Howling Frog Books

The readalong at War Through the Generations is wrapping up, and here are the final discussion questions.  Don't read this if you don't want to know what happens at the end. 1.  In Chapter 31, as Henry is swept down the river, he refers to a “we”.  Who do you think this “we” is? I just assumed that he was speaking of himself only and using a sort of figure of speech.  I noticed it, but didn't think about it too much. 2.  After Henry’s escape into the river, he talks about not having any obligation to the war effort on either side, though he wishes both sides luck.  Do you think he is no longer brave/courageous or is it something else?  Explain. I think he's had enough and sees that moment of escape as an irrevocable choice to leave the war.  He's in a bind--he's been trying to do his duty and get the cars and equipment where they're supposed to go, but it's a mess, and now he's been picked up and will be shot as a deserter or a spy no ma

Yvain: the Knight of the Lion , by Chretien de Troyes Chretien de Troyes was one of the key poets in turning some old legends about a King Arthur who fought the Romans and had a really prophetic wizard into the King Arthur whose stories we know so well.  And he wasn't British.  He was French, and he turned the stories into fashionable French romances.  Chretien invented the character of Lancelot and the whole Lancelot/Guinevere storyline.   Yvain was one of his favorite poems (I gather) and works as a sort of proto-novel in its structure. Yvain is a knight of great prowess, related to Gawain.  He does great deeds and wins a wonderful prize, but he loses it all through his own fault. Poor Yvain goes through many trials to atone for his thoughtlessness.  Along the way, he saves a lion and earns its loyalty, so he is known as the Knight of the Lion. I'm always interested in the setting for the Arthurian stories.  Knights and maidens go venturing through a trackless forest,

It's the final post on Madame Bovary , and there are spoilers, so don't keep reading if you haven't read it yet! This last part was very sad.  Emma's immaturity and greed just catches up with her on all fronts, but I was surprised that it was her debt that finished her off, not her adultery (though they have the same root cause). Emma reminds me of several literary heroines who have similar flaws, but who conquer them--frequently in moral novels for girls.  Anne Shirley wants romance, but her sense of humor, moral training, and good sense eventually teach her that the real boy next door is better than a fictional brooding hero.  Meg and Amy March both desire luxury, but each receives lessons about the vanity of wanting more than you can have.  Oh, let's not forget Marianne Dashwood, who nearly loses her respectability and her life to her romantic notions, and learns to value solid worth!  (None of these people stop being romantic; they just learn to control them

Little Women , by Lousia May Alcott I'm going to be writing a bit about this book for the Feminist Classics Project, so this is just a quick post to say that I read Little Women over the past few days and enjoyed it thoroughly.  I always refused to read it when I was a kid--I avoided anything with the word 'classic' on it, especially anything American--and I missed out!  When the movie came out in the mid-90s, an old friend of mine found out that I had never read it.  She bought me a copy, and I have just re-read it again.

I finished Warbreaker; the last section was very short and action-packed. I did feel like the conclusion was too hurried! I still have some questions.   1. There were a whole bunch of character revelations in this last section of the book. We now know who Warbreaker is, and what Blushweaver's motivations are, and who was behind the war, and the intentions of several characters we suspected. How do you feel, now that everything's out in the open?     The bad guys turn out to be the people no one was paying any attention to. I'm not sure how I like that. I think Sanderson was too vague about them throughout the book; I wanted to know more about the Pahn Kahl earlier anyway. They've got a different religion, but no one ever says what that is. They're just quiet quiet quiet...and bam! We're going to kill everyone!   The priests could have avoided a lot of problems by just explaining their perfectly harmless plan in the first place. That does kind of b

Anne's Anthology: Following the Footnote Trail, ed. Margie Gray I know you're out there.  You always spell Anne with an 'e,' you look for kindred spirits, Gilbert is your dream boy, and you would happily go to Prince Edward Island on a vacation.  Possibly you even insisted on a dress with puffed sleeves when you were 14, if you are old enough to have lived through the 80's. In honor of the Victorian Celebration , I thought I'd let you know about a book just for Anne-addicts.  Anne's Anthology is a collection of poetry that was popular in the Victorian era--every piece that was quoted or referenced in Anne of Green Gables , all gathered into one very large book, complete with where the reference is found.  This is not a collection of Victorian poetry that has remained popular for the last century or so or been judged important; it's a collection of what Victorians themselves liked, which I think makes a difference. It's not a terribly well-kno

War Through the Generations is hosting a readalong of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms .  This week we read chapters 21-30. 1.  “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one” is a statement made by Henry, and he and Catherine enter into a discourse about bravery.  Do you think either character is brave and do you think Catherine is right when she says the brave die more deaths but just don’t talk about it? Explain. I have to say, at this point I think Henry's pretty stoic.  He's put up with months of severe pain with barely a whimper (albeit with quite a lot of brandy).  He's not interested in running into battle, but he's reasonably cool under pressure and I think he's brave. Catherine, at least, is holding herself together at the prospect of having a baby out of wedlock in a foreign country in the middle of a war with no resources and nowhere to go.  I still think Catherine is a ninny, but I'll give her points for courage.  I think she'

Bev at My Reader's Block is requiring a challenge check-in.  She says: For those who would like to participate in this checkpoint post, I'd like you to do two things: 1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).  If you're really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you've read correlates to actual miles up Pike's Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc. I started off at the basic Pike's Peak level of 12 books, and completed that a little while ago, so I moved up to Mt. Vancouver--25 books.  I've completed 14 books and am almost done with the 15th.  Here they are: The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick The Book of Beasts, trans. T. H. White Mr. Dixon Disappears, by Ian Sansom Nightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love Peacock The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories, by M. R. James    The New Road to Serfdom, by Daniel H

I've finished Part II of Madame Bovary .  Not much more to go, really.  The writing is just wonderful (I think I said that before)--elegant and realistic and just a bit satiric.  Emma just keeps making things worse.  She has a baby, but refuses to engage with her child, first because she didn't get to have all the fancy baby accessories she would have liked, and second because she had set her heart upon having a boy.  As a result, she leaves her baby girl with a nurse, which was normal at that time, but she visits only once, and seems not to care about the welfare of her child at all.  When little Berthe returns home, Emma pays almost no attention to her. For a while Emma cultivates virtuous housekeeping, and very much enjoys watching herself do it, but she is putting on a show more than anything else.  Soon enough a neighbor moves in; he is a man of the world and can easily see that Emma longs for romance.  Completely cold-bloodedly, he decides to seduce her.  It's t

Hey there, Greeklings (and everybody else too)!  Guess what I just found?  A guide to free Loeb ebooks: DownLOEBables .  All the books are in the public domain; these are the first editions from 1911 and thereabouts.*  Now you too can have a Loeb library! As I've mentioned before, I've always coveted the Loeb editions because of their inherent coolness, but they are quite expensive and I really have no excuse for buying books that are half Greek when I can't even hold the whole alphabet in my head. (I've never had any trouble retaining Russian letters--I remember very very little Russian, but can still sound it out just fine.  I don't know why I can't retain the Greek alphabet properly, though I have improved, so maybe there's still hope.)   Then there are the Latin Loeb books--also very cool, but my Latin is pretty much at a kindergarten level. But now I can have some Loeb books on my tablet, and that is better than not having any at all!  I do not lo

Becca at I Read That Once has asked about reading habits.  So, here are my answers to her questions-- Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack: Not very much, but when I do, chocolate! What is your favourite drink while reading? Ice water.  Diet Dr. Pepper sometimes. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I don't usually.  Also, I read a lot of library books!  But even if I own the book, it mostly doesn't occur to me to mark it up unless something really jumps out at me.  Even then I tend to go for small bits of paper stuck in to mark places instead. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open? Usually a bookmark--I have a spot for bookmarks and try to keep a decent supply there.  Some of mine have been floating around for years, like the one from Berkeley Book Consortium, which went out of business eons ago (I bought my copy of Spellco

The Prince , by Niccolo Machiavelli Niccolo Machiavelli was a court diplomat working for the Borgias, but they got run out of town by the Medicis and Machiavelli was banished.  Living on his tiny little estate in the country, he wrote The Prince as a gift for Lorenzo de Medici in hopes that it would get him a job.  Machiavelli was a born politician, and though his poverty grated on him, it was really the hope that he could get back into politics and help repair the ruined mess that was Italy that spurred him to write the book. Machiavelli, evidently wearing a lot of padded clothing The Prince is written in a plain, straightforward style that will surprise anyone used to the flowery, discursive manner of most medieval works.  Apparently Machiavelli had intentions to pretty it up a bit but never got around to it or something.  Nowadays the style makes it easy to read, to the relief of countless high-school students. But Machiavelli's frequent references to historical events

This week we read chapters 35-49.  I did not want to stop reading!  There is not much left to go and I can't wait to get to the rest of the story.  I do not see how all my questions can be answered by the end. Questions: 1) So, pretty much everything has been flipped up on its head in this section. Which particular revelation was the greatest shock to you and how has it impacted your view of the book as a whole?  I was really surprised.  Even though I said at the beginning that the two mercenaries reminded me of the horrible Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar (who doesn't say much but tortures small animals a lot), I had gotten to like them and was taken by surprise.  And they were using Vivenna to start the war!  Last week I noticed that she was being counterproductive but I didn't think through the implications enough. I thought from the start that Vasher didn't seem like a bad guy, and I'm glad to have that confirmed.  And I'm not at all sure that Siri i

What?  A post that isn't about a readalong?  How can it be? It has taken me months to work my way through the Decameron .  I did not like it about 89% of the time, which is about how many of the 100 stories are repetitively scurrilous.  But now I have done it, and I never need to do it again! The background for this collection of tales is kind of odd.  The plague is ravaging the city of Florence, so ten Bright Young Things (7 young women and 3 young men) flee the city and lodge in a lovely house in the country, where they sing and dance and generally have a good time while everyone else dies horribly.  Each day, each person must tell a story, and there is generally a theme they have to stick to.  As everyone knows, this book served as a model for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , in which he uses the same device--but Chaucer spent a lot more time on his characters.  Boccaccio's young beauties are pretty well interchangeable, as far as I can tell, though apparently some cri

The Farewell to Arms readalong is hosted at the War Through the Generations blog. For this week, we read chapters 11-20.  Here are this week’s questions, feel free to join the discussion. 1. There is a lot of talk about being tired or the priest looking tired in this section.  What do you think Hemingway is trying to get at? War exhausts everyone in the vicinity whether they're actually fighting or not.  The priest isn't fighting, but if he's working near the front or in a hospital (I can't quite tell from the story what he does, but he's working with ambulance drivers, right?), it's his job to comfort the dying, wounded, and distressed.  A priest in WWI had a lot of tough questions to answer!   And then he spends a lot of his time being needled by everyone else, too, which seems to be the main preoccupation, as though he never does any actual priesting.  Anyway, I'm not surprised he's tired. 2.  The relationship between Henry and Catherine i

I'm not quite sure how everyone is doing this, so I thought I'd do a post each for parts I, II, and III.  I just finished Part I. The story starts off with Charles Bovary's early life story; his youth, training as a 'public health officer' (not quite a doctor but close-ish), unenthusiastic marriage to an older woman, and then her death and his remarriage to Emma, a farmer's daughter with a convent training.  Only then does the narrative change to Emma's perspective.  Her husband is unthinkingly happy.  He's got a pretty, pleasant wife and his life is comfortable and he doesn't wish for more, but Emma is discontented. For one thing, she doesn't love her husband.  The excitement of an engagement gave her the illusion of love, but she neither knows nor cares about this actual, real-life, kind of boring husband she's got.  Emma has read lots of novels, and she thinks that real love would involve poetry in the moonlight, whirlwind passion, and

We're now more than halfway through Warbreaker and I'm really liking it; I don't want to put it down for a week!  Join the discussion at Naithin's blog, Once Upon A Time . 1. Lightsong is beginning to remember his past, or at least, what he thinks is his past. Why do you think this knowledge is coming to him now, after five years as a Returned? Well, for one thing he's actually putting some effort into it.  He could have tried doing all that stuff at any time, but it was triggered by a mystery landing in his lap--and now for the first time, he's realized that he might still have his talents.  For a minute there I wondered if he wasn't Arsteel in his former life, but I guess probably not, since it's been five years since he Returned.  (Surely Denth wouldn't be so sensitive about it after that long?) Later on, it mentions that Lifeless retain their talents too, so it makes sense that a Returned would too.  I bet we'll see more parallels

So far I've read the first 10 chapters of A Farewell to Arms .  And so far I'm not enthralled, but hey, we can hope.  I didn't really expect to love Hemingway's famous style.   Here are the questions from the War Through the Generations blog: For this week, we read chapters 1-10.  Here are this week’s questions, feel free to join the discussion. So far, how do you feel about Hemingway’s writing style? Are you enjoying it? Not really.  He does make you work by plopping you into the story with no introduction; you just have to figure out where you are, and that's not a bad thing in my opinion (SF generally works best that way).  He likes run-on sentences without commas, which was probably quite new and original back then, but now makes me think of Cormac McCarthy.  Hemingway's words have not really grabbed me.  Everything is too surface or something.  I don't care about Henry or Catherine much at all, though I feel bad for the poor priest.   Rinaldi

The Pharaoh's Secret, by Marissa Moss This is a great story for older kids or YA.  I know there are lots and lots of kids' adventures in Egypt (though this one pre-dates Riordan's Kane Chronicles), but this is a worthy read. Talibah and her brother Adom are visiting Egypt for the first time, even though both their parents are native Egyptians and scholars of Egyptology too.  They had always looked forward to taking the kids to Egypt, but then Talibah's mother died, about 5 years before the story begins. Talibah keeps running into references to the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and feels a strong pull to find out more.  Pretty soon she's having weird dreams and meeting people who give her mysterious artifacts--she and her brother have a job to do that is connected with Hatshepsut and the rest of her family.  At the same time, memories of their mother are surfacing; this all has something to do with her, too.  It's all very mysterious, but together Talibah and Adom p

Social Q's: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries, and Quagmires of Today, by Philip Galanes This was a fun quick read I picked up at the library.  I love advice columns--who doesn't?--and Miss Manners is my all-time favorite.  Philip Galanes started an advice column in the New York Times, and here's his book.  It's very New Yorky, full of tips on social dilemmas common in New York.  It's also a fun read and has some good advice for people who don't live in New York, so if you like advice columns, it's perfectly fine.

The good folks over at A Classic Case of Madness are hosting a Madame Bovary readalong, and I've been saving my copy in order to join them.  This is a less scheduled project than the other readalongs I'm doing right now, and I think I'm just supposed to post my thoughts every so often, or at least respond to their posts. Madame Bovary appears to be having a little revival at the moment, in the wake of the publication of a new translation by Lydia Davis.  Emma Bovary is being advertised as "the original desperate housewife" on book copy and in advertisements, which I suppose she is, even though I tend to bristle at the phrase myself.  (Seriously, I can't stand it.) It took Flaubert years to write this novel; he worked at it constantly and produced only a few pages a month, as he wrote reams, revised, and then cut most of the material.  It caused something of a sensation for its subject matter and for the realistic style, which refused any sentimentality

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab , by Fergus Hume The other night I was wondering what to read, since nothing looked right, and then I saw Mystery of a Hansom Cab sitting on the shelf.  It's on my list, it's Victorian, and it's a mystery--perfect!  It turned out to be an even better choice the next morning, when I spent a couple of hours sitting around a prompt care clinic, whee. This was apparently the best-selling mystery of the 19th century, beating out Sherlock Holmes--and it isn't a British book.  It's an Australian story, set in Melbourne, which must have made it pleasantly familiar for Australians and nicely exotic for everyone else.  There are many descriptive passages that give you a good feeling for Victorian Melbourne; to me, it came off as if someone had plunked some Victorian Londoners down in California a generation after the Gold Rush.  The weather and setting is very familiar, since much of Australia is similar in climate to my own California, but pe

The Frogs , by Aristophanes This comedy was performed just a few months after the deaths of Euripides and Sophocles, which inspired the plot.  It won first place at the festival, and it even got a unique distinction--it was performed a second time (remember, plays were only performed once), and at the performance Aristophanes was crowned with olive leaves.  A sacred olive leaf wreath was only for citizens who had rendered great service to Athens.  This great honor was not for the parts of the play that moderns will find interesting.  It was for the chorus' long patriotic songs, exhorting Athenians to require nobility in their leaders, just like in the glorious days of old. The plot of the play seems rather audacious to me, but apparently anything went with the Athenians at this festival.  Dionysus, the very god honored by the plays, is the star of the show and the butt of nearly all the jokes.  Disguised as Heracles, he and his servant Xanthias are looking for a road down to Ha

Katherine over at November's Autumn's Classics Challenge   has been hosting a new discussion every month.  This month she says: "Select a quote from the Classic you're currently reading and create what I call a visual tour."  That is, collect images that evoke the mood of the book you're reading. All of these photos are from Flickr and you can see the source by clicking on the image. Framley Parsonage contains several passages that give a picture: Framley itself was a pleasant country place, having about it nothing of seignorial dignity or grandeur, but possessing everything necessary for the comfort of country life. The house was a low building of two stories, built at different periods, and devoid of all pretensions to any style of architecture; but the rooms, though not lofty, were warm and comfortable, and the gardens were trim and neat beyond all others in the county. Indeed, it was for its gardens only that Framley Court was celebrated. [I&