Retconning, so as to have a copy of these online as well. This was the year of moving to Moscow and out of Moscow. Most of my books were in storage the full year.
Thirty-nine in total; none in German; ten in electronic form after receiving a Kindle for Christmas in 2011.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Londongrad by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia
Armageddon Averted by Stephen Kotkin
One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin
From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
He Lover of Death by Boris Akunin
Distrust that Particular Flavor by William Gibson
The Possessed by Elif Batuman
The Diamond Chariot by Boris Akunin
The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
Country Driving by Peter Hessler
Kraken by China Mieville
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Nothing but the Truth by Anna Politikovskaya
The Future History of the Arctic by Charles Emmerson
Yello Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein
More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
Among Others by Jo Walton
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/01/05/taking-stock-of-2012/
This book deals with many important and socially relevant issues, such as racism, imperialism, colonialism, and the White Man’s Burden. Unfortunately, these important issues fail to compensate for the fact that this is an exceedingly dull story. There were parts of this book that made me feel profoundly disgusted, but other than that it left me cold. A disappointing effort from a normally brilliant author.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/12/10/burmese-days-by-george-orwell/
Most of us are familiar with Animal Farm and 1984; this story of a clergyman’s daughter living in 1930’s England is far more grim and depressing than any of Orwell’s totalitarian dystopias. Orwell the freethinker sees the Christian life as nothing but unrelieved hypocrisy, cant, and flummery, a way of making you feel like you are a good person as long as you are making yourself miserable. Perhaps the Anglican Church in prewar England was indeed a discouraging spectacle; certainly the manners and mores of most English people in that period seem to have been less than life-embracing. The characters in this novel are mostly shabby and small; even the better ones are hardly heroic, but I cannot believe that the English were ever such an utterly mean and joyless people as Orwell makes them out to be, and in his scant regard for the established church he misses the spirit of true Christianity. In some ways this was an informative description of English society, but it was not a good story.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/09/22/a-clergymans-daughter-by-george-orwell/
I think of “soul” as another word for consciousness, but Aristotle says remarkably little about consciousness in this book. For Aristotle the primary characteristic of the soul is that it moves or animates the body. The secondary characteristic is that it is endowed with perception through the physical sense organs. By the time he comes to the subject of intellect, imagination, and desire, his writing is very confused. There are some intriguing ideas in this work, but I find Aristotle’s writing highly technical and excruciatingly dull, not the sort of thing I would take with me to the beach or on a long flight. And much of his thinking relating to physiology we now know to be flat out wrong. A good early start in Western thought, but one that left much to be improved on.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/08/21/de-anima-by-aristotle/
Excellent book. If anyone wants to know how a pitifully small nation, surrounded by implacable enemies, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, can resoundingly defeat those enemies in six days, this is the book to read. The author is a card-carrying Israeli Jew, but he gives a thoroughly balanced treatment of the events leading up to the war, the war itself, and the war’s aftermath. The figure of Nasser looms large in this account, portrayed as an inspired leader but ultimately a tragic figure who was destroyed by what for his people was a disastrous and humiliating defeat. But for Israel and for the Jewish people, the war represents a glorious triumph and a historic vindication that their God is still with them. Kola kavod!
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/08/04/six-days-of-war-by-michael-oren/
Uneven, but some of these stories were pretty good. The scariest story was about an obsessive-compulsive whose condition is contagious. There is more than one story that is basically a revenge fantasy, which makes me wonder what goes on in King’s head these days. And there is more than one story featuring the stock King character of the Mean Rich Old Man of the type that appeared in *Bag of Bones*, something tells me King has come across this type of person more than once in his life. This is the kind of book to pass the time between connecting flights; none of these stories were really memorable, with the exception of “The Cat from Hell,” which is an all-time King classic. But King seems to have an ongoing propensity to churn out short stories as well as novels, which is an enviable talent.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/07/13/just-after-sunset-by-stephen-king/
When I first read this, I thought it was the worst novel I had ever read. On a second reading, however, it comes off remarkably well. It’s much funnier than I remembered the first time around, and somehow the ending seems more poignant now. It’s not one of Bukowski’s best, but it’s still Bukowski: funny, misanthropic, uninhibited, darkly philosophical. The first time I read it I would have given it a one star rating, but now I’m giving it four stars. I believe this is the last thing Bukowski published in his lifetime; it’s worth reading just to see his last printed words, which are as cynical and unrepentant as ever. And yet…there is beauty here, some roses growing out of the garbage heap. Bukowski has been dead for twenty years, but his brilliant, bitter words live on.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/07/09/pulp-by-charles-bukowski/
Tuchman’s thesis is that governments frequently, through sheer obstinacy and stupidity, do things that are injurious to their own interests. She cites four primary historical examples: the Trojans in the Trojan War, the papacy preceding the Reformation, the British government during the American Revolution, and the government of the United States during the Vietnam War. But it is when she gets to Vietnam that you get the feeling that this is primarily what she has been leading up to and is her primary purpose in writing this book. Tuchman seems to believe that political power has a way of insulating leaders from reality until it is too late, and that it is easier for leaders to stick to a faulty plan than to admit a mistake and make a course correction. However persuasive her arguments are…and they are fairly persuasive…this book makes a nice trip through history and is as enjoyable for its narrative rendering as it is for its polemics
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/06/18/the-march-of-folly-by-barbara-tuchman/
This was a deliciously written book about the turn of the century, an era little remarked upon by most historians. The era throughout seems to be one of marked class antagonism, although if there is a theme to this book, it is that the oppressed and toiling masses are no wiser or more virtuous than the elites who rule over them. The book leads up to what looks like a victory for labor and socialism, only to crash on the rocks of the First World War. The story is illuminated by profiles of remarkable personalities on both Left and Right, statesmen, rabble-rousers, and men of letters, who form a kind of gentlemen’s club above the fray of the times. As with most history, the story of the Common Man is lost in this discussion of distinguished individuals who claim to speak for him. Yet this is a remarkable book that fills in a crucial gap in my ongoing studies of Western Civilization.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/05/13/the-proud-tower-by-barbara-tuchman/
This play is surprisingly good for one of Shakespeare’s lesser known works. It is a story of shifting alliances and treachery in a world that is constantly uncertain. Surprisingly, a character known simply as “the Bastard,” who is surely fictional, is the central and most sympathetic character in the story, proving himself a pole of constancy and unbroken loyalty in an ever-changing and faithless world. King John himself is hardly sympathetic, but his enemies are hardly any more noble. This is a very short drama, but it packs a punch, and it seems to me unjustly overlooked among Shakespeare’s admittedly massive canon.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/04/19/king-john-by-william-shakespeare/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire