Sep 09 2016
Seven-year-old Alexandra Ridgemont loves chocolate Yoo-Hoo drinks and the lobster tank at the supermarket in the small Indiana town where she lives with her archaeologist parents. The lobsters are the same bright red as her hair. But the lobsters are sad. They always beg her to let them out of the tank. Alex ignores …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/09/made-you-up-by-francesca-zappia/
Aug 30 2016
I love so much how my experiences with Jo Walton’s books just get better and better. I spent the climactic scene of The Just City with one hand clutched to my breast, knowing something terrible was coming and feeling a kind of horror and relief when it finally did — horror because it truly was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/08/30/the-just-city-by-jo-walton-2/
Aug 19 2016
So much of this book is an exercise in narrative tension: you know something terrible is coming, and you know the general shape of it, but you’re waiting for the details to… I don’t know, ram it home? At one point — in what was, to me, one of the more compelling passages in the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/08/19/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-by-lionel-shriver/
May 01 2016
I love historical fiction. I don’t often read it (and too often fall into the trap of reading historical fantasy, which I’ve found to be an extremely problematic genre,) but I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how good historical fiction is. Perhaps that has to do as much with the nature of the author who goes …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/01/the-last-kingdom-by-bernard-cornwell/
Apr 22 2016
The Song Of The Lark is the story of how a small town girl becomes a famous opera singer by staying true to her instincts and artistic vision. Thea Kronberg is a difficult person to like: her talent and sensitivity mark her as a tall poppy to her detractors, but also attract the interest of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/22/the-song-of-the-lark-by-willa-cather/
Apr 09 2016
Nearly a month after reading The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra, I am still thinking about what made me uneasy while reading it. The nine interlinked stories themselves are a fabulous artistic achievement. Set primarily in Russia’s far north and far south, an Arctic mining center and Chechnya, they range back and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/09/the-tsar-of-love-and-techno-by-anthony-marra/
Mar 08 2016
You’d think a book this slim wouldn’t be so hard to properly review. There were things I really, really liked about it, primary among them being the all too realistic depiction of frustration and desperation at joblessness and alienation in a city that should be providing opportunities but is, instead, serving primarily as an exhausting …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/08/the-beautiful-beaureaucrat-by-helen-phillips/
Feb 08 2016
First of all, this book is presented as fiction but is really the life story of the remarkable Aylin De Vrimel (Radomisli-Cates, tho she’s never referred to as such,) written by a cousin who clearly hero-worshipped her. The prologue, presenting Aylin’s funeral after her mysterious death, is written in an embarrassingly maudlin way; fortunately, the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/08/aylin-by-ayse-kulin/
Dec 27 2015
In which I read a book simply because it has won the 2015 Man Booker prize, and am somewhat disappointed. I read just about everything on the 2015 Man Booker short list because I wanted to. This was one of the ones I didn’t read, and now I’m regretting a bit that it won, because …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/27/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-2/
Mar 02 2015
Product Details: Hardcover: 258 pages Reading Level: Age 18+ Publisher: Oceanview Publishing (May 5, 2015) ISBN-10: 1608091457 ISBN-13: 978-1608091454 Publisher’s Description: Imagine a helpless, pregnant 16-year-old who’s just been yanked from the serenity of her home and shoved into a dirty van. Kidnapped…Alone…Terrified. Now forget her… Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/02/method-1533-by-shannon-kirk/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire