Tag: Doug

A Famine of Horses by P.F. Chisholm

A Famine of Horses by P.F. Chisholm

The same friend who, ages ago, recommended I read Dorothy Dunnett suggested I picks up books by P.F. Chisholm, and this how bookish friendships are sustained over decades. We don’t always like the same things — Little, Big left her cold — but she seldom goes astray when she says she thinks I will like something. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/03/a-famine-of-horses-by-p-f-chisholm/

Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

After two Vorkosigan books that are outliers in the larger series — Shards of Honor because it was the first; Ethan of Athos because it’s about an unusual planet — Brothers in Arms returns to what I think of as the main sequence of the saga: books about the life of Miles Vorkosigan. Brothers in …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/14/brothers-in-arms-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/

The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin

The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin

What’s the difference between a very long online discussion and a labyrinth? What if the thread is started by someone called Ariadne? “I shall construct a labyrinth in which I can lose myself, together with anyone who tries to find me — who said this and about what?” (p. 1) What if the participants all say …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/13/the-helmet-of-horror-by-victor-pelevin/

Die Physiker by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Die Physiker (The Physicists) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Dr Miss Mathilde von Zahnd runs one of the most renowned, and one of the most expensive, private psychiatric clinics in all of Switzerland. The enormous fees paid by the rich clientele — in the stage notes before the play proper, Dürrenmatt speaks of moronic millionaires, schizophrenic authors, arteriosclerotic politicians — have enabled most of the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/12/die-physiker-by-friedrich-durrenmatt/

And Go Like This by John Crowley

And Go Like This by John Crowley

And Go Like This collects nine works of Crowley’s shorter fiction that were originally published between 2002 and 2018, plus the final story “Anosognosia” — when a person cannot recognize that they have a disability because of an underlying condition — which was published for the first time in this volume. They range in length from …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/06/and-go-like-this-by-john-crowley/

False Value by Ben Aaronovitch

False Value by Ben Aaronovitch

Because of the way that Lies Sleeping ended, Peter Grant finds himself suspended, temporarily he hopes, from the London’s Metropolitan Police. Because expenses don’t stop just because a job does, he signs up to work in the security department of one of London’s biggest and flashiest IT start-ups, the Serious Cybernetics Corporation. The founder, an …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/05/false-value-by-ben-aaronovitch/

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Mein litauischer Fürherschein — My Lithuanian Driver’s License — carries the subtitle “Ausflüge zum Ende der europäischen Union,” “Excursions to the End of the European Union.” He means one of the geographic ends of course, not the demise of the Union. I’m not sure I would have chosen Lithuania as the end of the Union …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/29/mein-litauischer-fuhrerschein-by-felix-ackermann/

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

One of the things that science fiction writers have learned how to do in the 206 years since Frankenstein was first published is how to bring their readers along with the new elements of the world that they put into their stories. Most of the time, they take care to make the fantastic elements plausible …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/28/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-2/

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, Pt. 3

One of the many astonishing things that Richard Rhodes does in The Making of the Atomic Bomb is to match the tone and pace of each of the major sections to their theme. It’s common enough in good novels, but uncommon in non-fiction, and vanishingly rare in a non-fiction work of this size and scope. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-3/

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

Everybody who’s anybody among Berlin’s dead craves an invitation to Frau Altenshul’s salon. She has devoted her afterlife — much as she had devoted her life — to beauty, whether that was beautiful music, beautiful art, or the simple beauty of conversation among like-minded people. Max Liebermann was a painter who had lived a long life, …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/21/das-konzert-by-hartmut-lange/