Howling Frog Books

The Forgotten Man: a New History of the Great Depression , by Amity Shlaes Amity Shlaes is a well-established journalist and historian in the field of economics.  Her new look at the economics of the Great Depression made quite a splash in 2008, and I've been meaning to read it ever since.  Score one for the TBR pile!  Shlaes offers analysis of how Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt responded to the 1929 crash and subsequent depression, chronicling the actions of the movers and shakers of the times.  It's a big-picture history; we see New Deal policies in action, the decisions in Washington, and the rise of large unions, not portraits of individual farmers and workers. We start in 1927, getting some background and the political climate of the time.  The economy is roaring and many people are getting modern conveniences such as electricity or even a car for the first time.  Leftists have their eye on the new Soviet Union and think it is just great, so a del...

Dancers in Mourning , by Margery Allingham I don't think I've said anything about Margery Allingham here, but I love her books.  She wrote a lot of them, very fun mysteries (and plenty of other stuff too; she wrote for magazines a lot) usually starring Albert Campion as the detective.  Campion is your eccentric kind of detective, who hides a clever mind behind a vacuous and foolish exterior.  He has something of a secret identity, and there are references to his real name being Rudolph and a wealthy background.  If he reminds you of Lord Peter Wimsey, there is a reason for that, since he was reputedly created as a sendup of Lord Peter.  I haven't had a lot of luck getting many Allingham stories, so I'm happy now because I just got a pile of them. In this story, Campion is called in to deal with a theatrical problem.  The famous Jimmy Sutane is starring in a popular show, but he's being quietly persecuted with nasty practical jokes.  Sutane is hig...

I didn't mean to stay silent for a week!  The only books I've finished have been re-reads of mysteries by favorite British authors.  I have some serious reading going on too, but let's face it--it's really hot, there's a lot going on, and I'm trying to get ready for the start of school, and my brain has not been quite up to facing the Great Depression or Kafka.  Even though they are really interesting.  I haven't even touched the EBB/RB love letters since Monday!  Oh no! What I have been doing is prepping for the start of school in a few weeks, and in case you care, I'll tell you about it.  This is your cue to skip this post if you don't care!   We are due to start in about 3 weeks, and I have done very little over the summer, because by June I always need at least a month where I do not have to think about homeschooling at all.  I do have most of my materials, because I do the bulk of my purchasing in the spring before the old school year ends...

The Letters of RB and EBB This time I read letters from November 1845--March 1846.  When last we checked in, Robert and Elizabeth had just begun their romantic relationship; Elizabeth had finally admitted her feelings to Robert and they were on the same page, though Robert had to keep assuring her that she was perfectly fine the way she was and that he hadn't planned to marry anyway (which, maybe he hadn't, but he sure wanted to marry Elizabeth--he was just too smart to tell her that just yet). From November through March, they really solidify their relationship.  Elizabeth becomes more demonstrative and manages to say more of how she feels about Robert, until she is quite eloquent on the matter.  She tells him her family nickname -- Ba -- and allows him to use it, which he does quite a lot.  Her given name of Elizabeth has disappeared by now. The sheer volume of letters has increased enormously.  They are now writing long letters to each other almost ...

Oops, this post got a bit lost.  For the Dewey Readathon I thought I'd try to spend some time on a couple of essays.  I wound up choosing a giant book of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s writings and speeches, and read several.  They were excellent, but now it is far too long since I read them!  This is just a note for the Essay Challenge.

Norms & Nobility: a Treatise on Education , by David V. Hicks I've wanted to read this book for years.  It's one of the foundational texts on classical education.  So it's been on my wishlist forever, but it's also pretty expensive and not that easy to find in a library.  I finally got around to ILLing it, and have been working on it for a few weeks. This is a difficult and heavy text, with a whole lot to think about--even though it's less than 200 pages long.*    Hicks lays out why a classical education is worth pursuing and how to do it (there is a whole syllabus for grades 7-12).  He has a lot to say.  I read it quite slowly, and it would be good to own the book so I can read it again...and then again. I think it's also rather advanced in the world of classical education.  This is not a book for a beginner to read; if I'd tried to read it 10 years ago it would not have made much sense to me.  At that time, The Well-Trained M...

Great House , by Nicole Krauss I did it!  I read a modern novel that has been on my wishlist for over a year!  I've actually had it checked out from the library for far too long, a ridiculously long time. Great House contains the stories of several different people, connected only by an old wooden desk with many drawers.  (Actually, even that much is not always clear.)  Each of these people tells--or, more accurately, confesses--a life story, and the desk comes to take on a weight and meaning.  As the pattern of the book emerges, we see that all of these people are very alone, having lost the ones who loved them, and the desk holds all that loss and sadness. It's a really good book, but very melancholy.  I read it with great interest, which is a little surprising to me since I don't normally go for modern fiction all that much.  I want to read a happy book now!

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday is a blog meme hosted by Julia at Stamping Ground .  (Who knew stamps had gotten so sophisticated and fancy?  Not me.) My daughter's birthday was a few days ago, so I can unveil the project I was working on.  Guess what her favorite show is: I must say, I think it is the awesomest bookmark that ever did awesome. In other news, I'm still working on the blog project, which we are hoping to roll out in a couple of weeks.  I've been using my librarian super-powers to invent categories and tags and all that, and I've written articles on teaching library skills to your children and what good chapter books you can read to a small child.

A local author who writes about local history recently found a copy of a teacher's exam in a newspaper from 1889.  Take a look at the questions and see if you can handle it.   And if you've never read the story of John Bidwell, who founded my town and was involved in an awful lot of California history, check out my review and put it on your TBR pile. I just got a copy of a new book that she helped edit; I need to read it so you can find out what it's about!

I've been meaning to sign up for Adam's yearly Austen in August event , so here I am.  Follow the link to sign up too! Adam says: The Goal:  To read as many of Jane Austen’s works (finished or unfinished) as you want or are able to, during the month of August.  Biographies, audiobooks, spin-offs, and re-reads also count.  I will post throughout the month on different subjects, as well as with my own reviews of the Austen books I finish.  We will be offering giveaways, guest posts, and other shenanigans, all of which are meant to inspire a great, interactive event. If you are going to participate, you can read any of Jane Austen’s novels, a biography about her, or any contemporary re-imaginings (such as Austenland or The Jane Austen Book Club , for example). All posts will help you qualify for prizes, which I’ll explain in a later post! I am planning to read Northanger Abbey , a book that I love and haven't read for a while.  I d...

The new edition's cove--not as pretty as mine. The Power of the Ring: the Spiritual Vision Behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit , by Stratford Caldecott InterLibrary Loan is my friend this month, and I've been reading 3 at once.  First to the finish line was this very lovely book by Stratford Caldecott--I am having a Caldecott party lately, since I just read his Beauty for Truth's Sake and just got Beauty in the Word a couple of days ago--and this is an older book, all about Tolkien and not education.  That sentence kind of got away from me there... If you're interested in how Tolkien's faith informed his work, and especially in how his Catholicism comes out in his books, this is the book to read.  There are several books like this actually; I've enjoyed one or two before, but Caldecott points out a lot of things I hadn't run into before.  It was really enjoyable to read, too (although the font used in the edition I read was a little annoying...

The 13th Element: the Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus , by John Emsley Everything you ever wanted to know about phosphorus, plus bonus material!  Phosphorus was discovered in the 1600s by alchemists searching for that ever-elusive philosopher's stone.  It glows in the dark, it burns spontaneously in air, it's very poisonous and yet it's necessary to all life on earth, so phosphorus is pretty interesting stuff. Emsley, a British university-type person, gives us an exhaustive history of phosphorus; it's interesting but a little too much information for most people.  There's a lot about alchemy and match factories--especially, of course, the dreaded phossy jaw, which was fascinating but don't try to read it over lunch, which I did--and then horrific descriptions of phosphorus bombs and nerve gasses.  Even murder and industrial accidents get their own chapters. There is quite a bit of good information about the necessity of phosphorus in nature, an...

Son , by Lois Lowry At last, Lois Lowry has written a concluding story to The Giver !  At the end, Jonas and Gabe go out on their sled and may or may not find safety.  Lowry wrote two more books in the same universe, but concentrated on other people.  Here, we learn about Gabe's mother--Claire, a young girl assigned as a Birthmother in the community.  The birth does not go well, and Claire is shoved off to the fish hatchery, where she wonders what happened to her baby.  She manages to secretly spend a little time with him, but then Jonas disappears with Gabe.  Claire, too, runs away from the community, and spends years in a different place before setting out on a journey to find the son she longs for. I liked Son quite a bit, and so did my older daughter.  Good stuff.

Black Sheep , by Georgette Heyer Goodness, you read one of those things and you can't stop!  I had this Heyer novel on my TBR pile and had been ignoring it for at least a year, but it wasn't very appealing.  My copy is an ancient paperback with a truly hideous cover.  It was a lot of fun to read. Miss Abigail Wendover is a single lady, no longer young (in Regency terms, that means she's 28), attractive and wealthy.  She is very worried about her niece Fanny, who is 17 and madly in love with a charming, calculating fortune-hunter.  As Abby tries to out-maneuver young Mr. Calverleigh , she meets his uncle--just back from India and the black sheep of his family.  Can she resist his charm and save Fanny as well? Very fun and fluffy, just like Heyer, though the plot was certainly more serious than the Reluctant Widow story from last week.  Fanny is on the brink of elopement!

Der Struwwelpeter , von Dr. Heinrich Hoffman Finally, I read another book, this time in German.  Struwwelpeter is right about my speed, since I haven't studied German in years and years--I quit after two semesters to take Russian.  Quite a few words were a bit old-fashioned, but I mostly did OK.  I also found an English version online to compare them---I read the German first and then the English--but of course the English version had been rendered into rhyme, so it mostly wasn't the same words. Although I read a whole lot of nursery rhymes and cautionary tales as a child, we did not have Der Struwwelpeter.  I shouldn't think very many American children do, but the older British novels I've read often make a passing reference to the stories in here, so it must have been pretty well-known in the UK in the past. These are cautionary rhymes in the traditional 18th- and 19th-century style--that is, children misbehave and are hideously punished, and everyone enjoys...

Time for another chapter of the letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett!  Ooh, this was interesting.  In our story so far, Robert has started a correspondence with Elizabeth, and he's clearly interested in her.  After they meet in person, Robert sends a Confession of True Feelings letter, and Elizabeth reacts poorly.  She has never thought of herself as eligible for romance, and she doesn't know what to do, nor does she want to encourage Robert to waste his life on her (as she sees it).  I have now read the next 5 months of letters, from May to October... RB's first letter to EBB The two are still writing, but Elizabeth is clearly trying to discourage Robert from romance.  She just wants to talk about Poetry and Life.  Robert keeps dropping anguished hints about his feelings, and she replies with a stubborn reluctance to hear it. ...I see by the law of my own star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star Wormwood ,...

In the First Circle, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I have done it!  I have read all of In the First Circle .  This is a spectacular book, but it took me a long time to read because it's not the kind of book you gulp down.  You have to go a bit more slowly.  Also, my copy is very large, so I had to be sitting down and concentrating in order to read--which is good for the experience, but an awful lot of my reading is done while standing up and doing other things, or over lunch, or something like that.  There is not that much sitting-down focused reading in my life. This is a huge story.  There is a long list of characters at the front (very helpful!), and they have their own lives, but connect at some points.  Even Stalin gets several chapters to himself.  The main storyline concerns the zeks (prisoners) at a special prison where they must use their engineering and technical skills to develop secret government technology--in particular, a telephon...

London Under , by Peter Ackroyd I love books about London, and in particular I love books about London under the ground, so when Kristen M. mentioned this little book, I went looking for it. It's a short, quick read in which Ackroyd devotes a chapter to the various elements making up the underworld of London: hidden rivers and streams, remains of ancient buildings, tunnels, sewers, and of course the Tube.  There's some nice history and it's very evocative. To be honest, it was a little too evocative for my taste.  Peter Ackroyd's style is always discursive and poetic, and here he goes on and on and ON about the chthonic nature of the underworld with sentences like "This was the anxiety that created the Minotaur, half man and half bull, with his own kingdom beneath the earth." These flights of fancy were paired with a distinct lack of detail.  To be fair, most people probably aren't as willing to read hundreds of pages about this topic as I am.  ...

Today is a little different, as I haven't been working on sewing; I've been working on my baby blog project (a group blog about inclusive classical homeschooling).  My workdesk is entirely virtual and the content is not yet sharable, and may not be for a little while yet.  Some articles I've written so far: How I taught 7th grade chemistry World geography with younger students Longer books to read aloud to young children Some photos I've taken:

The Reluctant Widow , by Georgette Heyer It's long time since I read a Heyer novel; I haven't been in the mood for one for quite a while.  I found this on the sale rack at the library, though, and the description grabbed me.  I have to say, this is one of the best and most fun Heyer novels I have ever read.  It is just great.  Elinor Rochdale, a governess down on her luck, is dropped off by the mail coach and expects to be met by her new employer's servant, so she hops up into the waiting gig that seems to be expecting her.  Imagine her surprise when she is taken, not to a spoiled little boy, but to a lord who matter-of-factly asks her to marry his dissolute cousin, who is sure to die soon.  Elinor is quickly drawn into a strange situation involving secret staircases, French spies, mischievous young brothers, and all manner of mad goings-on. Heyer's Regency dialogue is always pretty good, but here I really felt like she surpassed herself with Elinor's...

Mrs. Dalloway , by Virginia Woolf Happy July!  Or, good luck hiding from the heat, depending on where you are.  I'm hiding, with occasional forays to swimming pools. The WEM ladies have been reading Mrs. Dalloway , and I particularly wanted to join them, as this is one of my CC titles but I, for one, am quite afraid of Virginia Woolf.  I haven't read much of her before, I'm not too big on Moderns anyway, and I always get annoyed by her snobbery, so I needed company!  But I was in fact quite surprised by how much I enjoyed the book and that I didn't find it nearly as difficult as I expected (I was figuring on something not too far removed from Ulysses ). The book takes up one day and revolves mostly around Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged lady who is preparing to host a party in the evening.  I thought it would be entirely about Clarissa, but the point of view jumps around to various people, passing from one to the next as they intersect throughout the day....