Howling Frog Books

  Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, by Jane Marie This is an expose of MLMs -- multi-level marketing schemes -- which are pyramid schemes that keep just within the letter of the law.   You know them: Amway, Avon, Mary Kay, Arbonne, Doterra, Lularoe, and many many others.  Some are more respectable than others, but they all promise you the ability to run your own business from home, be independent, and make money at your own pace.  The trouble is that the product they're selling, whatever it is, is not where the profit lies; that's in your downline.  The more people you recruit to be sellers, the more money you'll make, but as the layers add up, the money runs out.  The people at the top make plenty, but you won't; in fact, you'll probably lose money and end up with a basement full of product you can't move. Marie dissects the biggest MLM companies, analyzing how they attract people (predominantly moms looking for fle...

 Hey everybody!  I disappeared for a while there, and I'm not quite sure what I am going to do, but I'll tell you about it.  My reading mojo disappeared; I mean, it took a long vacation and I wondered if it was coming back.  I think it had mostly to do with my husband's layoff back in January; worry took up most of my brainspace and there was not much left over.  I could read the fluffiest mysteries, and Diana Wynne Jones.  I read something like eight of Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, would you believe -- I liked those when I was around 13.  But I couldn't seem to keep up with blogging, or anyone else's blogs, or read anything new or in the least challenging.  I saw the CC Spin and I just couldn't do it!  Instead I embroidered things and played too much on my phone. A couple of weeks ago, my husband got a nice contracting gig, and I instantly felt much better.  Pretty soon my reading came back, and with renewed energy -- I read two Shakes...

 Here's some more November reading!  I'm thinking about going back to single-book posts, but on the other hand I'm having trouble finding time to write even these quickie riffles through several books at a time.  What do you think?     The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All -- But There is a Solution , by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott:   I've been looking forward to this book for a long time!  The title is a riff on Lukianoff's last book, co-written with Jonathan Haidt, and the two titles work together.  This time, Lukianoff is teamed up with a Gen Z writer, Rikki Schlott, to bring in a younger perspective.  The thesis here: that cancel culture (which yes, exists) is a manifestation of false ideas discussed in the earlier book, and which serve to make us less mentally healthy and less able to function as a society.  The ideas: Fragility: that people are fragile and need comfort; they...

 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...

 How to Fight Anti-Semitism, by Bari Weiss  This wound up being kind of timely; I'd just started reading it when the news about the Tennessee school board pulling Maus from the curriculum broke*, and then the whole Whoopi Goldberg/View/Holocaust thing happened, and so I wound up watching interviews with David Baddiel and reading think-pieces about it.** The final part of this book is, indeed, about fighting anti-Semitism, but a good 60% of it comes first, and it's about explaining anti-Semitism for the twisty, sneaky, ever-morphing thing that it is.   There's the Nazi version, which we can still see today in diatribes about Jews "replacing" people and attacks on synagogues.  Weiss actually opens the book with the story of the Tree of Life synagogue attack in October  2018, because that was her parents' own place of worship and community. Then there's a quieter version, in which anti-Semitism is bad, sure, but not as bad as real racism, and very understan...

 To absolutely no one's surprise, I am late to November Nonfiction, which is an event I really enjoy.  Week #1's question is hosted at Rennie's What’s Nonfiction blog, and asks: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?     Right now, my pick for favorite is The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore , but I warn you that I also started All That She Carried and that bids fair to match or surpass it.   I have only had a few weeks to recommend the story of Elizabeth Packard, but I did tag it a 'book everyone should read,' so I think that's the one. My nonfiction focus this year has largely been on World War II.  There's a WWII challenge for this year, and I...

 The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear, by Kate Moore  It's hard to say anything about this book besides --- wowzers, this is a fantastic, amazing story, and everyone should read it.  Including you. This is the life story of Elizabeth Packard, a completely ordinary woman, wife, and mother of six in Illinois.  In 1860, as the United States was headed towards war, Elizabeth and her husband were in disagreement about religion.  Theophilus was a Presbyterian minister, and while Elizabeth had been joyfully discovering new ideas about women's rights, he was under pressure to guide his congregation into a stricter, more conservative theology (which, among other things, was neutral about slavery, in contrast to the church's previous anti-slavery position).  Elizabeth's insistence on her right to read widely, have her own ideas, and argue them in public grated on Theophilus, and he ...

 Ravenmaster: My Life With the Ravens at the Tower of London, by Christopher Skaife If you've ever been to the Tower of London, or read very much about it, you know that there are ravens living there.  The story goes that ravens have always been at the Tower and that if they ever leave or are lost, the kingdom will fall.  There is, therefore, a Ravenmaster whose job it is to care for the ravens.  There are usually around six birds at any given time; they are usually rescues of some kind or occasionally former pets.   Chris Skaife has been the Ravenmaster for several years and he gives us an enjoyable rundown of the history and current state of ravenkeeping at the Tower.  This ranges all over the place, and includes the Tower's history as a sort of zoo for exotic animals, details of raven life and habits, stories from Skaife's own life, and tales of hair-raising ravenic moments.  Skaife also explains how ravenkeeping has changed over time and that ...

  Don't Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times, by Irshad Manji Irshad Manji is a person well worth following; she's just so interesting!  For several years she's had the Moral Courage Project on Youtube , which is about getting people of opposing viewpoints together to discuss solutions.  Manji dislikes labels because she feels, rightly enough, that they diminish our humanity and complexity.   As both a devout Muslim and a lesbian, she tends not to fit neatly into the expectations those labels generate. The foundational conceit of the book is Manji's own experience with dogs.  Raised to fear and loathe dogs as unclean and dangerous, Manji discovered a whole new dimension to life when she ventured to get to know dogs -- and the woman who became her wife.  Here, Manji sets up her thesis as a fictional conversation between her and Lily, urging all of us to look past our labels and our fears, and talk honestly with each other -- not to sco...

 Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct, by Abigail Tucker This is a fantastic book, and if you're a mom you'll want to read it.  If you're not a mom, it's probably a good idea to read it anyway, because after all, there are a lot of moms around. Scientists have only recently really started to seriously study the biological changes that come with motherhood.   We've long assumed that adults, on the whole, don't change much .  And it turns out that moms change -- a lot.  Our cells, our genes, our brains...all go through massive reconstruction. Tucker goes through a whole lot of research (she's a journalist, not a science person herself) and combines it with stories from her own life.  She's a mom of four herself and has plenty of relevant experience.  This is definitely a popular science book for laypeople, and it's got a good deal of humor as well. Compared to their rapidly developing infants, moms have a reputation f...

  The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, by Meghan Daum I enjoyed this book, which is pretty much exactly what it says: Daum's thoughts on #MeToo, the 2016 election, and everything that's been going on for the last few years.   She spends a good deal of time meditating upon the differences between people her age -- GenX, like me -- and the other generations, and her conclusion is pretty much that we've always been irrelevant and will never not be irrelevant (well, fooey). For example.  #MeToo.  When we were young, GenXers valued toughness; we desperately wanted to be tough.  Harassment was inevitable, and ideally we'd come up with some cool, dismissive response that would get us out of the situation and also make us feel like we were too tough to be bothered.  Millennials, logically enough, asked why they should have to be tough in the first place -- why do we have to put up with this?  While I do feel that a certain amou...

 Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions From Tiny Mortals About Death, by Caitlin Doughty Since my oldest is now enrolled in a funeral science course at college, I am learning a lot about how it all works.  And so I tend to pick up books by Caitlin Doughty, and that's what I did the other day at the public library.  Doughty collects questions sent to her by curious kids, and she gives full, detailed answers.  She does not pull her punches, but she delivers everything with warmth and humor. That said, it's not actually a kids' book.  It would probably go down well with ages 10+, but it's not published as a middle-grade or YA book, and sensitive kids should probably not read it. Doughty answers questions such as: Can I keep my parents' skulls? Can I give Grandma a Viking funeral? What about soldiers who die far from home? What if I ate a lot of unpopped popcorn and then got cremated? Can I be preserved in amber? And many more, some of which are on the gross si...

 Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev It's been a while since my brother recommended this book to me.  But boy it was a worthwhile read -- if not exactly the kind of thing designed to cheer me up at this particular time.  In fact, I laid it aside for a few days when the world got to be a bit much for me. Peter Pomerantsev is Anglo-Russian, his parents having emigrated from the USSR to the UK in the 1970s.  In the early 2000s, he was a young man getting into media and documentary video right as Russia was going through enormous changes, and he worked in television and shot film and generally did a lot.  He published this book in 2014 -- six years ago, which is a long time in terms of what's changed! -- and it contains his observations and stories about what it's like to live in the new Russia, which, he thinks, has now reinvented itself so many times so quickly that nothing feels real; everyone just...

Women's Work: A Reckoning With Work and Home, by Megan K. Stack I had no idea this book would be so absorbing, but after all, I'm always interested in reading about the issues around family, motherhood, and housekeeping!  This hit a lot of my buttons, and as with the Divakaruni book I wrote about a few weeks ago, I'm only sorry that for the most part, only women will read this and men won't be inclined to pick it up -- because although the title is about women, the actual subject matter is about families, work, and how we structure society.  Stack structures her book as a sort of memoir and sort of meditation on how we patch work and family together with money...or not. Megan Stack used to be a correspondence reporter, traveling the world's more dangerous spots after news stories.  Her husband, Tom, was the same, and eventually they decided to settle down in Beijing, where Stack planned to have a baby and write the novel she's been planning.  Seems easy enough, ...

The View From the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction, by Neil Gaiman Oh, I do like Neil Gaiman, though as usual I'm late to the party.  This is a very long collection of non-fiction -- I have noticed before that absolutely everybody wants him to write introductions.  So I took it fairly slowly and read it over lunches, so as not to overdose.  Gaiman, however, is not easy to overdose on. The book starts with my very favorite essay, which I would have put in front too, the one about how important libraries are.  I may be a librarian, but since I'm not a writer, I can't defend libraries with quite this much eloquence.  If you've never read this one, be sure to do so .  I gave you the link, so you have no excuse.  After that there are some more good essays on various bookish and writing topics before a set of pieces on 'People I Have Known,' which of course include the expected DWJ, Pterry, and Douglas Adams, as well as lots of other well-known and not so fa...

Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames, by Lara Maiklem The minute I saw this book I knew I had to read it.  And so did my co-worker, so we had to have one of those polite exchanges of "you take it first!"  She'll probably be happy I'm done with it.  This book is right up my alley.  If I lived in London I would absolutely go mudlarking.  If I'd had any clue how, I would have done it when we went on our trip (which, unbelievably, was just four years ago).  I can't understand why people who live in London don't spend all their time poking into odd corners of history, but I suppose they have to work in order to afford living in London. I do actually have a piece of medieval pottery taken from the Thames by a mudlark; one of the historical buildings we went into had a basket of them.  Pieces like that are very very common and not worth anything.  For one pound you could choose a piece, and the money went to English Heritage (or may...