Howling Frog Books

Heigh ho, Greeklings, it's a little hot to be reading tragedies and philosophy at the moment, and I didn't get much reading of any kind done in July.  But if you were more industrious and literary than I was, link up your Greek literature reading here! It's hot in Greece too.

July is about over, and that means the end of Allie's Victorian Celebration.   It's been quite an event, with giveaways and quizzes and all sorts of blogging fun.  So, thanks, everybody! Here's what I read: Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope .  Quite an enjoyable read, and apparently one of Trollope's big hits.  It's the fourth Chronicle of Barsetshire (Allie says that Penguin is publishing all 6 in its pretty new English Classics series.  That might be hard to resist). Mystery of a Hansom Cab, by Fergus Hume.   One of the great early mysteries, set in Melbourne. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert.  I got to participate in a readalong for this beautifully-written novel.  It was great stuff! Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott.   This was also a July selection for the Feminist Classics blog.  It was nice to revisit the March girls. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.   I've never read as much Dickens as I ought to, and...

I've been trying to decide what books to take on my trip.  We'll be doing a whole lot of driving, so I figure I'll be able to do some reading, but it always works out that you don't read as much as you expect, right?  And it will be my job to keep the driver awake (I won't be doing any of the driving myself, because my co-pilot gets carsick if not actually doing the driving). Anyway, I haven't read anything Greek lately.  I'd like to take Herodotus but the book is too huge for a road trip.  Euripedes is on my shelf, but in a library book.  Therefore I've decided to take Plato and Aristotle along for company.  Here they are, arguing away. You can see that Plato is the older one pointing upwards.  Plato believed that ultimate reality was found in ideals, or Forms, that could not be found on earth.  We have the imperfect reflections of Forms here, but somewhere there is an ultimate reality which contains ideal trees and people and furniture....

This is another title I found listed at the Project Gutenberg Project blog (which is also where I found Bab: a Sub-Deb ).  It's a very short book--really more of a pamphlet--written by an anonymous lady for a women's magazine.  This lady grew up in a log cabin with a large family and no luxuries, and then went to the big city to get an education.  There, she met and married her husband, who came from a wealthy society family and who was going into state business.  Suddenly she was living in a whole new world, one filled with social rules she had never been taught.  This little book contains her story and her position that social education should be part of education in every school: I realized that social amenities are too often neglected in America, and our manners sometimes truthfully called crude. But I told myself with pride that our truly cultivated people will not tolerate a social form that is not based on human, kindly instincts. It was not unt...

Another fun book title meme is making its way around the world.  Adam and Jillian have done it, and now it's my turn.  I'm going to stick with 2012 titles since those are the easiest to look up on my blog--I can never remember everything I want to. Describe yourself: Out of my Mind How do you feel: Crossed Describe where you currently live: The City of Ladies (that's how my husband feels anyway) If you could go anywhere, where would you go:   I can't decide between Distant View of a Minaret and Nightmare Abbey Your favorite form of transportation:   Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms Your best friend is: Archer's Goon You and your friends are: Divergent What’s the weather like:  Half of a Yellow Sun (it's hot!) You fear: Breaking Stalin's Nose What is the best advice you have to give: Observe Madame Bovary ; do the opposite Thought for the day: The School of Freedom vs. The New Road to Serfdom How I would like to die: The Graves o...

The Magic Half , by Annie Barrows I just got this book for my little girl, who loves Barrows' Ivy and Bean series of books.  (In fact we named two of my mom's chickens Ivy and Bean, to go with the other two, Beezus and Ramona.  Our chickens all have literary names.)  And, fun fact: I learned that Annie Barrows is also the author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , which I rather enjoyed for its depiction of Guernsey life under Nazi occupation. Oh, you wanted to hear about the actual book?  OK.  Miri always feels a little forgotten, sandwiched as she is between two pairs of twins.  When her family moves into a large old farmhouse, she finally gets her own room in the attic, and up there she finds a glass lens that takes her back in time to 1935.  There she meets Molly, who has a rotten time of it as the orphaned niece and household skivvy.  Together they hatch a plan to fix Molly's life... I thought this was a very nicely ...

As long as I couldn't settle down to read anything, I thought I might as well read the Communist Manifesto .  It's short, it's been on my TBR pile for a long time, and why not? The Manifesto was written in German by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 to explain the aims of the Communist Party and distance it from other revolutionary movements of the time.  1848 was a volatile year.  In France, the Orleans monarchy gave way to the Second Republic; in England, Chartists rioted but made no headway; Denmark put limits on its monarchy; and all sorts of unrest was going on all over the world.  (That said, my edition gives the text from 1888 edited and with additional notes from Engles.) Luckily, my little copy had some explanatory information which outlined Marxist theory and history.  Even though I know the basics of Marxism, I had a hard time making sense of the actual Manifesto .  Quite a bit of it is dedicated to explaining how other 19th-century rev...

Nothing!  I'm kind of reading nothing right now, which is a very weird feeling.  I never read nothing .  But I got back from my trip and plunged into a frenzy of homeschool planning, so all my time has been spent in typing up reading lists that match our history (we are doing early modern history this year, 1600-1850), studying the chemistry book and kit to find out what supplies we need, and going over writing programs to make sure I understand what we're going to be doing.  I've been reading over the relevant bits in my favorite book on homeschooling, which I nearly have memorized anyway (it's The Well-Trained Mind , by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise--they are my homeschooling gurus). This cute kindergartener is now going into 4th grade! Here is what I still have to do: read over the chemistry book to make sure I understand everything, practice my algebra quite a lot, put together history instructions, and wrestle with this new planning software I'm tryin...

While I was on my trip I read a couple of short William Morris pieces on my tablet. The Defence of Guenevere is a poem containing Guenevere's speech at the moment when she is about to be burned for adultery.  She tells the story of her relationship with Lancelot, from the moment she first saw him.  At the same time she repeats over and over: Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie,  Whatever happened on through all those years,  God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie. I also read a paper titled The Ideal Book , which contains Morris' ideas about how books should be printed: their layout, spacing and typography, the kind of paper that ought to be used, the size, and how illustrations or ornaments ought to look.  It's quite short and rather interesting, especially when he goes off on a bit of a tangent about the need for a really good English Black-Letter type that would be both easy to read and artistically tolerable. The funny thing about this ...

Bab: a Sub-Deb, by Mary Roberts Rinehart I downloaded and read this book (free) from Amazon after seeing Aarti's review .  And now I have a problem: I absolutely loved it!  But I can't figure out how to tell you about it without saying everything Aarti already said better.  So go read her post, and forgive me for my less-than-adequate words here. Bab is 17 and a 'sub-deb'--she's stuck at school until her older sister is married off and Bab can come out herself.  Bab is not about to let that stop her, though--she's got things to do!  Like concentrating on her Career.  Or falling in love and worrying over whether this is The Real Thing.  Or, mostly, getting out of the  horrifying scrapes she is constantly getting into. The whole book is written as Bab's essays or diary, complete with constant misspellings.  Don't let that stop you from reading a great book!  Bab is over-the-top hilarious, but she's also a real teenage girl you'll r...

Amy at Book Musings tagged me for this award, the rules of which are as follows: You're tagged if you have under 200 followers and do a good job blogging. Those who are tagged then share 11 random facts about themselves, answer 11 questions posted by the person that tagged them, and then create their own set of 11 questions for others to answer.   Thanks, Amy! 11 Random Things About Me (I'm running out of Random Things) I've lived in California almost my entire life, but I've never actually felt an earthquake.  I always seem to be on the wrong end of the state.  Confession: My kids really want a pet and I don't want one.  I can't keep up with life as it is. I just finished a neat embroidery project that was also a series of lessons in different techniques.  I'm quite proud of myself.  (If you're into embroidery at all, read Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread blog , which is where I took the class.) Tomorrow is my oldest daughter's ...

Twenty Years a-Growing , by Maurice O'Sullivan I've read several memoirs of growing up in Ireland, but I've never read one quite like Maurice O'Sullivan's memoir of his youth.  O'Sullivan, born in 1904, was part of just about the last generation to grow up on Great Blasket Island off the west coast of Ireland.  They lived a kind of life that was little changed from that of centuries before, and earned a living through fishing.  But as the fishing got less, virtually all the young folk had to leave the Blasket and go elsewhere.  Most of O'Sullivan's friends and relatives went to America, but he ended up in Connemara, where he eventually wrote his story down in his native Irish just for the enjoyment of the people he knew. O'Sullivan's childhood sounds idyllic for a little boy.  He spends his time avoiding school as much as possible, hunting for wildlife (for dinner), chasing sheep, and getting up to a bit of mischief.  Quite a lot of it is hai...

The Leavenworth Case , by Anna Katherina Green Here we have another tremendously popular and influential early mystery story--and again, it isn't British.  It's an American story--and here I'd been under the impression that Victorian mysteries were mostly an English phenomenon!  The Leavenworth Case was Anna Katherina Green's first mystery, published in 1878 (she turned to popular fiction after her poetry didn't sell too well).  Wikipedia says that Green was the first to come up with the idea of a detective that appeared in a whole series of stories.  She also invented the girl detective, paving the way for Nancy Drew, and the nosy, intelligent  lady amateur.   Although Green was a prominent woman in a field dominated by men, she appears to have disliked the feminist movement and was against women's suffrage. The Leavenworth Case is interesting for its lack of sensationalism.  In an age when mysteries were practically always penny-dreadful-t...

I had a great vacation visiting family members and my best friend (hi Jen!).  I drove around half of California.  And now I'm really, really tired.  I have a few books to tell you about but I think it will have to wait until tomorrow. I got lucky with the timing and missed a bad heatwave in my own town.  It's still going on, but I missed the part that included smoke from wildfires too.  I had forgotten how cool my hometown is and I was cold half the time!  It was very nice though.  Also, no one here cooks tri-tip so that it tastes right.  I ate more yummy tri-tip than was strictly good for me! Here is where we spent a day.  Can you guess where it is?  I rented wetsuits for the girls, but even so my younger girl got thoroughly chilled.  My oldest's ambition is to be a beach bum and she had to be dragged away. We also went to this beach and amusement park for an afternoon and Dollar Night.  Here you see a favorite ride....

Bleak House, by Charles Dickens Zowie, I read a gigantic Victorian novel!  It's pretty much Allie's fault because of her Victorian celebration .  I actually knew very, very little of the plot before starting; I mean, everyone knows that Mr. Murdstone is in David Copperfield and Miss Havisham is in Great Expectations whether they've read them or not, but I didn't know a thing about Bleak House except that it sounded depressing and there was a BBC adaptation a couple of years ago (which I didn't want to watch because I hadn't read the book--now I would like to!). It's a huge novel with a cast of thousands, but the center of the story revolves around Esther Summerson, one of Dickens' most virtuous pattern females.  Esther is the most humbly grateful person you'll ever read about, and if I hadn't known Dickens' love of improbably virtuous women characters, I would have thought she was going to turn out to be the secret villainess. Esther...

We're halfway through the year, but am I halfway through the challenges I've set myself? Greek Classics : Not quite halfway: 5.5/12   Need to finish Herodotus, read poetry, and start Euripides. Medieval Literature : 6/12 , halfway!  I've started The Golden Legend and Piers Plowman, too. Back to the Classics 2012 : 7/9 .  Just two to go: The Age of Innocence and Slaughterhouse Five . November's Autumn Classics Challenge : 5/7 discussions posted. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen : 9/9 Finished!  That was a fun one; I would never have read some of those books otherwise. Mixing It Up : 14/16 .  I have the history book picked out, but the food selection?  Stumped. Mount TBR : 15/25. Not bad.  Considering the size of my pile, it could be better. 150+ Challenge : I'm on something like #115, so no worries there. World War I Challenge : 2/3.   Still need to read the Keegan history. Hm.  Well, that's a bit ironic; the only...

Hey students of Greek literature, we're halfway through the year!  How are you all doing with your challenges?  Are you happy with your progress or are you wishing you hadn't signed up for so much? What Greek classics have you read this month?  I finished up Aristophanes, and I've been reading a selection of poetry, but I must confess that I've been paying more attention to Bleak House than to Euripides.  I'm not really quite halfway through my challenge, so I'd better step up! Leave your links at the widget below; you know what to do.  And have a very happy Fourth of July (should that apply to you)!

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms , by Lissa Evans It's been a while since I had a children's book here--I've been in the mood to read lots of Serious Literature, I guess.  But I saw this at the bookstore and promptly wanted to read it, and happily the library had a copy. Stuart Horten, age 10, is in a funk because his family has moved to a new town right at the beginning of summer, and now there are these nosy girls chasing him for their newspaper.  But it's not long before he finds a mystery to solve; 50 years ago, his great-uncle disappeared and was never seen again.  Stuart's dad ignored the clues Tony left behind for him to follow, but Stuart is going to figure out what happened!  Only things have changed an awful lot in 50 years;  things are changed or missing, memories have faded, and a very greedy person is on his trail. I enjoyed the story quite a bit; it has a really nice atmosphere and mystery to solve.  It was very fun to read--I laughed out ...