Howling Frog Books

o posted a summer project that I do not remember running into before, though I must have.  Karen at 746 Books hosts The 20 Books of Summer challenge: For anyone who hasn’t taken part before, 20 Books of Summer is a reading challenge I do each year from 1 June to 3 September where I read 20 books from my TBR in three months. ...  As ever, there will be a 15 books and 10 books option and as previous years, a few Australians might take part and rename it the 20 books of winter! I’ll have a Master Post with a linky where you can share your reading lists and the #20booksofsummer hashtag will be buzzing again. So that seems like fun!  I'll be choosing a mix of library and actual TBR books, since as I showed the other day, my library TBR pile is nearly as large as the pile of books I actually own.   Here are my picks; I accidentally included two extra and then couldn't figure out which to take out, so now I have wiggle room, I guess? Limonov, by Emm...

The Return of the King , by J. R. R. Tolkien I enjoyed this final installment so much!  It's a very long time since I read it, and I'd forgotten how rich and detailed it all is.  Gandalf is already in Gondor, preparing it for battle.  Aragorn and Theoden are mustering all the troops they can to go fight for Gondor, and it takes a long time, just like real life.  Aragorn decides to go down the Paths of the Dead.  But all of their dramatic fighting (which would normally be the crucial scene) will be useless unless Frodo and Sam get to Mount Doom, and providing cover for them is half the point of all that battle.  Sauron has tremendous resources and is only poking at Gondor so far. What I really had the most fun with was Tolkien's use of changing writing styles and dialogue.  He just lets himself go in this volume!  People describing battles, or even just talking around the battles, sound exactly like Beowulf , with lots of alliteration.  ...

By now everyone has published, or at least seen, a personal canon post.  The idea is to compile a list of books that have had a real and lasting effect on us, and that we consider 'great,' whether or not they're classics in the usual sense.  So here we go, a list (inevitably partial) of books that have had a lot of impact on me. I used to have this poster on my wall!  First, I have to list an awful lot of children's authors.  The inside of my head was, to a large extent, built or influenced by these names, and even if I don't read them as often now, they are still some of my most important.  Since I read as much as I could of each of these, I'm not going to put individual book titles down. Diana Wynne Jones Daniel Pinkwater Madeleine L'Engle Eleanor Farjeon C. S. Lewis L. M. Boston John Bellairs Tove Jansson Now for the books I read when I was more of an adult, in no particular order at all: Jane Eyre , by Charlotte Bronte The Quest of th...

The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman This is the third Invisible Library novel!  Irene and Kai are on probation, so they're stuck with a lot of scutwork jobs, but then a straightforward return to the Library blows up in their faces.  The Library is under attack by Alberich, who's got a scheme nobody has figured out yet -- nobody thought it was even possible to attack the Library at all.  I'm enjoying this series a lot, because the stories are not repetitive.  Irene's situation keeps changing, depth is added, we find out more, and there's just a lot of well-developed story.  Now there's this question about her parents, and her detective buddy Vale has this really interesting problem where he might become a Fae, and all sorts of interesting possible stories coming up. A really pretty good YA fantasy series, lots of fun.  I love these books.

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion , by Paul Bloom Paul Bloom is a psychology professor at Yale, specializing in child development and morality (among other things) and I reviewed his earlier book, Just Babies , a couple of years ago.  Here, he tackles empathy: what is it, do we need more or less or it, and what is it good for?  Since more empathy is often said to be the solution for many of our problems, what would that mean? Part of the trouble is that empathy is a word that is a little difficult to pin down.  Strictly speaking, empathy is entering into the feelings of others; feeling just what the other person feels.  Not the same thing as understanding others' feelings or feeling pity for them, but actually feeling what they feel.   However, the word is often used in a looser sense.  Bloom is careful to differentiate and write about empathy in the strict sense. So wouldn't it be great if we were all more empathetic with each...

Lois at You, Me, and a Cup of Tea posted another fun meme: 1. What book has been on your shelf the longest?  I have a lot of books that were on my shelves when I was a kid; a good number of them really still belong to my parents, only I snitched them (temporarily!).  I read my kids Winnie the Pooh from the same copy I had, so maybe that?  It is entirely possible that I have a few books that belonged to my mother when she was younger -- I'd guess Gift of the Mikado , maybe? 2. What is your current read, your last read, and the book you’ll read next?  I'm just now starting The Return of the King to finish up Brona's LOTR readalong, plus also Stolen Words , about the Nazi plunder of Jewish books.  My last read was Paul Bloom's Against Empathy -- watch for the review within 24 hours!  My next read?  How on earth am I supposed to know that?  That will depend on my mood and what the circumstances call for!  I'm particularly excited about "T...

My school year is almost over, and there are some changes coming down the line.  Today is my last working day of the semester, and I have the summer off, so that will be an immediate difference.  Tomorrow is my last day as a homeschooling mom; my younger daughter will be heading to high school in the fall, and I guess I'm retiring.  So in a couple of months, I'll have a good deal more time to devote to such things as housekeeping, doing outside things, reading books, sewing quilts, and....well, hopefully working, but my bid for more hours is on hold for the moment.  I won't have any trouble filling the time, don't worry about that! Every summer, I take a lot of books home from work and hope to have time to read them all, which I never do.  That doesn't stop me.  My TBR pile is particularly out of control these days, so to amuse myself I made a stack.  This is not a complete stack of all the books on my TBR and library shelves.  This is a stack ...

The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea , by Bandi Wow, check out what I found, everybody!  This book is a historical event -- it's the first book smuggled out of North Korea.  "Bandi" is a North Korean writer who asked a friend to take these stories out of the country.  While we now have several memoirs written by North Koreans who have escaped, this collection of short stories is, so far, unique. There are seven stories, plus some information about the writer in an afterword (which I skipped ahead to after one or two stories, I was too curious).  Honestly I was a little worried about how much information was given; it seems to me that it wouldn't be all that hard for the DPRK to identify this man.  I hope I'm wrong about that.  (Looking again, there is a note that says some of the information has been changed to protect him.  Which is better, but also, in that case why put it in?) The stories are arranged consecutively; they ...

Girl at War , by Sara Nović In 1991, Ana is a happy, rough-and-tumble girl of ten.  She and her best friend Luka get up to all sorts of things in their beloved city of Zagreb.  When the Yugoslavian civil war breaks out, things slowly deteriorate until Ana's family is caught up directly into the war. Ten years later, Ana is a college student in New York with a lot of secrets.  She hasn't told anyone about her past, but she finds that she can't leave it behind her, so on a whim, she goes back to Croatia and hopes to find her old friend.  There, she tries to figure out how to confront and absorb the things that happened to her -- which we only discover as she re-lives them. This is a really absorbing YA novel that is part historical fiction (for an actual YA -- to me it feels immediate) and part coming-of-age, even though Ana is actually an adult.  Having been through what she has been, she had to grow up fast, but is also a bit stuck. Her story, for the mo...

Mrs. Miniver , by Jan Struther Since I love mid-20th century British novels, it's somewhat embarrassing that I have never read Mrs. Miniver before.  I'd never even considered reading it until I saw it reviewed recently (by whom?  I don't remember now, sorry) and found out that it's exactly the sort of thing I love.  It was so popular that it was also made into a movie about the people at home during World War II, which I would also love to see, but as I read I discovered that unlike the movie, this is only barely a war novel.  The book ends before 1939 does.  Most of it takes place, over about a year, before the war starts at all.  Really, it's a novel that looks back on a sane world and bids it a loving goodbye. Mrs. Miniver is a fortunate, sensible, and happy woman.  Her husband is an architect and, after several years of struggle, they are now reasonably prosperous.  They have three children, a London home, and a beloved country house, not...

Still trucking along in the Faerie Queene....when last we left our hero Artegall, he was a captive of the Amazon Queen Radigund, who forced him to wear women's clothing and spin thread.  Britomart is on the way to save him! Ahahaha, will I finish in a year?  I'm betting not... Britomart arrives at the Temple of Isis (who is Equity); she enters, but Talus is not allowed in.  Isis wears silver and linen, and is shown standing over a crocodile.  Britomart prays to her, and sleeps in the temple.  She is protected and refreshed, but she also has a bizarre vision, in which she merges with Isis.  The crocodile threatens her, but must submit, and then he fathers a great lion upon her.  Waking, Britomart is very disturbed and asks the priest for an interpretation of this dream.  He tells her that Artegall is the crocodile, and also Osiris, and together they will produce the British kings.  Calmed, Britomart sets off for the Amazons' land, where...

Last Things: A Graphic Memoir of Loss and Love , by Marissa Moss Marissa Moss is an author/artist, and you may have seen her Amelia's Notebook series or her excellent picture-book biographies (or, I reviewed The Pharaoh's Secret a few years ago).  These days she has a small publishing company, too.  Her husband, Harvey Stahl, was an art history professor at Berkeley, and this is the story of his diagnosis of ALS and the family's journey through his illness and death. This is a really, really tough story, and Moss tells it with wrenching honesty.  Harvey's illness hit so hard and fast that there was no time to absorb and come to terms with it.  Instead, he was mostly angry and shut off, while Marissa tried to stretch herself far enough to care for him and their three boys without falling apart.  Harvey only seemed to find solace (if any) in working on the book he'd been writing; each son suffered in his own way; and Marissa struggled to hold her family tog...

The Circle, by Dave Eggers Twenty minutes into the future, Mae is the newest hire at the hottest Internet company on Earth -- the Circle.  The Circle is like Google, Facebook, and all your business combined online; it makes everything super-easy, but you have to use your real identity.  No more passwords or 37 different accounts to remember, but also no online anonymity.  No more identity theft (this part is more than a little hand-wavy).  Mae is thrilled, and grateful to her best friend Annie, who is now at the top of the company and got her the job. The Circle's leaders are very into transparency; everything should be open and seen.  Mae starts to move up in the company, and pretty soon she becomes famous worldwide when she goes 'clear,' wearing a broadcasting camera at all times.  She loves the fame and attention, and she gets sucked into the Circle's goal of seeing everything, all the time.  Even as she loses friends and family, she believe...

The Brueghel Moon, by Tamaz Chiladze After reading The Hand of a Great Master some time ago, I was interested in reading more Georgian literature.  The older stuff is not really available in English, but some newer things are; there's a publisher called Dalkey Archive that publishes a bunch of things in translation, and they have a Georgian series.  So I picked The Brueghel Moon without knowing anything much about any of them.  It's very modern. Levan, a well-to-do psychologist, is taken aback by the abrupt departure of his wife, who tells him that their marriage was just a habit and she was more his patient than his wife.  Left behind, he wanders aimlessly through memories, incidents, and possibly unreal fantasies.  Disjointed chapters feature a woman convinced that she had an affair with an alien, the wife of an ambassador, and strange links between them all. Interesting but strange and I won't claim to have understood it.   A good experien...

The Histories, by Herodotus As part of Ruth's Reading the Histories project, I took over three months to read Herodotus' Histories.   I do enjoy Herodotus, but he's not exactly easy, and the fact that my copy is a huge book that can only be read while sitting down on the couch, when I remember to pick it up, made it a very long read. Herodotus, first known person to systematically collect information and deliberately set it down as a history (rather than having a bunch of propaganda or myth mixed in), did his best to verify what he learned.  When he couldn't, or when he is skeptical, or found several versions of events, he tells you so.  The main subject of his treatise is the war between the Greeks and the Persians, but he really only gets to that near the end.  First, he talks about everybody and everything, describing Lydians, Persians, Cimmerians, and any interesting anecdotes or history. Herodotus' magpie brain is what I love about him.  He is just...

The Swan Riders, by Erin Bow I was late to reading The Scorpion Rules , but I was less late to the sequel, The Swan Riders , and it was worth it; the story is imaginative and gripping.   Greta, once a crown princess and a hostage to Talis, the artificial intelligence that runs the world, is now AI herself.  She, Talis, and two Swan Riders have to travel across the country (Saskatchewan, to be exact) before Greta falls apart.  Becoming an AI is extremely dangerous, and she could well die before she can receive good care.  Her former subjects, however, are in revolt.  The Swan Riders themselves are plotting something.  And Elian, her friend, but headstrong and not given to analysis, is out there too.  Everything goes pear-shaped very quickly. Erin Bow must be one of the best YA authors out there.  She is original and sharp, and Swan Riders gives readers plenty to think about as well as an exciting plot that keeps moving and layered charac...

The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion , by Virginia Postrel What exactly is glamour?  Is it personal style?  Charisma?  Envy?  Does it involve sparkles and lipstick?  Is it shallow and frivolous, or does it reveal deeper insights about human nature? Virginia Postrel embarks on a quest to define and chronicle glamour.  She calls it a moment of longing, in which we look at an image and project ourselves into a better life -- one that isn't messy and awkward, but instead clear and graceful. Glamour comes in all sorts of flavors; the earliest may have been military glamour, and Postrel uses Achilles as a primary example.  But so many things have glamour: princesses, suntans, wind turbines, airplanes, horses, and the Mysterious East.  They are dissected and analyzed for what it is that makes them glamorous.  Some elements seem to be important; glamour tends to attach much more to static images than to things that move,...

No good image of this exists online The Pharos Gate, by Nick Bantock The Egyptian Jukebox, by Nick Bantock A while ago I re-read the Griffin and Sabine trilogy, and  then I read the second trilogy , which had come out while I wasn't looking.  I found that second set to be a bit confusing.  Then, just recently, I discovered that a new book had come out upon Griffin and Sabine's 25th anniversary, and it purported to tell the outcome of the story.  I requested that and ILLed this other, intriguingly titled Bantock book at the same time.  So... The Egyptian Jukebox is a puzzle book, published in 1993.  It reminded me of nothing so much as the I Spy books for kids that my daughter loved so much when she was younger; it's just much more elaborate.  There is this jukebox with ten drawers, each of which plays a recording of a story.  Your job is to read the story, study the matching drawer, and follow the clues.  Each drawer yields a let...

The other day, Ruth at A Great Book Study posted this fun tag, which she got from Jillian at Dear Diary .  So I thought I would join the fun...everybody is doing this one right now! 1.   An over-hyped classic you never really liked:   OK, I'm a Philistine, or else I didn't read it at the right time, but Catcher in the Rye .  I read it at 14 because it seemed like a lot of people liked it (it's the book every teen celebrity recommends in order to sound good), and I didn't get it.  I found Holden annoying.  I read it again in my 30s to see if he was still annoying, and by then I was a mom -- so what I mostly noticed was that Holden spends two or three days with no sleep, consuming only alcohol.  That boy needs a glass of milk, a large sandwich, a quart of water, and a good night's sleep, and then he will feel much, much better.  A nice hot shower would help too.  After that he needs a summer job on a construction site and a grief coun...

The Heart of Midlothian , by Sir Walter Scott It's my first Scott novel other than Ivanhoe !  I was expecting some sort of dashing Jacobite adventure, but in fact The Heart of Midlothian is mostly about country people and...a prison. The story starts off agonizingly slowly, actually.  The first narrator meets a couple of Scottish lawyers, and then describes the Porteous riots of 1736 before mentioning a couple of tiny country houses and the family background there.  It is quite some time before we figure out that the main characters are two sisters, Jeanie and Effie Deans.  After that, though, it gets really good, so stick with it through the first 80 pages or so. Effie is the pretty, light-hearted, headstrong younger sister in contrast to the responsible, serious Jeanie.  Their father is a respectable cowman, but nearly fanatical in his strict Presbyterian religion.  When Effie finds herself in trouble, she refuses to confide in Jeanie, and after ...