Howling Frog Books

 Here are some titles from my official TBR list that I just haven't written about yet!  Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia : I saved this one for October, for an official RIP read.  And wow, this is a spooky story!  It's the 1950s, and Noem í is a debutante out for a good time in Mexico City.  Her father sends her down to the countryside to check on her cousin Catalina, who married last year in a romantic whirl.  Noem í arrives at a classic Gothic scene: a mouldering family mansion on a misty mountain, and....this is a strange place.  The silver mine that gave the Doyle family their wealth has been closed down for years, the house is festooned with mold, and everyone is very strange.  Catalina seems to be ill.  Her husband Virgil is creepy, but not as creepy as his elderly father is.  Just one family member, Francis, seems friendly, if shy and something of a weak character.  As Noemi unravels the dark family history and the se...

Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: the Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue This is a long-held goal of mine, to read the complete works of Hartmann von Aue!  I did, some time ago, get hold of a (terrible) copy of Poor Heinrich, which is how I found out about this medieval German knight and poet.  I shall now quote my own blog post for background: If you were here for my Arthurian literature project of 2014, you know that the mania for knightly romances and Arthurian tales spread through Western Europe in the 1100s.  I read French and German tales as well as English ones.  There were three great German poets of the courtly romance: Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parziva l , and Gottfried von Strassburg wrote Tristan , but before them came Hartmann von Aue, who introduced the idea into Germany in the first place in the 1190s.  He has not become nearly as well-known in English as the two later poets... This volume contains Hartmann's four narr...

Witch Week this year is all about the Arthurian literature .  I hope you're following Lory at Emerald City Book Review to read the guest bloggers, enter the giveaway, and all that good stuff.  The readalong is of Kazuo Ishiguro's Buried Giant, which I read a couple of years ago.  So I decided not to read along, but I did really like the book, and if you wish to see my thoughts you can read my review. I've read a bit of Arthurian literature during the life of Howling Frog, so I thought it might be useful to collect some of the links.  If you're interested in reading some of the older material, this might be helpful.  Some random links: Yvain, by Chretien de Troyes Poor Heinrich, by Hermann von Aue The Fall of Arthur, by J. R. R. Tolkien Ritual and Romance, by Jessie Weston (old folkloric speculation, now totally discredited, but fun to read) In 2014, I ran a year-long Arthurian challenge and read some great stuff.  Here is what I said at the ...

Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval , by Robert de Boron It's Witch Week!  The focus this year is on Arthurian literature, a favorite of mine, and so I read Merlin and the Grail , which I've been saving up for a treat.  This one was new to me, and I found out that it's an important piece in the Arthurian jigsaw puzzle, so read on. We don't know much about Robert de Boron, but he was writing right after Chretien de Troyes, around the 1180s, and he was the first writer to write the Arthurian cycle -- the whole story from beginning to end.  He managed to smush the important elements into just three tales (two, really), and he added a whole lot as well with Joseph of Arimathea .  He also converted the Grail into an overtly Christian relic. Chretien had a Grail that was a kind of platter, which served a host, and there was a spear dripping blood; these were obviously Christian allusions.  Chretien's audience would have immediately thoug...

Our final day was a bonus, because we hadn't expected to have all day to drive in.  Our plan was to get from Salisbury to Heathrow by late afternoon, so we could stay at a large motel right by the airport and not have to worry about getting to our flight.  We debated what to do and settled on visiting Winchester and then Chawton.  They were good choices! Arriving in Winchester, we parked at a teeny little lot fairly close to the cathedral, mostly because of Fiona the sat-nav.  Winchester is quite tricky to drive in and I think we might have passed the large statue of Alfred the Great more than once!  We thought we would just pop into the cathedral and not stay very long, because we had seen at least one church per day and honestly, we were pretty cathedraled out, despite being pretty dedicated fans.  Two hours later, we exited the cathedral, exclaiming over what a fascinating place it is! Winchester Cathedral was first founded in 642; that old buildi...