racism affects high school athletes but also how relationships fade away as graduation and college loom nearer. Eleanor “Leni” Greenberg and Chanel “Nelly” Irons are best friends and members of their high school’s competitive cheerleading team. In the summer leading up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/08/why-we-fly-by-kimberly-jones-gilly-segal/
Aug 12 2021
A coming-of-age novel with a queer country girl narrator playing sports and learning to interrogate her internalized misogyny while embracing who she is despite the opposition of certain members of her small town, including her nearest and dearest? I was wholly on-board even before I started reading Britta Lundin’s terrific, lived-in prose, and now I …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/12/like-other-girls-by-britta-lundin/
Oct 26 2020
When I was younger, I loved a good climb. Mostly of trees and free-standing structures, tho if I’d had a shot at a climbing wall, I’d have totally been up for that, too. So when my college roommates invited me to join the hiking club, you’d think I’d be all in. Unfortunately, club hiking required …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/26/above-all-else-by-dana-alison-levy/
Mar 03 2020
As a teenager who never really “fit in” but who got along just fine with my peers because I was happy with myself and didn’t really care about what other people thought, my number one favorite kind of novel was about protagonists who didn’t fit in and didn’t really care either. You know how rare …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/03/every-reason-we-shouldnt-every-reason-we-shouldnt-1-by-sara-fujimura/
Feb 11 2019
Y’all, that was delightful. Ngl, I totally pictured Bradley Cooper and JLaw in the roles (and had to suffer the cognitive dissonance of her being way too young to play Tiffany) but that aside, I was incredibly moved by this surprisingly gentle tale of lost love, mental illness and sports fandom. Pat Peoples is not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/11/the-silver-linings-playbook-by-matthew-quick/
Apr 22 2018
Absolutely cracking depiction of the lifestyle of a professional English footballer in and around the 1990s. Paul Merson is an Arsenal legend whose off-the-field antics were just as noteworthy as his sporting accomplishments, tho perhaps in a far different context. Merse is a larger than life figure who was as well known for his ebullient …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/22/how-not-to-be-a-professional-footballer-by-paul-merson/
Oct 26 2016
I requested this book from NetGalley because the premise sounded hella intriguing: in 2054, the Virtual Gaming League hosts VR gladiatorial combat tournaments, with participants feeling all the pain of their avatars, despite the injuries and deaths staying virtual. The first female team captain in the history of the combats, Kali Ling, challenges the structure …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/26/arena-by-holly-jennings/
Mar 12 2016
Partway through reading this delightful romp of a boarding school tale, I realized that my entire consumption of the genre to date has been nearly exclusively female-centric, starring Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s and Mallory Towers series (of course,) with a side of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School and a soupcon of American tales, including the delightful …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/12/mike-at-wrykyn-by-p-g-wodehouse/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire