Sep 15 2021
I honestly wasn’t sure when I started reading this book where Catherine Baab-Muguira was going with it, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure how to categorize this work now that I’m done reading it either. I do know that I finished reading this with stars in my eyes and hope in my …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/15/poe-for-your-problems-uncommon-advice-from-historys-least-likely-self-help-guru-by-catherine-baab-muguira/
May 10 2021
I thought I had a fairly good knowledge of obscure Victorian women who became explorers against the odds, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn of yet another one via this beautiful picture book for children (tho I continue to be chagrined by eras and societies that deny people opportunities on the basis of sex …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/10/fearless-world-traveler-adventures-of-marianne-north-botanical-artist-by-laurie-lawlor-becca-stadtlander/
Apr 14 2021
I’m glad that Leo de Hartog did not title this biography A Life of Genghis Khan because there is astonishingly little life between its covers. I would have thought the biography of someone who rose from a tribal noble to rule the largest land empire this world has ever known would be positively gripping, but …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/14/genghis-khan-by-leo-de-hartog/
Sep 14 2019
On the second page of his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson offers a thumbnail sketch of his subject: “He was, during his eighty-four-year-long life, America’s best scientist, inventor, dimplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/14/benjamin-franklin-by-walter-isaacson/
Mar 09 2019
Because I am all about timely reading, I have just finished The Bridge, whose subtitle is The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, and which was published in 2010. As Remnick explains in the acknowledgments, his “hope was to write a piece of biographical journalism that, through interviews with his contemporaries and certain historical actors, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/09/the-bridge-by-david-remnick/
Feb 10 2019
Don’t Panic, subtitled Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a labor of friendship in 1987 when Nick Landau of Titan Books, which had Adams’ agreement to write a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy companion book, called up Neil Gaiman “and asked if I was interested. I wanted to write this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/10/dont-panic-by-neil-gaiman/
Jun 22 2017
I always love an older female crime solver, and Celine is hopefully the first in a series featuring such a heroine, loosely based on the author’s mother, who was also a blue blood debutante turned private investigator, handling primarily cases of family reunion. Hired by a beautiful middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/22/celine-a-novel-by-peter-heller/
May 24 2017
The important information on this book’s cover is the subtitle, Conversations with Robert Silverberg. Traveler of Worlds is entirely a set of interviews with Silverberg, who recently passed 80 years of age. He’s one of the grand old men of science fiction; he has attended every Hugo award ceremony; he was incredibly prolific back in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/24/traveler-of-worlds-by-alvaro-zinos-amaro/
Jun 20 2016
Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/
May 11 2016
“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/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire