Nov 15 2020
I read Between the World and Me a lifetime ago, in early summer when it was strange to leave the neighborhood again after so many weeks of stillness. It is a hard book, not because of the difficulty of language or of its concepts, but because of the hardness of its subject: how to live …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/15/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/
Nov 26 2019
“Becoming Us,” the second part of Michelle Obama’s memoir tells how two very different people, two nearly polar opposite people in fact, came not only to love and cherish one another but to build a life and a partnership that would work from Chicago to the whole world. One of their first social functions together, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/26/more-becoming-by-michelle-obama/
Jun 26 2019
Hi, Frumious Readers! I feel like I’ve been away foreeeever, but it’s been crunch time over at my other reading job with CriminalElement.com so my apologies for being infrequent over here. Anyway, with Doug away for a bit, I’m glad to be back with this really great new novel sent to me by our friends …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/26/the-record-keeper-by-agnes-gomillion-2/
Jun 19 2019
Becoming really is that good. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from the beginning. There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/19/becoming-by-michelle-obama/
Apr 04 2019
In The Color of Law Richard Rothstein lays out the case that segregated patterns of residence in every part of the United States are not the result of impersonal market forces, not just the result of patterns of individual choices among large numbers of people, but are instead the result, often the intended result, of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/04/the-color-of-law-by-richard-rothstein/
Mar 09 2019
Because I am all about timely reading, I have just finished The Bridge, whose subtitle is The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, and which was published in 2010. As Remnick explains in the acknowledgments, his “hope was to write a piece of biographical journalism that, through interviews with his contemporaries and certain historical actors, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/09/the-bridge-by-david-remnick/
Feb 12 2019
I think I would have appreciated this more if I were French. There were hints of subtext that I could only guess at, nuances of race and class and prejudice that are foreign even to my broad background in the mores of American, Southeast Asian and British Commonwealth cultures. So I’m not sure if the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/12/the-perfect-nanny-by-leila-slimani/
Dec 09 2018
In the eight linked tales that comprise Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff takes readers on mind-stretching journeys across time and space, far more frightening trips across the mid–twentieth century US, conjures ghosts in Chicago, banishes them in New England, and summons up a sparkling cast of friends and relatives who are doing their best to live …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/12/09/lovecraft-country-by-matt-ruff-2/
Sep 11 2018
Tommy Orange is such a superlative writer that he can do things that irritate the hell out of me in other books and somehow make them work. And better than work: he creates magic on the page. It’s not really a spoiler to say that There There ends with multiple storylines left unresolved. In the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/11/there-there-by-tommy-orange/
May 19 2018
Wow, I didn’t even know about the firestorm over this book and the author and her Twitter use until after I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed Dread Nation. It’s a really terrific novel: what if zombies rose after the Battle of Gettysburg, and American history took a decided turn to deal with this new existential threat? …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/19/dread-nation-dread-nation-1-by-justina-ireland/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire