Howling Frog Books

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly I have really let the books pile up on my desk, but deadlines like "ILL return date" help me out.  So here goes. Every so often, a politician makes a big speech about how mosquito nets only cost a dollar and notebooks are even less, and if we just commit the money, we can solve poverty.  All we need to do is have a plan and the money, and it can be done!  Except, they've been making that speech for 60 years now, and while progress has been made, there are still millions of unvaccinated children, lots of unpotable water, and all sorts of terrible problems.  Is it that we just haven't given enough money?  What's the problem?  Easterly, an economist who has spent much of his career in the developing world and foreign aid, has a lot to say about what the problem is. From Easterly's perspective, a lot of the problem is that we t...

The Long Ships , by Frans Bengtsson Folks, this book is fantastic.  Now you know, so you will go out and read it too, right? This is the life story of Red Orm, who is captured as a teenager and ends up joining a Viking raiding ship as an equal.  So his years of adventure begin, pillaging, fighting, being captured as a slave, working as a bodyguard...Orm travels around the Europe of 1000 AD and even meets up with a few eminent people.  I was happy that he spent quite a bit of time at the court of Harald Bluetooth.  Eventually Orm even travels to Kiev. The really wonderful thing about this book is that Frans Bengtsson gives an amazing picture of life a thousand years ago, and he does it amazingly convincingly.  As far as I can tell, Bengtsson really understood how Vikings thought .  (Not that I would know, but he sure is good at conveying that impression and I think he knew his stuff.)  The whole time, I felt convinced that people were really like ...

Uniflame hosted this wonderful challenge so that we would get books off our wishlists.  The goal was 12, and I exceeded that (good thing too, because way more than 12 books made it on to my wishlist this year).   I kept track of 18 books, but a few more than that actually happened, which is all to the good. Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon, by Iosif Shklovsky  Reached, by Ally Condie The Violinist's Thumb, by Sam Kean Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime, by El len Prager   The Return of Captain John Emmett, by Elizabeth Speller   You Can Understand the Bible, by Peter Kreeft Watching the English, by Kate Fox  Great House, by Nicole Krauss  Norms and Nobility, by David Hicks  Shopping for a Better Country, by Josip Novakovich   A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth     The Lost Wife, by Alyson Richman Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder  The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y. S. Lee  The Book of Not, by Tsitsi ...

Beware of Pity , by Stefan Zweig In 1913, a young Austrian officer visits a wealthy man's home.  During the evening's entertainment, he accidentally makes a faux pas by asking the host's pretty young daughter to dance, not realizing that she lost the use of her legs in an illness.  His efforts to make up for hurting her feelings draw him further into the family, but he is unequipped to cope with their desperation for healing and the emotional blackmail they exert upon him.  Although he loves them, he cannot fix them, but he also can't refrain from trying. I really enjoyed this novel, which I took quite slowly--and that was a good thing.

The Doll, by Bolesław Prus A few months ago I decided to make The Doll my main October read.  I've been looking forward to it for a while, and it did not disappoint.  Now that it's been nearly two weeks since I read it, I hope I can still say some good things! Bolesław Prus (IRL Aleksander Głowacki) 1847-1912, was a Polish journalist and novelist.  From what I can tell, he is still one of the great 19th century Polish names, and The Doll is widely read.  There is actually very little about a doll in the novel; Prus would have liked to call it Three Generations to highlight the main theme.  Instead, this is a story of Polish society.   Stuck between decadent, useless aristocrats who waste money, and a huge population of hard-working people who are live so close to the edge that minor disasters are enough to ruin lives, Poland cannot seem to progress.  The three men of the story (well two mainly, plus a minor one) are of three generations. ...

In Search of Ancient Ireland , by Carmel McCaffrey and Leo Eaton A couple of years ago I read a book by Carmel McCaffrey called In Search of Ireland's Heroes .  It covers Irish history after the Norman invasion of 1167, and I saw that there was a previous book about Irish history before that.  It turned out to be kind of hard to find, to my surprise, but what I hadn't realized was that the book was written as a companion to a PBS program .   (Not the one about the Celts that had lots of Enya music--a different one. Same title as the book.)  McCaffrey and Eaton start with archaeological evidence about Neolithic societies, which is very interesting.  They have some good information about the development of early Irish culture, how their origin myths developed, and how very different those myths are from what we can tell about history. The section on the conversion to Christianity is very interesting; unlike many countries, Ireland did not experience a c...

Let's Kill Uncle , by Rohan O'Grady I heard of this title through the Bloomsbury editions--those lovely candy-colored books that are so tempting.  This one was a bit of a surprise, though; so far all the Bloomsbury books I've read have been humorous or satirical books by British women, and Let's Kill Uncle is by a Canadian.  It's funny, but the humor has a darker tone.  The copy I got through ILL has a nice Gorey cover, and Gorey is perfectly suited to this story. There are no children on the small island off the Canadian coast, until Barnaby and Christie, both age 12, come to spend the summer.  Christie's overworked mother has scrimped to give her this chance at an outdoor summer, and Barnaby is in the care of his guardian uncle.  Barnaby is the heir to millions, and his uncle is of the opinion that he should have the fortune.  Barnaby knows this perfectly well, and he also knows that no grownup will believe him, so he and Christie decide that this i...

The Book of Not , by Tsitsi Dangarembga A year or two ago I read Nervous Conditions , and have been wanting for some time to read this sequel, The Book of Not .  It was written quite a few years later and I think these are Dangarembga's only two novels; she has also written films and short pieces. Tambudzai is now attending the pre-eminent girls' boarding school in Rhodesia.  Great things are expected of her, and she badly wants to be an excellent scholar and win at least one prize.  But as hard as she works, life is often too much for her.  The school is almost entirely populated with wealthy white girls, and segregation is in force, so that daily life is filled with difficult social dilemmas of the kind guaranteed to make a teenage girl freeze with anxiety.  She has a hard time getting along with the African girls she shares a room with; in fact, she has a hard time getting along with anyone.  Outside the school, a guerrilla war for Zimbabwean indepe...

The Agency: A Spy in the House , by Y. S. Lee I don't remember what blogger pointed me to the Agency series by Y. S. Lee; it's been on my wishlist for a long time, and I finally got around to ILLing the book. Mary Lang was a 12-year-old London street urchin when her life took an unexpected turn and she went to live at a school dedicated to preparing girls to earn their livings.  At 17, even more unexpectedly, the headmistresses of the school reveal that some pupils go on to work as undercover agents for the Agency.  After all, who is less noticeable than a servant girl?  No one expects her to be doing detective work.  And so Mary joins up and heads off to her very first assignment, as paid companion to a spoilt teenage girl whose father might be cooking his books. It took me a little while to get into this story and at first I didn't think I would continue.  It was when Mary started her assignment that I got interested.  After that, I liked the book...

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin , by Timothy Snyder  I've been working on this one for a while. It is just about the most unremittingly grim and tragic book I've ever read.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, because YOU SHOULD.  But it won't be fun. Timothy Snyder illuminates a whole lot of history that we in the West haven't really been very aware of until recently.  Since the fall of the Communist bloc, a lot has come to light about World War II in Eastern Europe that we didn't easily see before.  By "bloodlands," Snyder means the part of Eastern Europe that suffered most in the first half of the 20th century--first from Stalin, then from Hitler, and then from Stalin again.  This area, which is now mostly contained in the countries of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and the Baltics, suffered three invasions, all of which involved deliberate mass murder.  In total, the Nazi and Soviet regimes put about 14 million people to death....

The Lost Wife , by Alyson Richman In Prague, in 1938, two young people fall in love and get married just as war is about to destroy everything they know.  Separated by events, they each believe that the other has died, until a wedding many years later, when they recognize each other. That's not a spoiler because it's how the novel opens.  You read the story to find out how it happened.  Lenka tells her story from the beginning, while Josef tells his backwards.  It's a gripping novel, and I quite enjoyed it, though it is a little toastier than I really prefer. Richman writes well, and she actually based her novel on a real-life incident she heard of through a family connection--two people really did meet at a wedding and recognize each other as their long-lost spouses. It's also, as you might expect, a really, really tragic novel.  As Jews, Lenka and her family are shipped out of Prague and end up in Terezin (Theresienstadt) for most of the war.  Jos...

Shopping for a Better Country: Essays by Josip Novakovich Josip Novakovic* is originally from Croatia--well, when he lived there it was Yugoslavia--and he has lived in the US and various other places in Europe since college.  These essays are collected from many years of writing, and though they certainly feature exilic themes and travel, they are about all sorts of things, really. I like the way Novakovic writes; matter-of-fact and taking everything as it comes.  I liked that he consciously refused to judge countries based on short visits. He writes about his mother and his family--he has a son who plays the cello--about people he has met on travels, and about the difficulties of Russian airports or traveling to Croatia during and after the war there. A couple of bits I liked: An old man near my hometown claimed that he had no need to travel.  He had lived in eight countries and in one house.  He remained faithful to the previous regimes, and thus felt like...

Norms & Nobility: a Treatise on Education , by David V. Hicks I've wanted to read this book for years.  It's one of the foundational texts on classical education.  So it's been on my wishlist forever, but it's also pretty expensive and not that easy to find in a library.  I finally got around to ILLing it, and have been working on it for a few weeks. This is a difficult and heavy text, with a whole lot to think about--even though it's less than 200 pages long.*    Hicks lays out why a classical education is worth pursuing and how to do it (there is a whole syllabus for grades 7-12).  He has a lot to say.  I read it quite slowly, and it would be good to own the book so I can read it again...and then again. I think it's also rather advanced in the world of classical education.  This is not a book for a beginner to read; if I'd tried to read it 10 years ago it would not have made much sense to me.  At that time, The Well-Trained M...

Great House , by Nicole Krauss I did it!  I read a modern novel that has been on my wishlist for over a year!  I've actually had it checked out from the library for far too long, a ridiculously long time. Great House contains the stories of several different people, connected only by an old wooden desk with many drawers.  (Actually, even that much is not always clear.)  Each of these people tells--or, more accurately, confesses--a life story, and the desk comes to take on a weight and meaning.  As the pattern of the book emerges, we see that all of these people are very alone, having lost the ones who loved them, and the desk holds all that loss and sadness. It's a really good book, but very melancholy.  I read it with great interest, which is a little surprising to me since I don't normally go for modern fiction all that much.  I want to read a happy book now!

Watching the English: the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour , by Kate Fox I have finally found people who dislike talking about feelings even more than I do!  At least, if you believe Kate Fox, an anthropologist who spends her life studying her own tribe: the English (not the Welsh or the Scottish or anything but English; that would be a different book again).   Here, she tries to work out a primer for being English--she describes how people behave and develops a list of unspoken rules, ending up with a sort of diagram describing the central characteristics of Englishness.  She's doing this for an English audience, not for others, and as a result she doesn't try to play up good points of being English, which makes me feel kind of weird about writing this post.  I would really like to live in the UK for a year or so myself, so English people, do not blame me for the content of this book! This was my last ILL of the year before school is over and it turned out...

Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: the Ocean's Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter , by Ellen Prager Ellen Prager would like to introduce you to some interesting critters.  She will happily lead you on a trip through our oceans to meet copepods, hagfish, jawfish, cookie cutter sharks, and her favorite--the bone-eating zombie snot worm.  This is a great little book, but I'm warning you now: don't read it over lunch .  Unless maybe your lunch isn't very good anyway and you're OK with skipping it.  If you want to enjoy your lunch, pick a different book. Each chapter focuses on a particular kind of sea-creature, starting with the teeny ones like diatoms and arrow worms, moving on up through snails and coral reefs, and ending with larger fish.  There are chapters specifically about extreme environments and what Prager calls "X-games" (a sort of Guinness book of skills).  Every section ends with a piece about current research into the animals and why we should pay...

The Violinist's Thumb: and Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code , by Sam Kean Aren't fashions in titles funny?  Title trends come and go, and right now very long subtitles seem to be the thing.  The shorter and/or more cryptic the main title is, the better, and then the subtitle should be long and elaborate, with a touch of humor.  It reminds me of A Little Pretty Pocketbook.   This title has been on my library wishlist since it came out; I really enjoyed Kean's previous book about chemistry, The Disappearing Spoon , and I like lay books about science in general (especially chemistry!).  The Violinist's Thumb is a detailed look at DNA--the history around its discovery, how it works, what we know and do not yet understand about it.  It's got lots of interesting anecdotes, funny turns of phrase, and more than you ever needed to know about A, T, G and C. But. I was enjoying the book and zipping through it, when a ...

Reached , by Ally Condie How many people have been waiting to get their hands on the third book in the Matched trilogy?  Me, for one.  I've enjoyed this YA dystopian drama. In the final volume, Cassia is working in Central City and trading poetry on the side.  Xander is working as a medical official, and Ky is a pilot for the Rising.  All three are waiting for the moment when the Rising will really start.  Will they ever get to see each other again?  And of course, who will Cassia choose? This was a really long book, right into Chunkster territory.  A lot happens, and the story doesn't stall.  If you've read a whole lot of YA and dystopia, the storyline won't be terribly surprising (love triangle, loyalty in the rebellion, etc.), but it is well-done and a good read for any teen.  You can give it to your 12-year-old, but there's enough depth for anyone.  Free will and the ability to choose (and have consequences) are the central...

Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist , by Iosif Shklovsky Look!  It's my first book of 2013, and it only took me 3 weeks into the new year!  I found this book at Dwight's excellent A Common Reader blog, and I knew I had to have it.  Unlike many books I have to have, the library owns a copy of this one, so I got to read it almost right away. Iosif Shklovsky was a Soviet astronomer who made great strides in radio astronomy, became a leader in the space program, and helped to start the group SETI, which searches for life in the universe.   Because he was Jewish, and because he was an outspoken sort of person who did not always go along with the Soviet regime, he was never really accepted into the inner circle of Soviet science.  In 1981, about 4 years before he died, Shklovsky thought he ought to write down some stories from his life--personal anecdotes, his thoughts about science in Russia, all sorts of things.  He didn...

I was hoping to find something like this!  Uniflame at Uniflame Creates is hosting a wishlist challenge: Read 12 books (one for every month of the year) that you would like to read, but don’t already have on your shelves.  Rules: 1. The challenge runs from January 1st, 2013 to December 31st, 2013. 2. You are to read 12 books from your current wishlist. If you don’t have a list anywhere, write down books that you are eager to read, that you don’t own yet, and choose 12 books off that list. 3. If you can’t find a book that’s on your wishlist (your library doesn’t have it, or you don’t want/can’t buy it) then you can use another book. But: you are not allowed to include any NEWLY added books for this challenge. So, whatever your list is now, that’s it. I.e. you can’t read amazing things about a book on someone else’s blog, decide you want to read it, then read it for the Wishlist Challenge. The opposite is true: you want to read something for the Wishlist Cha...