Howling Frog Books

Prospero's Mirror , by A. N. Donaldson Last year when I did Gothic October, I found a really neat podcast all about M. R. James stories .  I'm still listening to it, and a little while ago they did an interview with A. N. Donaldson, who has written a short novel featuring James as the protagonist (much like the mysteries starring Jane Austen, I guess).  It's a Kindle book, and only a buck, so I thought I'd try it out.  While the storyline is intriguing, I was disappointed in certain things Donaldson did with James' character and I don't recommend you spend a buck on it too. The story is that an elderly James is called to visit Cambridge's "Old College" to help an old friend figure out what to do with an antique stone mirror they've found hidden away in a disused corner.  James examines the mirror and discovers papers about it relating to its use in the great plague of 1666. It's a creepy story all right, and much of it is quite inter

It's time for another check-in at Mount TBR, and I'm not doing so hot.  Bev says: 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.  So far I've read 10 books, which puts me at less than halfway to my goal of 24. Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy The Middle Window, by Elizabeth Goudge The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James  The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. DuBois   The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man The Chemical History of a Candle , by Michael Faraday Last of the Mohicans , by James Fenimore Cooper  Botchan , by Natsume Soseki  The Echoing Green , by Gillian Avery  Making Their Own Peace , by Ann N. Madsen  2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following: A. Who has been your favorite character so far

The Great Divorce , by C. S. Lewis After this book came up in conversation a little while ago, I had to re-read it.  It is just such a great book.  If you're not familiar with C. S. Lewis, this is a pretty good introductory volume, though I suppose The Screwtape Letters is better for that purpose.  The Great Divorce is similar, though, in that it uses a fanciful trope to explore Christian theology in a way that gives the reader an interesting story to read. The story here is given as a dream or vision, in which the narrator is wandering in a large and dreary city.  He finds a queue at a bus stop and joins the line, and finds himself on a field trip to the edge of Heaven itself.  Heaven is much more real than the passengers are, though; the grass hurts to walk on and the people look semi-transparent.  Everyone is greeted by someone they knew in life, who wants to take them up into Heaven and assures them that they will firm up along the way and be able to bear it--and the pass

Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-Enchantment of Education , by Stratford Caldecott A fellow classical homeschooler recommended this to me a little while ago.  It's a bit difficult to summarize, honestly, especially because I think I didn't really wrap my head around the first few chapters.  I'm going to have to go back and re-read at least the first half, or just the whole thing.   In essence, Caldecott is laying out his vision for what true education looks like and an argument for the liberal arts.  Caldecott is Catholic, and so this book is as well. Caldecott gives a rundown of the seven liberal arts, the trivium and quadrivium, and chooses to focus most on the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.  Really, he is concentrating his attention on mathematics and its applications in cosmology.  Most of this book is about the truth and beauty of math, and the importance of math in theology: Music, achitecture, astronomy, and physics--the physical

I actually cannot show you a picture of the little cross-stitch project I've been doing this week, which is nearly done, because it's a birthday present for my daughter and I don't want her to see it.  But I have produced several quilt squares recently:     I can give a hint, though, about the present--it has a blue box on it, and it's a bookmark.

The Chosen , by Chaim Potok A newly-formed book club I'm joining picked The Chosen as one of the first books we'll read.  I was happy, because it's on my CC list even though I know just about nothing about Chaim Potok.  When I started it, and it spends 30 pages on a baseball game, I was pretty trepidatious about the whole thing, but my husband said he had really liked it in high school, so I kept reading and pretty soon I was hooked.  I really enjoyed this book a lot. The story starts in 1944, just as D-Day and the invasion of Europe is starting.  It's narrated by Reuven, an Orthodox Jewish teenage boy--he meets up with Danny, who seems at first to be destined to be his arch-enemy.  Danny is Hasidic, and a baseball game between their two teams turns ugly.  Reuven winds up in the hospital, and that's where he and Danny begin a friendship that they both need--but Danny most of all. The amount of studying these boys do is phenomenal.  They both work really hard

Jenny is having a readalong of the letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (later Browning).    Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Barrett in January of 1845, expressing his admiration for her poetry.  Browning was pretty eminent at this point, so she was very happy about this, and they promptly struck up a very friendly correspondence.  Very friendly! I read from January to May of 1845, as the two are just getting to know each other.  At first, Elizabeth is quite worried that she is taking up too much of Robert's time, and politely sprinkles her letters with apologies for writing so much and tiring him out with her letters.  It doesn't take him long to tell her to cut it out; he would rather read her letters than any others.  Soon they're promising perfect honesty in the spirit of friendship and poetry, and indulging in flights of Victorian fancy about literature.  And they haven't even met in person yet! It was quite difficult to meet Elizabeth, actually

Making Their Own Peace: Twelve Women of Jerusalem , by Ann N. Madsen Ann Madsen spent many years traveling to Israel yearly, and then lived there for another five years.  There she made friends with a wide variety of people, and here she gives us sketches of twelve women she has known who created havens of peace in one of the most fought-over cities in the world.  It's a really lovely book. Madsen arranges her sketches chronologically.  Her friends are Christian, Muslim, and Jewish; they are Israeli, Palestinian, and several other nationalities.  And they are all amazing women who work to create peace as far as they can. I enjoyed it very much.  And I bought it when it came out in 2003, so I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Different subtitle.  I am confused. Slouching Towards Adulthood: How to Let Go So Your Kids Can Grow Up , by Sally Koslow I can never resist "state of society" books like this.  Koslow is a mother of grown sons, and looking around, she noticed a whole lot of 20-something and even 30-something young adults sort of wandering around in an extended adolescence, doing lots of things but never quite getting around to the traditional milestones of adulthood like a steady job or career, marriage, children, or having a place of their own.   Here she analyzes societal trends, interviews lots of young adults and their parents, and spins some theories.  She calls this 'adultescence.' First off, I have to point out that Koslow is mainly talking about what must be a fairly small slice of the young adult population--mostly upper-middle class, highly educated, and probably white, nearly always with parents who are well-off enough to give them some financial support.  I do not

A Red Herring Without Mustard , by Alan Bradley I didn't read the first Flavia de Luce story, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie , so I went into this one blind.  It's a mystery series, but 'modern' in its approach, I think.  It doesn't feel like your usual cozy British mystery, it's a different take. Flavia is a precocious and unusual eleven-year-old living in a giant crumbling manor house outside her village.  She loves chemistry, and not much else; her family is a mess and the village residents dislike her.  Her sisters are cruel and her father absent through grief at the death of his wife nearly 10 years ago.  Flavia is fascinated by her mother and thwarted in any efforts to get to know about her.  Meanwhile, she likes to investigate the mysteries that come her way. In this case, the mystery is who attacked an elderly and sick Gypsy woman camping near the river.  Flavia stubbornly investigates, even as the body count goes up and the police warn her

On the Road , by Jack Kerouac For Adam's Beats of Summer event , I wanted to do a re-read of On the Road .  I haven't read it in over 15 years, I kind of enjoyed it before, and I had already read Dharma Bums earlier this year. Adam just did a profile of Jack Kerouac, so go take a look! Kerouac wrote several of these autobiographical novels in which he set down his impressions of various adventures--together he called them The Duluoz Legend.   He changed everyone's names, and I'm sure he also made changes for narrative purposes.  On the Road takes place in the late 1940s, and Kerouac kept notes for a long time and then wrote the book all at once in 1951.  It wasn't published until 6 years later. In the story, Kerouac calls himself Sal Paradise.  The other main focus is Dean Moriarty, a charismatic and completely iconoclastic guy who likes to talk a lot.  Sal wants to head west, join Dean, and see the country.  He hitch-hikes and gets rides, and meets all kind

Pamela , by Samuel Richardson I have done it!  I have conquered Pamela !  And now I never have to do it again . Pamela is a beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished young maidservant in Lady B.'s home.  Lady B. has trained her as a companion, meaning to marry her to a respectable man when the time comes, but when the lady dies, what is to become of Pamela?  Young Mr. B. has designs upon her person, but Pamela, being perfectly virtuous, is resolved to resist his blandishments--if necessary to the death. I really got into the premise of the novel.  Richardson starts off by tackling a real and serious social problem of his day--servant girls' utter vulnerability to men of higher status--and he does it from the girls' perspective.  Pamela has a problem shared by thousands; she is a poor and defenseless girl and Mr. B. has all the power on his side.  She can't leave, she can't make him too angry, and she can't make him leave her alone.  Should she succumb, s

The Old Man in the Corner , by Baroness Orczy I'd vaguely heard of the Old Man in the Corner as one of the early detective classics, but I hadn't realized that the stories were by Baroness Orczy!  So then of course I had to read some, which is easy now that you can download that sort of thing from Google Books or Amazon Kindle for free.  These stories, as with so many others, were originally published in magazines, so the repetition wasn't quite as obvious; it just re-established the characters in the readers' minds. In each story, the young and modern Lady Journalist meets up with the Old Man as she's trying to eat her lunch in a restaurant.  He then lectures her on a current criminal mystery, and solves the whole thing while he sits there, fidgeting with a bit of string in which he ties complicated knots as he talks.  He also consumes milk and cheesecake.  (Oog.)  The lecture always falls into three parts: he summarizes the case and produces a photo or two of

The Darling Buds of May: the Pop Larkin Chronicles , by H. E. Bates This is really a collection of three short novels: The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air , and When the Green Woods Laugh .  I don't know if that makes up all the Pop Larkin books or not.  They're set in the English countryside, in the 1950's, and they're pretty much a celebration of all things English, country, and summer. The Larkins are a large family on a farm, and they have a lot of fun. Upper-class inhibitions and hang-ups are unknown.  Food and drink flow continually.  Pop does deals and makes a lot of money one way and another, and in the first story a tax collector shows up to get him to fill out his tax forms, but the family simply absorbs him.  He stays forever and marries the oldest girl, Mariette.  Then they all spend the summer in France, and finally there is a summer involving a neighboring manor house, a new swimming pool, and a lawsuit.  Pop makes a stir wherever he goes

I think today is really the last day.  I'm pretty sure.  Today I actually got to read quite a bit: I finished A Red Herring Without Mustard .  Interesting.  Kind of weird. I read a huge chunk of Pamela , over 75 pages.  I think we had two or three events today!  I am even more annoyed with Mr. B. than ever; besides the part where he was a kidnapper and would-be rapist for the first 200 pages, now that he's a doting husband he doesn't approve of Pamela nursing her own baby, and she has to give up the idea despite her conviction that it's the moral thing to do.  Lovely.  The baby isn't born yet, though, so maybe he'll change his mind.  Ha. I officially hit the halfway point in In the First Circle .  You'll notice that I'm reading it much more slowly than Pamela , though they are about the same length.  Well, this one is better and deserves more attention.  Although Pamela does not quite allow for skimming, I'm reading a bit quickly.  Solzhenitsy

The Amateur Cracksman , by E. W. Hornung It's Raffles, the original gentleman thief!  He's witty, urbane, daring, the best cricket-player around, and a master of disguise.  He steals for a living and for fun, and the more challenging the job, the better he likes it.  This first Raffles book contains eight stories, narrated by the faithful sidekick, Bunny. Hornung published the stories in 1899.  Fun fact: he was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and the book is dedicated to him.  I'm going to presume that he picked up some ideas from the Sherlock Holmes stories, but these are really quite different--written in a simpler and more humorous style, and generally not as complex .  Raffles is, in many ways, an inversion of Holmes, though: Raffles is personable and charismatic, for one thing.  He is also fairly rotten to Bunny much of the time; he's manipulative and secretive, and though Bunny complains (and Raffles repents, only to repeat himself), he puts up wi

I got much more read for this, the last day of the Wicked Wildfire Readathon hosted by Shelf Confessions (and is today the last day?  It says the 7th -14th, so I think there should be another day, right?): More than 50 pages of Pamela --something new finally happened, instead of an endless rehash of past events!  And it looks like something else might happen tomorrow! Quite a good bit of On the Road .  I'm well into the sad part now, as Dean Moriarty gradually disintegrates and Sal feels disillusioned with the world.  He even exhibits some sympathy for Dean's wife, although mostly the women are an alien tribe, united in hostility to the men. And a large chunk of A Red Herring Without Mustard .  It's sort of interesting?  I don't think I'm going to read another one, but I do want to see how this turns out. I'd like to spend the rest of the evening on In the First Circle .  When I started it a few weeks ago, I didn't realize that the plot arc about

A Streetcar Named Desire , by Tennessee Williams This was my Classics Club Spin title for this month.  I've never read any Tennessee Williams, but I've been wanting to for some time.  I got the Library of America volume of Williams plays, 1937-1955, and I figure I'll read The Glass Menagerie too. Wow, what a play.  I hardly even know what to do with it; it's so different from what I'm used to.  I presume that everyone knows how it goes, but just in case, we have Blanche arriving at her sister Stella's apartment in a poor section of New Orleans.  Blanche works very hard at keeping up an image of a delicate and virtuous Southern lady, fallen on hard times, but it soon becomes obvious that she suffers from alcoholism and mental instability.  Stella has married--far out of her own background--Stanley, an earthy and violently dominating  man.  He is abusive, but their chemistry is the basis for their relationship.  Stella is going to have a baby as well. Blanc

Today I read a bit, cooked a lot, and took kids swimming.  The reading part: I finished The Darling Buds of May , a short novel from the Pop Larkin series.  Post coming soon! I read a little bit of Pamela , but not as much as I should have done.  I even took it to the pool. Still reading A Red Herring Without Mustard .  Still iffy about it. My song selection makes no sense at all.  The Pop Larkin books have lots of summer in them--English summer, with green fields and strawberries and such.  Never have you read of so much English summer.  I have no experience with the English summer; I'm an expert on the California summer, which is a completely different thing.  And when I think of songs that feel like summer, I get very different results than would fit with a Pop Larkin book.  However, I do rather think that Pop would get a kick out of the chaos and fun of the B-52's Rock Lobster , and so that is my song for today.

Time for a little sewing!  I've been continuing work on the project I started last week, and I now have one 18" block that will be the center of the quilt, a whole bunch of dinky little 3" blocks to go around that, and one 6" block for the outer area.  I'm having fun with the hideous colors, and working hard on getting the points just right.

I really thought today I'd have a bit more time for reading, but I was wrong!  I did get my daughter safely on her way to camp, though, so that was the big thing of the day.  And I picked a whole lot of fruit.  I've got nectarines coming out of my ears here.  I did get to read some: Some of the third book in a collection of three Pop Larkin novellas called The Darling Buds of May . I'd already read the other two and was taking a break. A very few pages of Pamela, which I found again.  Now Mr. B. is telling his side of the events from Volume 1.  Nothing is ever going to happen again, apparently; they are just going to reminisce about the past. A good bit of On the Road .  Therefore today's song selection is Depeche Mode's cover of "Route 66," no surprise there.  I'm not actually a fan of this cover, which IMO lasts too long and doesn't have enough variation, but the song itself is good.  I have no idea why there is a neon ghost lady in th

Today I have hardly gotten to do any reading AT ALL. My daughter is going to camp tomorrow, and so I spent the day doing sudden and unexpected errands. But I got to read: A little teeny bit of In the First Circle . A good bit of The Amateur Cracksman , the first book about Raffles, the gentleman thief.  I was about 70% of the way through and I finished it.  I'm sort of horrified by how he treats his sidekick--whose name is, of all things, Bunny. I can't find Pamela . A little bit of Slouching Towards Adulthood , a look at the problems of attaining independence in young adulthood in a time when unemployment and debt are both very high. A few chapters of a Flavia de Luce mystery, Red Herring Without Mustard .  I'm not sure this is going to be my kind of book. I have no idea what I could pick for a song today, so I didn't.  Tomorrow is another day!

Today I got to read quite a bit: Pamela --my usual 50 or so pages.  I think this whole volume is going to be about Pamela settling into married life and getting used to being rich, plus a whole lot of reminders about the action of volume 1.  Practically nothing happens, but every once in a while something does. In the First Circle , by Solzhenitsyn --I got to read, oh, 60 or 70 pages.  It's a truly great novel, but I'm having to take it slowly.  It is not to be rushed. Another Nibley essay from Approaching Zion . Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh , by R. L. LaFevers --I read pretty much the whole thing (I started last night).  That was a fun break from all the serious reading I've been doing lately.  It's the 4th book in the series and takes the action to a new level; I thought it was well-done.  Today's music selection belongs to Theodosia, and of course it's the Bangles' Walk Like an Egyptian .  What else could it be if you grew up in the 80s?  Look o

I don't have much to report today; I went to an outdoor wedding in 110 degree weather, that's what I did.  I'm about recovered now.  :)  As for books, I read: Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus , by R. L. LaFevers : finished.  A fun read. Pamela , by Richardson : finished vol. 1, about 30 pages into volume 2.  I have no idea how he is going to fill nearly 500 more pages. I am halfway through and the story appears to have been over for a while now. Virgin on the Ridiculous, by Wallace Tripp Prospero's Mirror , by A. N. Donaldson : just a few pages. My song for the day is for Pamela: it's Bach's Minuet #2, something she could have played on her spinet.  It's also something my girls are learning to play on their violins.  Here's a link to a one-woman duet I found on YouTube ; I don't feel right putting the video right here on my blog, since I didn't ask her permission.  I couldn't find a professional recording, because this is a stand

It seems that people post statistics about what they read.  I am not good at this, but I'll make a stab at it.  Usually it looks something like this: Friday, June 7th # of pages:   Books read:   Books finished:    Total # of pages:  I'm not sure how many pages I read or anything like that, though. Mr. B finds Pamela Writing, by Joseph Highmore I've assigned myself 50 pages a day, and today I managed about 65, so go me!  I'm almost done with the first volume, though I have no idea what else Richardson is planning to do with Pamela.  She's going to have to get kidnapped by pirates or something for anything exciting to happen.  He could have stopped here and had a fine novel that was only about twice as long as it needed to be.  Prospero's Mirror , by A. N. Donaldson A short novel featuring M. R. James as the narrator, I read about half today, but what that is in pages I could not say; it's a Kindle book. A Streetcar Named Desi

I just heard about this readathon today from Emily at Classics and Beyond .  My Shelf Confessions has a yearly readathon in summer.  It's a week long, starting tomorrow, and certainly I need some motivation to tackle my books a bit more!  I have a huge pile of books right now, but have not been reading enough (lots of great sewing though)--instead, there's been too much time spent online.  So, though I have quite a busy week coming up--who doesn't?--I'm going to make an effort to pick up a book rather than puttering around on the Internet.  It's going to be quite hot this weekend, so it would be a good time to sit by a fan and read!  I've been working my way through Pamela , and aiming for about 50 pages a day.  This is not terribly fast, but I can only take so much of her.  It's very repetitive, every detail is described ad nauseam , and Pamela is so humble and grateful that she makes Esther Summerson from Bleak House look like a Mean Girl.  I am rea

Patterns of Thought: the Hidden Meaning of the Great Pavement of Westminster Abbey , by Richard Foster Story time!  Yesterday I mentioned that I was put into a complicated quilting mood by a quilting book.  It was a book called Bella Bella Quilts , and is all about translating Italian cosmati work into quilt form.  It is my ambition to someday make some of these quilts, but they are pretty high-level stuff.  For the moment I am daydreaming, but I'm going to do it. Cosmati is a medieval Italian tiling technique that used complex geometric patterns set into white marble.   It's amazing stuff, and especially interesting to quilters.  This photo is taken from the explanation of cosmati at the Westminster Abbey page : Back in the mid-thirteenth century, King Henry III commissioned a cosmati pavement for the high altar at Westminster Abbey.  He imported Italian workers, but not the white marble; instead, they used local Purbeck marble, which is a greyish limestone.  The Westmi

After my smocking frenzy a couple months ago I took some time off from sewing, but now that school's out, I'm back in a big way.  In the last week, I've finished a quilt top (it was strips before) and started a new project. Finished quilt top I've been in the mood to produce something really complicated, with lots of little pieces.  I haven't done much complex piecing in years, as I have spent a lot of time on heirloom smocking and sewing and less on quilting, and the quilts I have made have tended to be the easy-piecing, spectacular-fabric kind.  Now I suddenly have four complicated quilts in my head!  So I went through my stash and planned 3 of them, and picked a Lori Smith pattern to start with.  I've been saving up fabric for years to do an antique-style quilt with repro fabrics, and now I'm finally getting around to it.  It's a medallion pattern, and I've done the central 18" block (the scary part!) and now I'm working on a myria

I've been pretty quiet lately so I thought I'd just post a little update on what's been going on in the Howling Frogiverse.  I've been reading--but mostly really long books that are taking a while, so posts are few. I took the kids on a trip this week to San Francisco to visit the Exploratorium at its new location on Pier 15, and I tell you what, it is fantastic.  We had a great time, and I was happy because we could take the BART train into the city and walk to the museum; the old location was a pain to get to and you had to drive, and I really hate driving in San Francisco.  I like to take BART and the kids think it's part of the adventure, so we all won there.  At Pier 15, with the Bay Bridge. All the traveling made it impossible to read any of the giant books I have going on, though. When I go on a trip, I always have to take a minimum of 3 paper books and a tablet stuffed with ebooks, even if it's just overnight, but the books invariably stay nearl