Sep 17 2023

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

Odd reports from the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground have come to the attention of Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit he’s a part of. They’ve come through as part of a project to deal with sexual assaults and offensive behavior on the transport system, and part of that was “improving reporting rates for those offences, which meant convincing victims we were taking them seriously. So when you get a cluster of complaints about assaults by ‘a man who wasn’t there’ you don’t just bin them. You pass them to the people who are responsible for weird shit, i.e., me and [Sergeant] Jaget [Kumar].” (p. 6) Wait a minute. “‘A man who wasn’t there?’ I said.” (p. 6) Indeed. Five reports of people being variously pushed, groped, shouted at or racially abused. Common element: no apparent perpetrator.

Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

“Where it got weird was in the follow ups.” (p. 6) Not only was there no apparent perpetrator, the victims denied having made any calls from their mobiles to the police, despite logs on both the phones and from the police, as well as transcripts of the conversations. Officers who made later follow-up visits said they believed the victims genuinely had no recollection of the incidents. A detail that caught my eye was archaic, or at least peculiar, language used by the assailant. One transcript mentioned a victim being called a “Saracen,” for example. Those peculiarities and the lack of apparent connections or intimidation make it look even more like a case for Peter and company. When Jaget asks for his official view, he gives another flash of the bureaucratic jargon so lovingly mentioned in Foxglove Summer: “We at the Folly have embraced the potentialities of modern policing.” (p. 8)

With that, they’re off. Ghost-hunting on the Metropolitan line. Fortunately, Peter and Jaget spot a disturbance on a train the very first morning of their search. By the time they make their way through the cars, whatever-it-is has already happened. Aaronovitch shows a bit of police procedure by way of setting the stage for the supernatural. The two have figured out which passenger was the victim, a young white woman who

caught my eye because not only was her face flushed, but she kept sneaking looks at us and then pretending to be madly interested in her Kindle.
Me and Jaget did some professional looming until we’d cleared enough space for me to crouch down and, in my best non-intimidating voice, ask whether she was alright. In case you’re wondering, that blokey sing-song timbre with a reassuring touch of regional — in my case cockney — accent is entirely deliberate. We actually practise it in front of a mirror. It’s designed to convey the message that we’re totally friendly, customer-facing modern police officers who have nothing but your wellbeing at the core of our mission statement — but nonetheless we are not going to go away until you talk to us. Sorry, but that’s just how we roll. (p. 3)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/17/the-furthest-station-by-ben-aaronovitch/

Sep 16 2023

Memoirs of the Polish Baroque by Jan Chryzostom Pasek

More properly: The Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a Squire of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania edited, translated, with an introduction and notes by Catherine S. Leach because a title appropriate to the era is important.

If Sir John Falstaff walked off of Shakespeare’s stage and wrote his memoirs, they would read a lot like Memoirs of the Polish Baroque. Admittedly, Pasek lived 300 years later than England’s Henry IV, but the type is nearly immortal. Pan — the rough Polish equivalent of “Sir” and pronounced “pahn” — Jan Chryzostom Pasek is a low-ranking nobleman out for renown, love, adventure, riches, land and titles if he can get them, and glory for his commander, king and country. He fights the Swedes with at least as much enthusiasm as Capt. Jack Aubrey showed for “thumping the Frenchies.” The Swedes having been mostly driven off, he fights against invading Muscovites just vigorously. He has fighting spirit left over for fellow Poles who have risen up against their king. His pugnaciousness never left him. He was mostly settled by 1667, when he had some land in the Krakow region. What happened next?

At the first session [of the local assembly of the gentry], the Kraków gentry began to slight me, calling me a newcomer. But I, after dealing one a punch in the head, another a punch in the nose, another on the back, was left in peace and no longer called a newcomer. (p. 203)

Memoirs of the Polish Baroque

Pasek is not just — in his telling — brave on the field of battle, clever in his stratagems, fortunate when swords are swinging, he is also a formidable orator, one of the most prized skills in the nobles’ republic of Poland-Lithuania. In the early 1660s, parts of the Polish army and nobility rebelled against the king, who had not paid them for their services in various wars, and who was otherwise reneging on promises made. Rebellion was lawful within the Commonwealth, provided certain forms were observed, when the elected monarch was held to be violating the oaths made at the start of his reign. In this rebellion, Pasek held to the royal party, but was at one point captured by confederates. Pasek recounts dueling speeches at a meeting of Senators and other grandees in Grodno, where he, a mere country gentleman, held his own against magnates and bishops, winning his freedom and making points for the king’s side. He didn’t quite end the rebellion single-handedly, if only because the historic record would have shown otherwise and Pasek was averse to telling entire untruths in his Memoirs. But the account that he does provide leaves no doubt about his view of his own importance.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/16/memoirs-of-the-polish-baroque-by-jan-chryzostom-pasek/

Sep 15 2023

How To Make A Peanut Butter Sandwich In 17 Easy Steps by Bambi Edlund

Children are, at once, natural simplifiers and complete over-complicaters, so books like this charming title are totally up their alley, as our anthropomorphic cast uses the power of teamwork to make sure that they’re all fed and happy.

Bambi Edlund opens her picture book with a list of all the things you’ll need to make a peanut butter sandwich, including assorted animals, fruit that may or may not end up in the final product, and a bunch of seemingly unrelated items such as a fallen log and a set of dancing clogs. Seventeen might sound like a lot of steps, but that number provides a strong hook for young readers, who will want to know what could possibly be so complicated about something as simple as making a peanut butter sandwich?

Ms Edlund answers that question with aplomb, satisfying both animal lovers and fans of Rube Goldberg-like machinations. My middle child had great fun reading this book with me, with his favorite part being how the animals were all well-rewarded for their hard work in the end. My eldest child was inspired by our reading to start making his own list of how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, enlisting aforementioned middle child in pretend labors as they exercised both imagination and logic while playing nicely together.

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Sep 13 2023

Photo Finished by Christin Brecher

I’ve been a big fan of Christin Brecher’s since her debut novel, Murder’s No Votive Confidence. The series that that book kicks off upends the (culinary) cozy formula in the best possible way, and is a must-read for me. I’m not actually sure if she’ll be writing any more of that series tho, as her attention now seems to be on her newer Snapshots Of NYC novels, of which Photo Finished is the first. Not that I begrudge her the change of direction, as this book is a hoot from start to finish!

PF introduces Liv Spyers, the college dropout and aspiring photographer who’s set up her small studio (and apartment) in the basement of her grandparents’ key shop, where she also helps out from time to time. Sending her resume out to various photography agencies has gotten her exactly zero callbacks, but no one ever succeeded in New York City by giving up at the first setback. When Regina Montague — renowned celebrity photographer and the owner of one of the highly successful studios that passed on Liv’s resume — comes into the key shop one day and mentions needing a photographer for an imminent gig, Liv immediately recommends herself. Regina is desperate enough to give her a shot, telling her when and where to show up to photograph a society debutante’s ball.

Liv is excited to snag the gig, not only for the pay but for the in that a successful night will give her with Regina’s agency. There’s only one small problem: her really good camera is still in the possession of a cute guy she had an unfortunately literal run-in with while on the subway earlier. Second best will have to do, but in an even weirder twist of fate, the cute guy himself is one of the (adult) guests at the ball.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/13/photo-finished-by-christin-brecher/

Sep 12 2023

The Green Witch’s Coloring Book by Arin Murphy-Hiscock & Sara Richards

subtitled From Enchanting Forest Scenes To Intricate Herb Gardens: Conjure The Colorful World Of Natural Magic.

Whether or not you’re already familiar with Arin Murphy-Hiscock’s Green Witch oeuvre, this is a delightful way to get to know it better. The experienced will love the way this coloring book enhances their existing practices, providing an activity that is both meditative and beautiful. The practical-minded like myself will also adore how functional this book is, as at the end of coloring each page, you’ll have made something beautiful enough to put up in your own home, perhaps as a reminder of your own Green Witch beliefs and ways. Several pages include prayers to go with the symbolism throughout, tho many pages are simply celebrations of the natural world.

This lack of heavy-handedness makes this book perfect for the novice, or even for those who aren’t particularly into this system of belief. There isn’t a ton of text, but the encouragement to open your heart to the magic of the natural world around you makes this an accessible way to learn a little more about what it means to be a Green Witch, even if that path is ultimately not for you.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/12/the-green-witchs-coloring-book-by-arin-murphy-hiscock-sara-richards/

Sep 07 2023

Der Verrückte des Zaren by Jaan Kross

The jacket copy from the Süddeutsche Zeitung edition of Jaan Kross’ historical novel The Tsar’s Madman, first published in 1978, is tough to beat for a concise summary. “In his diary, Jakob Mättik tells the dramatic story of his brother-in-law, the Baltic German nobleman Timotheus von Bock, who won not only renown in 1812 in the war against Napoleon but also the trust and friendship of Tsar Alexander I. Alexander wins a promise from Timotheus that he will always tell the Tsar the truth. Bock keeps his promise and presents the Tsar with a memorandum that mercilessly lays out the problems of the Russian Empire and does not hold back from criticizing the Tsar personally. … But his boldness is harshly punished: he is arrested and locked away. His pregnant wife Eeva, Jakob’s sister, is left behind. Nine years later, Bock is declared insane and released, but the new Tsar Nicholas I only allows Bock the life of house arrest on his estate with an overseer. Not only the overseer but also Jakob wonder whether Bock is just a dreamer, a rebel, or maybe an actual madman…”

Larger than life statue of Jaan Kross; next to that Doug Merrill holding a copy of Kross' book Der Verrückte des Zaren

Jaan Kross (l) and me in Tallinn holding a copy of Der Verrückte des Zaren

Jakob’s diary moves back and forth in time, describing not only the novel’s present when Timotheus has returned, but also the time of his arrest and how everyone — most particularly Eeva — coped with the absence of the lord of the manor. He also relates times further past, when Timotheus first took an interest in Eeva (and Jakob by extension) and how they came to be married. As a German-speaking noble, Timotheus is part of a class that had dominated Estonia since the 1200s and 1300s. The Russian Empire was a comparative latecomer, having wrested the Baltic shores from Swedish control in the early 1700s. By the time of The Tsar’s Madman, Russian monarchs had reigned over the region for a bit more than a century. The nobles were integrated in Russia’s high society, and travel to the Imperial court in St. Petersburg was a regular part of their lives. They served in Russia’s armed forces and followed the capital’s fashions, but in truth Russian suzerainty had done little to change relations on the manors that had persisted for centuries. The nobles’ society that Kross shows is Baltic and German; the few Russians who appear are either passing through or are on a particular mission with orders from the court.

The Estonians have, of course, been there all along. It is their labor that props up the entire system of nobility and empire, but neither the local Germans nor the sovereign Russians think that they count for much. Jakob himself does not name the Estonian language, he just calls it “the peasants’ tongue.” Kross knows better, of course. He wrote the novel in Estonian, and his work led to a revival of historical fiction in Estonian in the late Soviet period. Kross was born in the interwar Republic of Estonia, and he finished his studies of law during World War II, when Estonia was alternately occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. After the war, the Soviets deported him to Siberia, and he was held in the Gulag until 1954. When he returned, he found his law qualification was useless, as Soviet law had superseded Estonian, and Kross turned to writing to make a living. Historical subjects kept him clear of the worst of late Soviet censorship, and he became Estonia’s most-translated author. Kross outlived the Soviet Union, dying in 2007 in a Tallinn that was the capital of independent Estonia as it was when he was born.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/07/der-verruckte-des-zaren-by-jaan-kross/

Sep 06 2023

Die Känguru-Comics written by Marc-Uwe Kling

and illustrated by Bernd Kessel

One of twenty-first century Germany’s best-known characters is a kangaroo. Talking, obviously, but less obviously a Communist, a fan of Nirvana (“The band?” asks Marc-Uwe Kling, narrator of the stories. “No, the Beyond,” says the kangaroo, and after a pause, “Of course the band! You like to pose unnecessary questions!” “Yes,” says Marc-Uwe.), a self-proclaimed veteran of the Viet Cong, and an even bigger fan of alcohol-filled bon bons. The kangaroo first appeared at the door of Marc-Uwe Kling’s Berlin flat — in an episode chronicled in 2008 for local radio station Fritz — hoping to borrow a frying pan to make some savory pancakes.

Känguru Comics

It soon transpires that the kangaroo also needs to borrow some salt. And some flour. Each time, the kangaroo — having introduced itself as the new neighbor from across the hall — lets Marc-Uwe close the door and presumably goes back to its own apartment before ringing again seconds later to ask for the next ingredient. Eggs, milk and oil follow soon after. Having collected all the necessary ingredients, the kangaroo returns to admit that it doesn’t yet have a stove in its apartment. (German houses and apartments are often sold or rented as basically just the four walls: no light fixtures, no appliances, no cabinets until the new residents install them.) Marc-Uwe invites the kangaroo in to cook. When the kangaroo is about to make a mess of the process, he takes over. Then the kangaroo asks if he can add some ground beef. When Marc-Uwe says he’s out of that just now, the kangaroo says he should go and buy some, it doesn’t mind waiting. “But don’t shop at Lidl! The labor conditions there are terrible!”

That’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and a cultural phenomenon. The Kangaroo Chronicles started as radio sketches, got collected into a multi-hour CD set, won a German prize for comedy in 2010 and were published in book form. The sketches continued, soon followed by second (The Kangaroo Manifesto), third (The Kangaroo Revelation), and fourth (The Kangaroo Apocrypha) collections in both book and audio formats. By 2020, the first two books had sold at least 2.5 million copies in Germany, and the first audio collection (which runs to nearly six hours) had sold more than a million times.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/06/die-kanguru-comics-written-by-marc-uwe-kling/

Sep 05 2023

Dog’s Breakfast by Nicole J Georges

This book is quite straightforward about the contents including dog deaths, and I thought I was okay enough to read through all that, given that it’s been over a month since my own brave little Carl passed away. But the combination of Nicole J. Georges’ emotive storytelling and my own fresher-than-I-thought grief conspired to have me sobbing through the entire sections dealing with the deaths of her dogs, one so rapidly following on the other.

Even with that devastating experience aside, I found myself incredibly engaged with this collection of confessional comics and zines. Ms Georges writes in a way that makes me feel invested in her on-going endeavors, whether in the oblique references to her love and family lives, her careers in both cartoons and teaching, or just in her everyday concerns with her emotional and physical fitness. Perhaps it’s her disarming honesty that has me feeling so sympathetic to a life quite different from my own (or at least my own as it is now.) Reading her book felt almost like being entrusted with her diary. And I do mean that literally: it felt like I was being bestowed a gift, of trust, of confidence, of friendship at a remove, with this book.

So it was nice to settle in and read what felt like letters written to me from a friend, catching me up on her latest goings-on. Well, “latest”. These comics run from the first decade of the 2000s to the present day, tho the Invincible Summer zine projects span the decade from 2008-2018. It would probably help to already be familiar with Ms Georges’ work before diving in, but I had no difficulty losing myself in her stream of consciousness, as if we were old friends catching up again after being apart for a long while. To be clear: I don’t feel like I actually know her. I’m just grateful to have been given a chance to know these snapshots of her at those particular points in time.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/05/dogs-breakfast-by-nicole-j-georges/

Sep 01 2023

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

I like seeing writers stretching and trying new things. To date, and in addition to her short fiction which I have not read, Mary Robinette Kowal has published a completed series of five Regency romances with magical elements, an ongoing series of space exploration against the background of an Earth slipping into uninhabitability, a (so far) standalone novel set during the First World War in which spiritualism works, and a slightly spooky novella that’s a medium-future meditation on memory and authenticity. The Spare Man is an interplanetary mystery, set in a 2075 in which thousands of people can take a cruise from Earth to Mars for vacation. Permanent settlements on the moon and Mars are established enough that people can travel from one to another as tourists, but they remain in the background.

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

All of the action takes place on the International Space Ship Lindgren, an interplanetary vessel that Kowal says in her afterword about the science “is bonkers” and that “no one would actually build. Except a cruise line.” Kowal takes as her main characters a newly married couple: Tesla Crane, traumatized inventor and rich-as-Croesus heiress, and her husband Shal (short for Shalmaneser) Steward, a recently retired detective of some renown. They’ve taken a luxury cabin for their honeymoon cruise, and they’re accompanied by Tesla’s service dog, Gimlet, who’s a Westie.

The Spare Man is an homage to the “Thin Man” movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Kowal works to present an updated version of black-and-white Hollywood glamour in space — banter and cocktails, yes; smoking and a lily-white cast of characters, no. The movies were billed as comedic mysteries, all in good fun with the occasional dead body, and so it is with The Spare Man. I haven’t seen any of the movies, so I can’t speak to how far the parallels go, or how well Kowal translates the style to another era and to interplanetary space. I could tell that she had fun writing this story, and that came across even when her leading couple were terribly inconvenienced, if not in too too much danger. There’s a cocktail recipe at the start of each chapter. Some are traditional, some were made up for the book; some are alcoholic, some are zero-proof; all appear drinkable. And on the Lindgren, practically every hour is cocktail hour, at least for the rich and investigative.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/01/the-spare-man-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Aug 31 2023

The Queen’s Favourite Witch #2: The Lost King by Benjamin Dickson & Rachael Smith

The first volume of The Queen’s Favorite Witch turned out to be an unexpected surprise, combining historical fact with an empowering tale of believing in yourself, and ending with a shocking twist. I’m genuinely impressed with how Benjamin Dickson and Rachael Smith have continued this series with a book that, while not as big on plot twists as the first — and in fairness there are still a lot of twists here! — is certainly as fresh, smart and delightful.

Which are all words that could also be used to describe our heroine Daisy, the court-witch-in-training in the retinue of Queen Elizabeth I. Under the supervision of court magician John Dee and his assistant Valentyne, she does her best to learn the skills she’ll need not only to serve her monarch but to help her survive in desperate circumstances. If only Lord Globbard would stop filling up all her free time by insisting she exorcise the East Wing of Richmond Palace to his satisfaction! She’s pretty sure the wing isn’t actually haunted, even if she has started having weird dreams of a ghost asking her to help find the person who murdered him.

Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth herself is fending off her advisors’ insistence that she marry and provide an heir. The queen well knows that marrying will subjugate her to her king, who could very easily sideline her despite the excellent job she’s done running the country to date. But she finally concedes that there’s no harm in arranging for King Phillip of Spain to come visit, as a friendly gesture between nations whose relationship perhaps isn’t at its best.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/08/31/the-queens-favourite-witch-2-the-lost-king-by-benjamin-dickson-rachael-smith/