Howling Frog Books

 Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana Jr. Wow, this is a fascinating account.  No wonder it was hugely popular in its day!  It's not well-known now, and I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I sure enjoyed this memoir of life at sea in the 1830s. In 1834, Richard Dana was a law student at Harvard, and he contracted measles, which damaged his eyesight; he couldn't read at all.  He decided that the way to recover his health would be to sign on as a regular sailor to a merchant ship and spend a couple of years at sea.  He entered service on the Pilgrim , which was headed to California -- in the days when Alta California was a sparsely-populated area of Mexico and the back of beyond.  No Panama Canal, no railroad, and no overland journeys from the United States yet.  The financial interest in California was for cattle hides from the herds run by the Spanish missions, brought to the coast largely by the Native peoples being used as ...

 The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe , by Marci Shore  I've had this for quite some time, and was spurred to start it when I started watching a series of lectures online and realized that the professor was the same person who wrote this book.  And also she's married to Timothy Snyder, whose books I love.  So I dove in, and it still took me forever to read, but that's because of my slump, not because it wasn't fascinating.  It was! It's a sort of combination memoir and description of life in many different places in Eastern Europe after the Cold War ended.  To my intense envy, Shore -- who must be only a year or so older than I am -- spent 1990 on studying and teaching in Czechoslovakia and other places.  That's what I wanted to be doing in the early 1990s!  Only I didn't know how to get there, and probably I wouldn't have done too well at it anyway.  But reading about her doing it was pretty amazing. Shore's...

 The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, by John Hendrix I recently read Hendrix' Faithful Spy , and now I've got his latest -- a chronicle of one of the most world-influencing friendships of the 20th century.  And I'm here to tell you, it's great stuff, a lovely biography/tribute to both men.  This is a graphic novel suitable for age 10 and up, but is equally absorbing for adults.  Give it to the Middle-Earth and Narnia fan in your life! Hendrix gives short biographies of each before they meet, and then he gets detailed, providing lovely illustrations in teal, lavender, and gold.  But there's just one problem; what they mostly did was talk, and that doesn't make for exciting reading.  So Hendrix introduces two metanarrating avatars: a wizard and a lion, who explain myth and epic, provide commentary upon the relationship, and generally facilitate the reader's experience, like a Greek chorus in a play.  The two s...

 The Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell When I opened this book and started reading, I was a little taken aback when the introduction to the trilogy edition explained that all three books had been edited down in order to become the trilogy.  I didn't sign up for that!  I wanted the whole thing!  But then it turned out that complete editions of the first book are no longer easy to get; they've long been replaced by this shortened trilogy version.  And so, resigned, I decided to read the first part of the book and then see how it was going before committing to all three books.  And I did really enjoy Ring of Bright Water , but I don't think I'm going to continue. Read on to see why. Gavin Maxwell, wanderer and general nature guy, had tried running a shark-hunting business on the Scottish island of Soay.  He'd gone back and forth to the Middle East a few times, for what exactly he does not say, but writing seems to come into it, and probably also gen...

 The Faithful Spy, by John Hendrix It's a graphic novel biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, aimed at a YA audience!   While this story culminates in Bonhoeffer's involvement in plots to kill Hitler, and his subsequent imprisonment, it's not the sole focus of the book.  This is a biography that aims to give a full picture of Bonhoeffer's life, complete with his childhood and family, later studies, travel, and efforts to start a new kind of pastor training. The art is gorgeous -- complex and layered, but done only in scarlet, teal, and black.  Visually, this book is wonderful, but it does suffer from the size; I think it would be better in a larger size, which may have been too expensive to print or something.  The print is tiny, and I often struggled to read it. Highly recommended for an excellent angle on Germany in World War II* and a fascinating treatment of Bonhoeffer's life, plus the art.  It was really good. But I wish it was printed larger! *Alth...

 Joyful Recollections of Trauma, by Paul Scheer I like Paul Scheer; he's very funny, and I keep meaning to listen to his podcast "How Did This Get Made?" but I've seen him in other things.  Like the hilarious NTSF:DS:SUV::.  Anyway, a little bit ago I listened to one of my favorite comedy podcasts and he was a guest, talking about his new book.  I ordered it for my work library, and read it once it came in.   Scheer had a pretty rough childhood, with a stepfather who enjoyed thinking up creative ways to terrorize little Paul.  Finally he and his mom escaped, and he embarked on his quest to become...an actor!  Lessons in improv led to one thing and another, and finally to the Upright Citizens Brigade, a long-form improv comedy troupe that launched Amy Poehler and others.   He also realized that he was not okay, and spent a good long time straightening himself out in therapy, which was really interesting to read about.  He'd tried rag...

 The Hard Way: Discovering the Women Who Walked Before Us, by Susannah Walker This book arrived for me while I was gone on the Ridgeway, and that's what it's about!  Sort of.  I was kind of confused about the title at first but eventually Walker moves from the Ridgeway to focus on the much less known Hard Way or Harrow Way, and it is not easy to trace.  Anyway, I helped to back the publishing of this book, pretty much on a whim, so I got a copy and my name in the back.  You can look me up. Walker seems to be about my age, and spent much of her 20s walking and even living on the Ridgeway, before settling down into marriage and a child and suddenly no more walking.  Or at least, it became far more difficult to get out to anyplace as inaccessible as the Ridgeway, which is not stroller-friendly and has hardly anyplace to park and leave the car, and she spent a lot of time thinking about how women get pulled into domesticity once they have kids, in a way that do...

 Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich In 1373, a 30-year-old nun was dying of an illness.  Instead of dying, she had a series of visions and got well.  Over the next 15 years or so, she composed two narratives of the visions she had seen -- a short version, and a long version containing everything she felt like she'd learned about her revelations since.  Julian of Norwich was an anchoress attached to -- surprise -- Norwich cathedral and she became quite well known.  Margery Kempe visited her, which means two of the earliest women writers we have in English knew each other.  These visions were about the Crucifixion and about God's infinite love for His creations.  Here are a few of my favorite bits, some of which are very well-known:   'It is true that sin is the cause of all suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' 'Since I have set right what was the greatest harm, it is my will ...

 Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others, by Zachary Levi I like Zachary Levi, so when this (rather surprising) book came out, it caught my eye.  Levi writes about his long struggles with mental health and relationships, and it's a sweet and deeply felt story that I found valuable. The short version is that Levi comes from generations of family abuse and re-enactment -- lots of people who had no idea how to love others or themselves.  They would escape their family homes, only to build new ones that were just the same.  Kid Zachary found escape in making people laugh, and threw himself into a Hollywood career, but by the age of 37, after a short disaster of a marriage, he was falling apart and had no idea how to cope.  Never having been loved as a child, he didn't know how to accept himself as a regular imperfect person. A lot of intensive therapy later, Levi learned to build basic skills like not beating himself up at every moment.  He was als...

 It's nothing but fun around here, as you can see by these very cheery selections.  Maybe I should try to read heartwarming Christmas tales for a bit?   Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women's Trauma Against Them , by Dr Jessica Taylor:   This is a UK book, and focuses on UK practices, though it's still relevant to the US.  But just so you know, she uses a lot of NHS terminology that I didn't understand at first, such as sectioning , which seems to be holding a patient for psychiatric reasons without their consent.  Anyway... Taylor's theme is that she has seen way too many women shoved into psychiatric diagnoses and  medication because they were upset about the abuse that they had suffered.  Say you get a teen girl who has been through some horrific abuse, and instead of receiving therapy and advocacy, she is told that she is making a lot of it up and has BPD.  Her distress is interpreted as mental illness instead of a normal perso...

It's Spin day!  I finished my book in good time, and it was a very interesting read.   Boswell's London Journal, 1762 - 1763, by James Boswell, ed Frederick A. Pottle James Boswell was the son of the laird of Auchinleck, and he was on the outs with his father.  Lord Auchinleck wanted his son to study law and generally act like a responsible adult, and James wanted to live an exciting life in London, maybe join the Guards -- as long as he didn't have to actually leave London and do anything military -- hang out with literary types, and write poetry.  So they made a deal: Jamie's dad gave him an allowance that was enough to live on as a gentleman, but not enough for living large, and let him spend some time in London to see how he liked it.  (This was pretty nice of Dad, considering that a couple of years before, young Jamie had announced a desire to become a Catholic monk and then ran off to London for a few months of serious debauchery.  The Laird mus...

 I'm way behind on documenting my reading in September, but here are two books that go together.  In our family, we love the 90s TV show Babylon 5 .  We especially love Lyta Alexander!  So a while back my husband got me the actress' memoir, and then I thought I ought to follow it up with another one.... Pleasure Thresholds: Patricia Tallman's Babylon 5 Memoir, 2020 edition, by Patricia Tallman : While there is plenty of Babylon 5 in here, I would not at all call it a B5 memoir, because it covers her whole life.  From a difficult childhood to work as a stuntwoman (especially on Star Trek ), a wobbly beginning on Babylon 5 , and life after that, and happily with lots of photos, Tallman talks about her experiences, difficulties, friends, and life with her son.  It's highly readable and a lot of fun, and (this is my preference) lacks snipy Hollywood gossip. Instead there are lovely stories about various co-stars and friends, and an abundance of snapshots of p...

 Did I do it?  Did I hit my goal of 20 books by September 1st?  I did, and also I've been very busy and unable to finish this post.  So here we go... Summerbook #17: The Way to the Sea , by Caroline Crampton:   Crampton does a podcast I listen to ( Shedunnit ), so when she wrote this book I wanted to find a copy, but it was only published in the UK.  It's all about the Thames estuary - the bit between London and the sea -- which is where Crampton grew up, on a boat half the time.  She actually starts at the source of the Thames, but covers from there to Tower Bridge in the first chapter.  After that she gets down to business and covers history, the state of the river, ecology, and throws in bits of her own memory.  People have tended to ignore the estuary or use it as a place to dump things they don't want to look at, from actual garbage to sewage treatment and power stations.  These days the shipping is there too; an absolutely massive...

 I think I'm a bit behind on my reading; if we count my Spin title, I've now read 14 books of summer and have six to go, which isn't terrible.  But I'm going to need to buckle down a bit in August.  And I had this month off!  In August I have to go back to work!  I've admittedly been rather lazy, pottering about, working on crafty projects, and watching too many YouTube videos (but stitching while I did so!).  I've also done some day trips and hikes, and enjoyed air conditioning a whole lot.  And I've been getting a bit involved with the local public library!   How has your summer been going? Summerbook #9: Notes From the Burning Age , by Claire North :  Centuries after the apocalypse, humans live in a carefully balanced world built from the ruins of the old one.  At some point during a destructive world war, chimaerical monsters -- kakuy -- arose from the depths and wreaked destruction upon humankind in revenge for their hapless de...

I've been having a good reading month!  Here are some of the more notable books I read in January.  I've also joined a daily chapter of Les Miserables , which I'm really liking so far, and I'm reading Letters From Russia , the record of a Frenchman's 1839 tour.  It's fascinating, and also nearly 700 pages long, so it will take me a while.  The Wife of the Gods , by Kwei Quartey -- the first in a series, or at least a pair, of detective stories from Ghana.  Darko Dawson is a CID man in Accra, and he's called to his mother's ancestral village (now a town) to investigate the murder of a young medical student.  As Darko wends his way through a maze of local politics, traditional beliefs, and family history, he is also wrestling with some of his own demons.  It's a good, solid mystery with great characters and lots of cultural detail, so I really enjoyed it. The plot hinges on adinkra cloth, which this cloth is not North to Paradise , by Ousman Umar -- t...

 Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson A little bit ago I posted that my kid had given me Sitting Pretty , which was on the new bookshelf at my work library, because I'd put it there -- along with Being Seen .  That was actually the one I'd intended to read, so I grabbed it too.  Since eye issues run in my family, and I have my share, I'm always interested in books about low vision and so on. Elsa Sjunneson is a writer and activist; she's done a lot of writing and editing in SF.  This book is a memoir and meditation on how the world sees disability, and disabled people.  She is Deafblind -- that is, partially sighted in only one eye, and uses hearing aids -- because her mother got a mild case of rubella from an unvaccinated person.*   In each chapter, Sjunneson talks about different aspects of disability and navigating a pretty unfriendly world that isn't set up for disabled people.  At first I found Sjunneson's...