Howling Frog Books

First off, happy Halloween!  Happy Witch Week!!  I hope everything is suitably spooky in your neighborhood. Wow, I feel like I've done quite a bit of reading lately....but what I have not done is finish anything much.  I think I am 30 - 50% through ten or so books!  There are books all over my coffee table; it's a disaster. How Democracies Die, by Levitsky and Ziblatt  I Served the Kind of England, by Bohumil Hrabal The Cancelling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott Overreach, by Owen Matthews (oh my gosh so heavy-duty) The Lost 116 Pages, by Don Bradley A Land, by Janetta Hawkes Sexy but Psycho, by Dr Jessica Taylor  (fascinating and I think goes a bit too far) London Diary, by James Boswell  (why yes he has picked up an STD, again) Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter, by Katharine Coldiron  (I love this book) So, I'm in kind of a ridiculous place right now.  But here are the three books I'...

  Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes ( The Treasure Chest), by Johann Peter Hebel I have no idea how I got this book; it's been sitting on my tablet for some time now.  A few weeks ago I started reading it at bedtime, for which it is perfect, because it's a collection of short little stories, vignettes, jokes, and so on, usually with a little moral theme.  Johann Peter Hebel (1760 - 1826) was from Basel in Switzerland and spoke the Allemanische or Alemannic dialect of German, which is/was spoken in much of Switzerland, Bavaria, and Baden.  He lived in a few different places in those areas, and I'm going to count him for Switzerland.  Hebel became a professor, a poet/writer, and a deacon in the Lutheran Church.  Eventually he rose to become a prelate and a member of the Parliament of Baden, though what he really wanted to do was be a parish priest in the Bavarian/Swiss borderland.  Anyway, in the first years of the 19th century, he also edited ...

My copy is ancient; but it's still in print! A Celtic Miscellany, ed. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson This is one of those TBR books I've had around forever and ever.  I can tell, from the price written on the inside front page, that I got it at our local used bookstore, but it must have been a long time ago! Miscellany is an appropriate description; here we have samples of literature from six Celtic languages, primarily Irish and Welsh, but also Cornish, Scottish-Irish, Breton, and Manx.  The translator, Jackson, wanted to produce a representative collection that wouldn't just include all the things everybody is already familiar with -- but some of the favorites had to go in, or else it wouldn't be representative.     The selections are in themed sections, starting with adventure stories (Cu Chulainn, Fionn, and others), and going on to such topics as love, nature, epigram, satire, elegy, and so on.  They also go somewhat chronologically, with the earliest mater...

What a fun cover!  Mine isn't. Coronation Summer, by Angela Thirkell A couple of people around the bloggy world have been reading Angela Thirkell, which strikes me as a perfect author for reading while hiding out from a global pandemic.  I had this one on my TBR shelf, and indeed it was an ideal read for right now.  I'm going to pass it on to my mom and then to a friend; it was so refreshingly funny! Fanny Harcourt is 17 in the summer of 1838, when the young Victoria is going to be crowned.  She and her best friend Emily Dacre manage to talk Fanny's father into spending the summer in London so they can see all the sights and experience the excitement.  The girls also spend quite a bit of time thinking about the young men they meet; Emily has a crush on Fanny's older brother Ned, and Fanny is much struck by the romantic-looking dandy, Mr. DeLacy Vavasour, who has published several sensational novels.*  Mr. Darnley, on the other hand, is also charming...

Sixpence in Her Shoe , by Phyllis McGinley I don't actually know that much about the mid-century American poet Phyllis McGinley, except that she won a Pulitzer Prize.  And she wrote this book, which is about "the world's oldest profession," housewifery, specifically as practiced in modern America.  Three sections on Wife, House, and Family organize a selection of chapters/essays, many of which ran in the Ladies' Home Journal or other magazines in the 1950s, and were then collected and edited into a book in 1960. McGinley's thesis here is that the domestic calling is an honorable one, not to be despised -- not even by intelligent and educated women -- which can be blended, or not, with a profession, as the individual woman prefers.  Every so often she is clearly rebutting Betty Friedan. It's a fun and refreshing read.  McGinley is a witty, humorous writer, and I love reading books about housekeeping.  (I'm not quite so good at the actual housekee...

The Zelmenyaners, by Moyshe Kulbak A couple of years ago, I read Outwitting History, about saving Yiddish literature from the dumpster of history.  IT was one of my favorite books of the year, and it put some Yiddish titles on my wishlist.  This was one of them, and I finally picked it up! The Zelmenyaners appeared in a serial format in a Yiddish monthly magazine called Shtern (the Star), published in the Soviet Union.  It was actually two series; the first one ran in 1929 - 1930, and the second 1933 - 1935.  It became a comic family saga, about a Jewish family in Minsk. None of the Zelmanyaners are actually named that.  Their father, Reb Zelmele, has been dead for a while now, but it's still his courtyard, with his descendants all living around in a big house, and little houses, and stables.  Bubbe Bashe is their matriarch, and she's so old she's like a little hen.  The four sons now have children and grandchildren, and so there are Zelmenyan...

Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley These fun books came across the donation table and I just read them in spare moments.  Several years ago, I downloaded The Haunted Bookshop , but I couldn't understand the first chapter at all, so I quit.  I had no idea that it was a sequel to Parnassus on Wheels !  Now it all makes sense.... Parnassus on Wheels is the narrative of Helen McGill, spinster, who lives with her brother on a farm.  Until a few years ago, they farmed happily together, but then Andrew wrote a book and became a successful writer about the joys of country life, and things have never been the same since.  Helen is pretty fed up and the last straw arrives on a wagon in the form of a mobile bookstore, Parnassus on Wheels; the owner wants to sell the outfit to Andrew so he can retire and write his book, about the joys of bookselling.  Helen decides that it's high time she got to go out galliv...

The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald This somewhat fictionalized memoir came across the donation table, and I'd heard somewhere that it was fun, so I took it home to read in random moments.  Betty MacDonald may be familiar to some as the author of the wonderful Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children (in which Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who may be a witch and was definitely once married to a pirate, knows how to cure children who have fallen prey to bad habits and become Answer-Backers or Slow-Eaters-Tiny-Bite-Takers). Betty MacDonald tells some hair-raising stories about her childhood in Colorado before she really gets going with her marriage to Bob.  Bob's dream is to be a chicken farmer in the Pacific Northwest and Betty gamely agrees, signing up for a life of isolation, no electricity, very hard work, and a stove that eats fuel but doesn't like to get warm.  And lots of rain.  And lovable but difficult neighbors, especially the Kettles. She makes it all extremely fu...

The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P. G. Wodehouse I was at the library, and in the mood for some Wodehouse, but they didn't have all that much on the shelf.  The only thing I hadn't read already was The Clicking of Cuthbert , a collection of--of all things--golf stories.  I've never played real golf in my life, and this didn't seem all that promising, even when the stories were by Wodehouse, but I took it home to see.  And (cue Mikey eating Life cereal here)...I liked it! Most of the stories are narrated by the Oldest Member of the golf club, who comforts, entertains, and dispenses wisdom learned on the links.  There are romances, rivalries, melodrama, and preposterous situations.  My favorite was definitely the one about the avant-garde Russian novelist who comes to town and turns out to be a fanatical golf player, thus boosting the romantic career of Cuthbert Banks. Let me tell you one vairy funny story about putting. It was one day I play at Nijni-Novgoro...

Reynard the Fox: a New Translation by James Simpson  Reynard tales were really, really popular in medieval Europe; you can find many versions of the stories in various languages, and this is a modern translation of the 15th-century Caxton edition in English.  Reynard tales are satirical animal stories, very much like B'rer Rabbit stories, but starring a cunning fox who does awful things, mostly to nobles or priests, and then gets out of trouble with his quick wits and fast talking. In the royal court of the king (a lion, of course), every animal has a place, except for Reynard, who has swindled or murdered so many people that he is universally hated.    In every adventure, though, he manages to come out on top...eventually.  Reynard is really good at using people's greed or anger against them. It's really fun to find all the animal names and see how common they became.  "Reynard" came to be a synonym with fox , and in fact replaced the Old Fre...

The Umbrella Man and Other Stories, by Roald Dahl Thirteen short stories by Roald Dahl--you can't go much wrong with that.  One or two of these were stories that I recognized from having read them many years ago, but most were new to me.  Several were creepy as all get-out, others were funny in that signature Dahl fashion, and one was a memoir piece from the war.  A few have O. Henry style twist endings.  All are great stuff and it's a wonderful collection that made for a happy few evenings.

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions , by Randall Munroe Lots of people read Munroe's webcomic xkcd - -I do--and if you don't, you should probably take a peek at it to see if you'd like it.  It's full of geeky fun.  Munroe also writes a column called What If? in which you can send in a ridiculous question and he'll answer it in great detail.  For example: What if I collected a mole of moles? What if a baseball was thrown at 90% of the speed of light? What if I collected all the elements and arranged them according to the periodic table? What if I dove into a spent nuclear fuel pool? How long could a nuclear submarine last in orbit? What if we all shone laser pointers at the Moon? What if we built a bridge out of Legos? Many of the answers to these questions are some variation on "we would all die horribly," so the fun is in the details.  (You would not die if you dove into a spent nuclear fuel pool; technicians ...

Texts From Jane Eyre , by Mallory Ortberg SO FUNNY.  There, that is my opinion of this collection of texts from famous literary characters.  Mallory Ortberg writes The Toast , which I don't exactly subscribe to because there's more profanity than I like, but which I have often enjoyed perusing because it's very funny, mostly about art history, or literature, or history in general. It makes me extra happy to find humor about classic literature. I would love to quote half this book at you but it's not easy, because it's all little texts.  But here is one installment of Edgar Allan Poe. hey where are you? hi where are you? you're like two hours late it's almost midnight I can't get out of the house right now Is your car blocked? do you need a ride? no it's like there's this bird there's a bird on your car? no he's sitting on my statue it's like mm it just keeps looking at me got those fiery bird eye...

Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh The only book I've read by Evelyn Waugh is Brideshead Revisited, which is mostly on the melancholy side, so I thought I would try a funny one.  Decline and Fall is Waugh's first novel. Paul Pennyfeather is a divinity student at Oxford, the most innocent fellow around, but through an unfortunate mishap he is sent down (expelled) for indecent behavior.  He is fit for nothing but to become a minor schoolmaster at a not-very-good school, so off he goes to Wales to meet a cast of oddballs.  Fate tosses him hither and thither, between wealthy socialites and, well, prison.  Most of it is funny, some of it is pretty strange in that 1920s way, and a few bits defy the comedy and go melancholy again. I enjoyed it, but not like I enjoy a Wodehouse novel, which is more straightforward fun.  Waugh seems to have a layer of gray under his humor, like he's showing us that things might be funny on the surface, but watch out for those depth...