Howling Frog Books

I have this selection of Solzhenitsyn's writings , and I've read the first section, so I'm going to talk about the bits I read.  There were three lyric poems as well, which I thought were very good, but I'm not going to say anything much about them. "Besed," chapter 5 of The Trail While Solzhenitsyn was in the Soviet prison camp for 5 years, he composed a narrative poem of over 7,000 lines, and he did it without any pens or paper.  He composed and memorized the poem with the help of a rosary that acted as a mnemonic device.  Which is just stunning .  It's an autobiographical poem in which Solzhenitsyn gives himself the name of Sergei Nerzhin.  Most of the poem has not been translated into English (as of the time this book was published), so only one chapter is included.  That's still a good long narrative, so I'm going to count this for my poetry challenge. Besed (say BAYset) is a Belorussian village where Solzhenitsyn's unit fought in ...

In the Garden of Beasts , by Erik Larson It took me a while to get around to reading this; I was feeling sort of lukewarm about it.  I had seen it at work for some time, but only got to it when I needed some reading material for my lunch break one day.  After that I decided to read the whole thing.  Everyone else has already read it, so you don't need much from me! This is the story of the Dodd family in Berlin at the dawn of Nazi power.  Mr. Dodd was appointed to be the American ambassador to Germany in 1933.  He wasn't a typical ambassadorial type, but he was determined to uphold American ideals--while keeping the Germans happy, something that in retrospect the State Department seems oddly obsessed with.  Half the book covers Dodd's constant troubles as ambassador, and the other half focuses on his daughter Martha, who fancied herself as a dangerous intellectual. Martha seems a bit of a ninny to me; first she's completely enamored of the new Nazi re...

Good morning!  I am not actually awake yet, because it's 5am and I need my sleep, and I will be mostly unable to join in the readathon until this afternoon.  But here is the post where I will make updates. I'm supposed to answer these questions: 1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?  Sunny California!  Emphasis on the "sunny"--after a nice cool spring it's in the 90s now.  I live in the rural northern part above Sacramento that everyone forgets about--we hold 2% of the total population of California. 2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?  It's a smorgasbord of delight!  I don't even know. 3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?  ...you think I'm well-prepared, don't you?  I have a bag of sunflower seeds/Craisins/almond M&Ms, and I'm thinking quite seriously about treating myself to Indian food tonight.  That's all I've got. 4) Tell us a little something about yourself!...

Fauna & Family , by Gerald Durrell I was so happy when I found this at work the other day!  Gerald Durrell is one of my favorites, and I've collected many of his books, but they are not always easy to get and I'd never read this one.  Plus, a bonus--it's a book about Corfu, which is my favorite kind.  Durrell wrote 3 Corfu books, and this is the third.  You would think he'd have run out of material, but no. In eight chapters, Durrell tells eight stories: about how the King of Greece came to Corfu and the ensuing mayhem, how the pompous snob guy fell in a swamp and then got moops, and how Jeejee fell out of a window while trying to levitate.  Of course there is as much about animals as about people.  And while I am not really an animal person, there is no resisting Durrell's loving portraits of every kind of creature. I had a lot of fun with this one.  It was so nice to relax and laugh over the stories.  A new Durrell book is a treasure!...

I've never done the 24-hour Dewey Readathon before (in fact I've done exactly one readathon ever), but I figure it will be fun to try it out.  I already know that I have other stuff I have to do on Saturday, so it certainly won't be any 24 hours of reading, but I'll read as much as I can and not worry about it.  This is a getting-my-toes-wet readathon. What I'm supposed to do is start reading at 5am on Saturday morning and, for the next 24 hours, have my nose in a book as much as possible.  I'm supposed to post updates every so often (I figure 3 times is more than enough).  Apparently there are prizes and mini-challenges, but that is probably too advanced for me. I have lots of great books to read, so no problem there.  Anyone else doing this?  I know I've seen lots of people talking about it, but I'm signing up at the last second.

Botchan , by Natsume Soseki My brother gave me this a few years ago, and I should have read it before.  Botchan is a classic of 20th-century Japanese literature, plus it's quite fun.  It's frequently compared with Huck Finn in terms of its place in culture; just about everybody reads it when they're young, and it's about a young man who rebels against the system, and it's funny.  Of course it's funnier in the original language--there are a lot of puns, for one thing. This is the cover on my copy of the 1971 translation, which I think is just great.  It really captures the book.  Most of the covers I saw online were far too serious and important-looking. The title word means something like "young master," but with a more affectionate connotation.  The narrator gives himself no other name.  That's what his servant Kiyo calls him. Botchan is something of a troublemaker.  He is impulsive, headstrong, and stubborn--the despair of his parent...

A Novel Without Lies , by Anatoly Mariengof This book is not a novel at all; it's a memoir, but a memoir of the life of a friendship.  Anatoly Mariengof and Sergei Esenin, both young Russian poets, met in 1918 and were inseparable for several years.  Together they lived and wrote and developed the Imagist philosophy of poetry.  But as Esenin became mentally unstable, they drifted apart for a time, though they made amends.  Esenin committed suicide in 1925, and Mariengof wrote down his reminiscences of their time together. There is not a whole lot of background provided, of course, so it's good to know a little bit about what was going on in Moscow in the 1920s, but you can get by with knowing that the Soviet Republic is newly born, everyone is poor, and Russians take poetry and literature far more seriously than anyone else you know.   Plus the editors provided little side notes in the margins to explain the various people who show up in Mariengof's st...

Sense and Sensibility , by Jane Austen I just felt like I had to read some Jane Austen again, and that it had to be Elinor and Marianne.  It's hard for me to pick a favorite Austen novel (that would be like picking a favorite kind of chocolate truffle) but Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility tie for first, anyway. Now, I know many people like Marianne best and think Elinor is a prig.  Not me.  I am on Elinor's side every time.  Who else would keep the place running?  It's not that I don't like Marianne, but she is exhausting and I really look forward to her growing up a bit (though of course I wouldn't wish her heartache on her).  Elinor has things to learn too; she falls too far on the side of denying her feelings even to herself, and at last she has to learn even to express them aloud. This time I paid attention to the very small society that forms the girls' world.  Miss Austen lived in a tightly constricted society that, I think, was very...

Last of the Mohicans , by James Fenimore Cooper At last, I have finished my Unreadable Book!  Friends, let me just warn you about this one: don't bother unless you have a really good reason.  It's been on my TBR pile for a couple of years, after a bookish friend of mine (IRL!  I have friends who like to read as much as I do!) said that it was her very favorite book.  I kept meaning to get to it, but American literature is not one of my big favorite things and somehow other books always line-jumped ahead.  This year I put it on my TBR list for Adam's challenge so that I would jolly well HAVE to read it, and... 1827 painting by Cole illustrating a scene in "Last of the Mohicans" Last of the Mohican s is a riproaring frontier adventure with lots of action and suspense, buried under a mountain--no, a mountain range --of excessive verbiage.   Cooper was writing in the 1820s, and his prose combines a 19th-century enthusiasm for euphemism and verbosi...

Zaremba, or, Love and the Rule of Law , by Michelle Granas Cordelia lives a severely constricted life in Poland, translating articles and caring for her oddball family members.  This takes up pretty much all her time until she happens to meet Dariusz Zaremba, a businessman whose rivals have targeted him for revenge in the form of false accusations of criminality.  As she is thrown into a new world of smear journalism, publicity, and government corruption, she has to learn to take action--something she has practically never done before. Although the book is partly a love story, the wider focus is on the rule of law and what happens when governments ignore the rights of individual citizens.  I was quite impressed with that aspect of the novel, and liked certain lines: She was simply appalled at the powerlessness of the individual before the forces of the state. (p 124) [on corrupt use of government power]  "The activities of ordinary criminals pale in compariso...

The Black Monk and Other Stories , by Anton Chekhov Last year for Gothic October I read "The Black Monk" and enjoyed it very much.  I had downloaded it as the first in a collection of Chekov's short stories.  It was published in 1915 and I'm not quite sure what the reasoning behind the selection was; I suppose it was just what the editor preferred.  The biographical sketch in the beginning spells it as Tchekhoff, which seems to me a little overdone, alphabetically speaking.  Anyway, I read the rest of the stories for the Back to the Classics 2013 Challenge, short stories division. The stories are all sad.  Not romantically melancholy, not tearjerkingly emotional, but plain tragic, with most of the characters caught in circumstances with no solution.  Chekhov saw so much suffering around him--just in ordinary Russian life--and these stories all reflect that.  They are pessimistic about the human condition, about the existence of free will, about F...

To my brother: NO PEEKING.  And no complaining if you do peek. Stamping Ground hosts What's on Your Workdesk?  Wednesday every week. Operation Smocking Insanity is just about finished!  I need to add 5 little bullion flowers in the main diamonds, and finish a few little tidying-up details and it is all done--a sundress complete with fancyband, smocking front and back, and a pretty ribbon.  I have done practically nothing this week but smock, and now I am all. smocked. out.  I don't think I'll have anything next week for WOYWW. I apologize for the truly horrible quality of these photos and the fact that the green t-shirt clashes horribly with the different green in the dress.  I took them very fast while my daughter complained.  I think the dress is going to be too long--which I guess is better than the too-small dress I produced last year.   Maybe some tucks? Front--needs flowers in the diamonds Back Whole thing

Early British Trackways, by Alfred Watkins Several years ago I read a minor classic of British children's fantasy called The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner.  ( Then I read it again and posted--very briefly--about it here. )  In the story, the children travel along an "old straight track" that is supposed to be an ancient road.  This theme is developed much further in the sequel, The Moon of Gomrath .  In the notes, Garner talks about the idea that inspired that part of the stories--Alfred Watkins' theories about old straight tracks in Britain. In about 1920, Watkins (a businessman and local history hobbyist) theorized that there were ancient tracks in Britain, laid out along prominent landmarks and used for trade and travel.  He called these paths "ley lines" and believed that he had discovered quite a few.  The phrase "ley lines" almost certainly makes you think of New Agey beliefs about lines of power leading to special places, ...

Some interesting stuff going on lately: Jenny is collecting people for a read-along of the letters between Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Want to join? Emily of Classics and Beyond wonders if people would be interested in a read-along of Les Miserables sometime.  Let her know if you are. Also, I really am reading books.  I have a couple to post about, but the current sewing project is taking up much of my blogging time.  Mainly I'm halfway through two very long books, and one of them qualifies as an Unreadable Book as per Professor Fen's game.  (James Fenimore Cooper, I'm looking at YOU.)

Because I don't have enough challenges on my plate...Arenel at  Slightly Cultural, Most Thoughtful and Inevitably Irrelevant   is now Ekaterina at In My Book.  She is hosting a Language Freak Summer Challenge !  In other words, brush up on whatever language you need to practice by reading a book!  The rules are long (yet entertaining) so I'm not going to quote them all here; go take a look.  But this challenge is for you if you answer yes to any of these questions:  Do you love learning foreign languages? Have you ever suspected that something is lost in translation when reading a book? Do you feel ashamed of not practicing some foreign language enough? Are you an unbearable snob who tells everybody that they haven't read a book if they have read it in translation? I can answer yes to the first three, though I hope #4 does not apply!  (I'm pretty sure it is true , which makes me really sad because I will never read Russian anywhere near ...

Stamping Ground hosts What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday every week.  Here is mine: The baby dress is finished.  It's a size 1, but will be enormous on a one-year-old, and will probably fit her until she is 3! I finally found the pattern for a sundress I've been wanting to smock for my niece for months.  Then I found out that her birthday is in less than 2 weeks--and a late delivery is no good because my brother is taking his family overseas for a few months right after that.   A really late delivery would be OK, but I'm going to try to get it done.   This is the dress I want to make --it has smocking front and back, which will take longer, but its double layer of fabric is both super-cute and practical.  The construction is simple and ingenious.

Notice the spotlight with bat silhouette! The Bat , by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood It is...the Bat!   That is an actual chapter title, folks.  This thriller had so much cheesy fun that it was hard to put down.  I read it in one day.  It's been a book, a play, and a movie, and eventually it helped to inspire the character of Batman, so I think it counts as a must-read as far as cultural influence goes.  Miss Cornelia Van Gorder, an 'elderly' and wealthy lady full of gumption, has rented a country home for the summer for herself and her lovely niece, Dale.  But!  So far there have been disturbances every night.  Is the house haunted?  Is someone trying to break in?  Is the legendary super-criminal, the Bat, going to make the house his next target?  Miss Van Gorder brings in a detective, Dale brings in a secret fiance, several other people barge in, and they all spend a scary night in the house complete with murder...

The Case of the Gilded Fly , by Edmund Crispin Woohoo!  My mom turned out to have FIVE Crispin mysteries, so I am going to try to space them out.  But I already read another one. Professor Fen gets a new sidekick in the person of Nigel Blake, a journalist on holiday in Oxford (hoping to meet and date a certain actress).  A prominent playwright is hoping to revive his career by putting on a new play, but tensions are thick between cast members, with minor actress Yseut Haskell at the center.  When Yseut is found murdered in an impossible manner, Professor Fen is the only one who knows what's up. The mystery was pretty good, with some interesting characters.  I was sad that there were no goofy literary games this time, though.  What bugged me about the story was how Yseut was treated throughout--but that was redeemed (somewhat, I think) in the end, as Fen realizes that Yseut's life was not less valuable than others.

The April meme for the Classics Club is: “Who is hands-down the best literary hero, in your opinion? Likewise, who is the best heroine?” Gee, that's a terribly difficult question!  There are too many to pick from!  It's like asking me to choose a favorite flower out of the zillions on the planet. The best heroine is Jane Eyre .  She is tough and honest and has all that integrity; you'll never get her to do something that she believes is wrong.  She sticks to her guns.  Plus, I could live with her and enjoy her company.   I'm having a harder time coming up with a guy.   After reading Huckleberry Finn , though, I'm actually thinking I'll choose Huck .  He's pretty hard to beat, though I'm sure he would think I'm too civilized and fancy, with my quilts and smocking and all. Not that I don't love Mr. Darcy or all those other romantic heroes, but I feel like I don't know them as well.  I thought I'd better go for a guy who te...

Oleander Girl, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni I have been looking forward to the release of Oleander Girl for a while now!  I received it the other day and I enjoyed it just as much as I expected to.  I became a fan of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni around 1996, when my roommate Monica lent me Arranged Marriage , a collection of short stories.   I am ashamed to confess that I still have it, because we live in different states, but happily she says she forgives me.  So, thanks Monica, because I've read every Divakaruni book since then and enjoyed them all.  (Except Palace of Illusions , because I was convinced that something terrible was going to happen to the heroine--it's the story of Paanchali, the wife of the Pandavas--and I wouldn't be able to stand it, so I didn't finish even though I was loving it.  I should really fix that problem.) Oleander Girl is about Korobi, who has grown up very sheltered in an old-fashioned Bengali family.  Her gra...

The Red Badge of Courage , by Stephen Crane Here we have the newest installment of the WEM project!  I must admit that American literature is one of my really weak areas, and the Civil War is too, and this is on my CC list, so it was good for me to read it. This is a psychological description of exactly what one boy soldier in the Civil War goes through, from one moment to the next, in his first few days of real war.  At first he is full of dreams of glory and itching to prove himself; then he's terrified or angry or exalted with pride.  His self-justifications and inability to admit mistakes are so real and human, just like what we all half-consciously do all the time. I'm amazed at how Stephen Crane's imagination allowed him to write a book that seems so real that many Civil War veterans assumed that he was one of them (one claimed to have fought with him at Antietam!); and yet Crane never saw a battle at all.  He was born in 1871 and grew up listening ...

Although I don't know that I'll do this meme every week, I think it is a really fun thing to do, so here's my second installment.  I haven't actually done much sewing this week--the baby dress is ready to have sleeves put on but looks exactly as it did a week ago as far as photography is concerned.  I have made some progress on the smocking on the little-girl dress: But mostly this week has been Easter/springtime/birthday stuff going on.  My younger daughter turned 10 yesterday (snif), and we spent Monday out hiking and looking at wildflowers.  Here is the birthday girl identifying frying pans, a very small yellow poppy.