Oct 05 2025
Where Miklos Banffy spends nearly 1500 pages of his Transylvanian Trilogy chronicling the life of Hungarian nobility across their half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil compresses much of the experience of the Austrian half into less than a tenth of that in a tale of life in a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/05/die-verwirrungen-des-zoglings-torless-by-robert-musil/
Sep 28 2025
After introducing readers to the lost world of Hungarian nobility before the Great War in They Were Counted, Miklós Bánffy continues their stories toward the great catastrophe that is coming, that only a very few of them can see looming on the horizon. These two books, along with They Were Divided form Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/28/they-were-found-wanting-by-miklos-banffy/
Sep 27 2025
No Longer at Ease follow Things Fall Apart a generation later, although that is not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that Obi Okonkwo is in a heap of trouble. He is in the dock, on trial in a case that has been the talk of Lagos for weeks, and the only thing remaining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/27/no-longer-at-ease-by-chinua-achebe/
Aug 27 2025
translated from the original Kurdish by Sami Hezil. It feels a little strange to be talking about a(nother) book on the subject of the legacies of the departed, especially since this definitely takes the opposite tack of yesterday’s What Happens After? That book talked about grief and acceptance, whereas this speaks of guilt and vengeance. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/27/lovers-of-franz-k-by-burhan-sonmez/
Jun 23 2025
Oh, huh, I didn’t realize that this second book in The Web Of The Spider series would have a different protagonist than the first one, but it makes sense! In Rise Of The Spider, our narrator was young Rolf, who watched with growing horror as the Nazi Party’s hatefulness infiltrated not only his beloved hometown …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/23/threat-of-the-spider-by-michael-p-spradlin/
May 30 2025
with delightful illustrations by Poly Bernatene. Bear with me while I tell you an anecdote here. I used to work in some decently nice restaurants, and at one of them had a manager of Mexican descent who loathed Cinco de Mayo. According to him, it’s a holiday made up by American beer companies that no …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/30/cousins-in-the-time-of-magic-by-emma-otheguy/
May 29 2025
Friends and readers, what a glorious thing it is to have music in the world! Whether you appreciate it for itself, or for the ways in which it can bring you closer to divinity — as Johann Sebastian Bach, among so many others, believed — music is a gift that connects the interior world ineffably …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/29/allegro-by-ariel-dorfman/
Apr 21 2025
A Surfeit of Guns picks up the afternoon of the day after the end of A Season of Knives; P.F. Chisholm gives her protagonist Sir Robert Carey no time to rest. In fact, she sends him off on a night patrol that of course turns out to be eventful, though not in the ways that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/21/a-surfeit-of-guns-by-p-f-chisholm/
Mar 03 2025
Happy Women’s History Month, readers! To begin with, let’s look at an arresting novella about a young woman who refuses to play by the rules of Victorian England, no matter the cost to herself or to anyone around her. Winifred Notty is a troubled soul. Raised by a mother driven to madness by the intolerable …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/03/victorian-psycho-by-virginia-feito/
Dec 12 2024
As the year winds down, let’s look ahead at one of the most anticipated releases of 2025! In 1961 New York, a modeling scout appears seemingly out of nowhere, complimenting twenty-one-year-old Mia’s Jacqueline Kennedy look and offering her a one-way ticket to Paris. All she can think is: why not? Even so, she’s a bit …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/12/the-kennedy-girl-by-julia-bryan-thomas-excerpt/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire