Apr 17 2025
What an odd and interesting metaphysical novel! Told primarily in the second person, this tale of magical realism flits between fantasy, science fiction and the everyday as it explores what it means to truly be in charge of your own life. The “you” addressed in this novel is the frustrated, fake-it-till-you-make-it everyperson (tho tends to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/17/captains-wanted-by-andres-schabelman/
Oct 21 2024
It almost always surprises people to hear that I enjoy country music. I’m not sure why: so much of it is fantastic, and I love good music of every genre. Perhaps it helps that I lack the class prejudices of most Americans when it comes to music. Admittedly, I don’t care for stoner jams, but …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/21/patsy-clines-walkin-after-midnight-by-judith-a-proffer-julie-dick-fudge-yoko-matsuoka/
Jul 18 2024
And with this I’ve completed the reading for the 2024 Hugos nominees for Best Graphic Story! And what a way to round out the category! It won’t topple Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons from the chokehold that book has on first place, but it sure comes close. Shubeik Lubeik is the Arabic for, essentially, “your …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/07/18/shubeik-lubeik-by-deena-mohamed/
Apr 25 2024
Y’know, when I first said yes to this collection of short stories based on the indigenous storytelling traditions of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples, I was expecting something very different. I thought that this would be a collection of old myths given a fresh retelling. And there is a little of that, definitely, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/25/the-forgetters-by-greg-sarris/
Sep 18 2023
I finished this terrific graphic novel and said out loud, “They should turn this into a movie!” Honestly, it’s the kind of story that I love to see on film: beautiful, visual, meaningful. Bonus for having an editor who can pace it better than my reading speed does, and a director who knows how to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/18/not-a-new-york-love-story-by-julian-voloj-andreas-gefe/
Jun 27 2023
Okay, if you’re a Ben Okri fan, then this is likely going to be your jam. I hadn’t read any of his award-winning work before this collection, so I absolutely jumped at the chance to read the latest publication of the first Black, and at the time youngest, winner of the Booker Prize. And it’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/27/tiger-work-poems-stories-and-essays-about-climate-change-by-ben-okri/
Nov 20 2022
A country and a century, told through what happened to a family, narrated by a member of that family’s next-to-youngest generation, dedicated to a member of the youngest generation who is trying to both escape and understand the legacy she is bearing. In The Eighth Life (For Brilka), Nino Haratischvili brings her native Georgia to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/20/the-eighth-life-by-nino-haratischvili/
Jan 06 2022
with notes and an afterword by Ellendea Proffer, who is smart enough to put all her illuminating, excellent content at the end in order to avoid spoilers. That said, I rather wish there’d been a bit of footnoting to direct readers to this area, tho understand that this isn’t meant to be an annotated version. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/06/the-master-and-margarita-by-mikhail-bulgakov-translated-by-diana-burgin-katherine-tiernan-oconnor/
Jun 22 2021
Hey, Doug, I’m reading a novel translated from the German! Ably translated into English by Tess Lewis, who’s done a really good job, in particular, of getting the song lyrics from the 1980s not quite right when the characters are explaining them to one another. What You Can See From Here is an interesting sort …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/22/what-you-can-see-from-here-by-mariana-leky/
Jan 24 2020
I picked this up thinking it would be a sweet romance featuring Asian-American characters who cook, and while it definitely has the latter, the former is merely an uninteresting subplot featuring the dreaded insta-love. This is definitely more contemporary fiction than romance, which made my genre-loving heart sad. Actually, a lot about this book made …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/01/24/natalie-tans-book-of-luck-and-fortune-by-roselle-lim/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire