Tag: Literature

Fables: The Deluxe Edition Vol 10 by Bill Willingham et. al.

While I’m going to review the rest of the series as a whole, I thought this book merited its own review, as it contains the entirety of the crossover with Jack Of Fables and has a distinctly different tone from the preceding books, being very much more a metaphysical caper and thus closer in theme …

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Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

This was 324 pages, really? It breezed by so quickly, an under-rated quality in serious fiction, and I was so, so happy to not cringe my way through another of Margaret Atwood’s recent works. Of course, she’s not completely off the hook, but her modern-day adaptation of The Tempest, a novel about a man whose …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/03/hag-seed-by-margaret-atwood/

Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller

This spring I went to Weimar. It’s a good weekend outing from Berlin, about three hours by train, and it’s lovely in May. The park on the Ilm, in particular, is splendid, with views and points of interest coming in and out of sight just as Goethe had intended. His country house, where he lived …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/16/die-rauber-by-friedrich-schiller/

The Song Of The Lark by Willa Cather

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/22/the-song-of-the-lark-by-willa-cather/

The Beautiful Beaureaucrat by Helen Phillips

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/08/the-beautiful-beaureaucrat-by-helen-phillips/

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

The bff and I are both big fans of Wodehousian humor, so while trawling a Best-Of list last year, I stumbled across a glowing review of this novel, recently out in paperback, and thought I’d buy us a copy. Gave it to him for Christmas, and he passed it back to me recently to read …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/17/wake-up-sir-by-jonathan-ames/

The Story Of A New Name by Elena Ferrante

I want to get it, guys, I really do. All the acclaim, all the rhapsodic reverence: I want to feel that, too. I just don’t, and tho I feel like I maybe came close here (and much closer than in the first book,) I still just don’t understand why this has been such a sensation, …

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The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

I usually find Liane Moriarty novels superlative, but this one fell short for me. Here’s my main problem with The Last Anniversary: it’s fairly clear from the outset that Grace has post-natal depression, yet at no time in the proceedings does she acknowledge this as true. It’s absolutely maddening. I also haaaaated Laura. I suppose …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/23/the-last-anniversary-by-liane-moriarty/

A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James

I haven’t been so relieved to finish a book in a very long time. Not that it’s badly written, or even that it’s dull, just that it’s so unrelentingly violent and dismal that I could not, in any of my other entertainments, even approach anything destructive (so, goodbye, playing Witcher 3 or watching True Detective …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/27/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james/

Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg

Stunning and sensitive, this book would have been perfect but for the ending, which I felt petered out in a way that was meant to be philosophical but which just felt oddly disconnected given all the emotions that had filled the pages till then. I mean, honestly, I’d cried three times before even getting halfway …

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