Howling Frog Books

Cover from 1980 edition All Hallows' Eve, by Charles Williams These days, Charles Williams is not terribly well-known, but he was really kind of famous as a writer and unusual historian in his day.  He was an editor at Oxford University Press and an Inkling, and C. S. Lewis was one of his greatest admirers.  Williams wrote several novels that are just about unlike anything else I've ever read; T. S. Eliot called them supernatural thrillers, but they are not at all what you and I would expect to find if we went looking for supernatural thrillers.  Williams' novels feature spiritual elements made manifest in the contemporary world, and concern the misuse of power and the state of the soul.  They are intensely Christian, though they rarely mention that word and are, again, nothing like what you would expect from a Christian novel.  If you've ever read Lewis' Space Trilogy and were completely baffled by That Hideous Strength , that's the book that Lewis is su

I am really glad some of you talked me into doing the readalong of The Count of Monte Cristo .  It is such a fun book!  I've not had much trouble keeping up with the pace and am now on chapter 70.  This is about halfway by chapters, but more than halfway by page numbers. I really did not know anything much about the plot before I started; it was mixed up in my head with the Man in the Iron Mask.  I've never seen the movie either.  All of you probably already know that this is the story of young Edmond Dantes, a carefree young sailor with wonderful career prospects ahead of him and a true love he is about to marry--until he is thrown into the Chateau d'If and left to rot, all for the sake of a bureaucrat's ambition.  In prison, he hears about a legendary treasure buried on the island of Monte Cristo, and vows to escape, find the treasure, and get his life back. It's very exciting, filled with plots, piracy, duels, bandits, and all sorts of wonderful stuff.  Lo

Code Name Verity , by Elizabeth Wein It's hard to say much about this book besides wow . It's no wonder that this story made the shortlist for the 2013 Carnegie Medal (Britain's medal for the best children's book, as with America's Newbery, though this is not a child's book).  Lots of people around the blog world are raving about Code Name Verity , and the hype is deserved. 1942:  "Verity" is an Allied spy, set down in France on her first mission--and promptly caught by the Nazis.  She has broken down under torture and is writing an account of her activities in exchange for favors such as clothing or another few days of life.  But what she writes is not so much straight information as the story--from her best friend's perspective--of how she ended up as a spy in France.  Only much later do we even find out her name. And then the novel grabs you and does not let go. The prisoner and Maddie are great characters, and it's fascinating gettin

In Search of Ancient Ireland , by Carmel McCaffrey and Leo Eaton A couple of years ago I read a book by Carmel McCaffrey called In Search of Ireland's Heroes .  It covers Irish history after the Norman invasion of 1167, and I saw that there was a previous book about Irish history before that.  It turned out to be kind of hard to find, to my surprise, but what I hadn't realized was that the book was written as a companion to a PBS program .   (Not the one about the Celts that had lots of Enya music--a different one. Same title as the book.)  McCaffrey and Eaton start with archaeological evidence about Neolithic societies, which is very interesting.  They have some good information about the development of early Irish culture, how their origin myths developed, and how very different those myths are from what we can tell about history. The section on the conversion to Christianity is very interesting; unlike many countries, Ireland did not experience a conversion by the swor

Tighe haunts Hairy-Faced Dick Three, yes three narrative poems!  I finished my poetry challenge! I have been fretting about my narrative poetry challenge.  Plus it's almost Halloween.  I put the two together and found the perfect solution-- The Ingoldsby Legends ! The Ingoldsby Legends is a sort of miscellaneous collection of poetry, myth, ghost story, and legend, most of it told in a humorous style.  They were written by "Thomas Ingoldsby" (really a Victorian clergyman named Barham) and published in magazines, and were so popular that they were collected and published.  It's the sort of book that was hugely popular and well-known a century ago, but no one reads it now unless they are a little weird like me.  When I was a kid, I used to see it mentioned in books by E. Nesbit and wonder what it was, so I bought an old copy when I got the chance. The stories and poetry are funny, but of course very, very Victorian.  I got tired of the poems pretty quickly when

The Golem , by Gustav Meyrink I'm not sure what to call this novel, besides really strange and bizarre.  I mean, this is easily one of the weirdest books I've ever read.  "Hallucinatory" is the best descriptor I can come up with.  And it's often described as Meyrink's easiest work to read.... Gustav Meyrink (born Meyer) was the illegitimate son of a wealthy German baron and an actress.  He did quite a bit of writing, was enormously interested in unusual religions and the occult, worked as a banker, and went to jail for fraud (it's not clear that he was guilty).  Der Golem , Meyrink's first novel, was published serially in 1913-14 in a German magazine, and made him famous.  After that he translated Dickens into German and wrote much more.  An unnamed narrator dreams that he is Athanasius Pernath, a jeweler living in the Prague ghetto.  As he meets his neighbors, he hears about the legend of the Golem, a clay man brought to life by kabbalistic ma

The Stranger , by Albert Camus I've been struggling to write this post for days--that's the trouble with classics, what is there to say that people don't already know?  This strange novel was the next on the WEM List, and I read it along with the WEM Ladies and Ruth .   I've never read any Camus before, though I've certainly meant to, so I thought this was a good opportunity.  I can't say I loved it, though. The story is famous; Mersault, a French Algerian, shoots and kills a random Arab on the beach, though he doesn't seem to care about it much.  In fact, Mersault has a hard time caring about anything much.  He is detached from the rest of the world. So we wonder: why is Mersault so detached?  He doesn't seem to have any desires or emotions, really.  He has physical, bodily desires--food, sex, drink--but nothing emotionally.  He is content to go along with whatever happens.  His mother dies, but he doesn't mind; they didn't have much to

Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough: the Medical Lives of Great Writers , by John J. Ross, MD My mom handed me this book, knowing I would enjoy it.  Ross talks about great writers' medical conditions!  Why did Milton go blind?  Is there something behind Shakespeare's constant mentions of 'the pox'?  Let's talk about the Bront ë s' tuberculosis and Joyce's eye problems! In each chapter, Ross gives a short biography of a great writer and then goes into detail about what we know about the medical history.  Ross is a good storyteller, not too wordy, and he's very good about not speculating too far.  Often he points out far-fetched theories and punctures them, reminding readers that, for example, plain old TB was more than enough to kill all the Bront ës without resorting to fanciful diagnoses.  He is careful not to get too confident or too fancy, which I appreciated. This would be a good bedside book if you're not easily grossed out; it

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of the Romans from 161-189 AD.  He doesn't seem to have been all that cut out to be emperor, because he was mostly a very nice guy, and so I was surprised to find that he had a pretty successful reign and didn't get poisoned or anything..  These meditations are really his personal writings to himself; they were not meant for publication.  They were private. The twelve books of reflections, written on campaign, contain a lot of advice on how to live a good life.  Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic, but a slightly unusual one.  He is humble and talks about God, or the gods, quite a bit.  All of the advice is about doing what is right regardless of others' opinions, doing good to others, putting duty over personal desire, and so on.  Here are a few snippets: Keep yourself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all pro

DVD cover with mysterious photos A while back I read Mary Rinehart Roberts' novel of The Bat , which was a hugely successful play in the 1920s.  I ran into a film version of The Bat at the library, so we took it home to watch; I was hoping it would be the play, in movie form.  It turned out to be the 1959 version, starring Vincent Price, and the screenplay must have been extensively rewritten--the basics were there, but quite changed, and with several character changes. Still, we had fun watching the film.  Who does not adore Vincent Price?  My 13-year-old daughter has not yet had the fun of watching lots of old scary movies, so I'm going to try to educate her a bit as long as it's October.  I just love watching goofy old movies around Halloween, and this one was pretty good, though it lacked the incredible cheesiness of the novel. So who are these people on the cover of the DVD?  They are not in the movie!  At least, they don't look like that--they are Agnes M

Let's Kill Uncle , by Rohan O'Grady I heard of this title through the Bloomsbury editions--those lovely candy-colored books that are so tempting.  This one was a bit of a surprise, though; so far all the Bloomsbury books I've read have been humorous or satirical books by British women, and Let's Kill Uncle is by a Canadian.  It's funny, but the humor has a darker tone.  The copy I got through ILL has a nice Gorey cover, and Gorey is perfectly suited to this story. There are no children on the small island off the Canadian coast, until Barnaby and Christie, both age 12, come to spend the summer.  Christie's overworked mother has scrimped to give her this chance at an outdoor summer, and Barnaby is in the care of his guardian uncle.  Barnaby is the heir to millions, and his uncle is of the opinion that he should have the fortune.  Barnaby knows this perfectly well, and he also knows that no grownup will believe him, so he and Christie decide that this is a p

The Book of Not , by Tsitsi Dangarembga A year or two ago I read Nervous Conditions , and have been wanting for some time to read this sequel, The Book of Not .  It was written quite a few years later and I think these are Dangarembga's only two novels; she has also written films and short pieces. Tambudzai is now attending the pre-eminent girls' boarding school in Rhodesia.  Great things are expected of her, and she badly wants to be an excellent scholar and win at least one prize.  But as hard as she works, life is often too much for her.  The school is almost entirely populated with wealthy white girls, and segregation is in force, so that daily life is filled with difficult social dilemmas of the kind guaranteed to make a teenage girl freeze with anxiety.  She has a hard time getting along with the African girls she shares a room with; in fact, she has a hard time getting along with anyone.  Outside the school, a guerrilla war for Zimbabwean independence rages and make

Oh dear.  I have been looking at all my lovely piles of books and deciding what I want to read next, and there are lots of wonderful things to read.  I've been pottering my way through M. R. James because it's October--and the stories are very well worth re-reading, I'm noticing a lot of good stuff I didn't necessarily get before--and I just started Gustav Meyrink's seriously bizarre novel The Golem , and I'm dedicating October to reading Boleslaw Prus' novel, The Doll , which is supposed to be one of the great Polish novels and indeed so far it is good. I've got rather a lot of history to get through if I want to finish all my challenges properly--I have several books to go for the TBR challenges and the majority of them are weighty or dense.  And I've got a bunch of great books checked out of the library, like Code Name Verity and Napoleon's Buttons.  Plus I just got Susan Wise Bauer's new history book, The History of the Renaissance Worl

The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity , by Os Guinness I've heard of Os Guinness before as a co-author of a reference book on literature for young students.  I had not realized that his main thing in life is writing books of social criticism and advocating in social policy.  Although he currently lives in the US, he spent much of his life working in Europe.  He seems to be British or  Irish by birth, having been born in China and gotten his PhD from Oxford, but that's a guess based on two minutes of poking around the Web.  Certainly his biographical sketch is worth reading; he's had an exciting life! Guinness' major concern--here and in other books--is the preservation of the basic human rights of freedom of conscience and speech as an essential element of a free society.  Everyone, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, ought to be able to exercise their beliefs.  He calls this soul freedom, after Roger William

Bev at My Reader's Block is hosting the Mount TBR Challenge, and it's time for a third-quarter check-in!  Bev says I need 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.  2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following: A. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like. B. What has been your most difficult read so far.  And why?  (Length?  Subject matter?  Difficult style?  Out of your comfort zone reading?) C. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all? D. Choose 3-5 titles from your stacks and using

The Agency: A Spy in the House , by Y. S. Lee I don't remember what blogger pointed me to the Agency series by Y. S. Lee; it's been on my wishlist for a long time, and I finally got around to ILLing the book. Mary Lang was a 12-year-old London street urchin when her life took an unexpected turn and she went to live at a school dedicated to preparing girls to earn their livings.  At 17, even more unexpectedly, the headmistresses of the school reveal that some pupils go on to work as undercover agents for the Agency.  After all, who is less noticeable than a servant girl?  No one expects her to be doing detective work.  And so Mary joins up and heads off to her very first assignment, as paid companion to a spoilt teenage girl whose father might be cooking his books. It took me a little while to get into this story and at first I didn't think I would continue.  It was when Mary started her assignment that I got interested.  After that, I liked the book a lot.  The hist

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin , by Timothy Snyder  I've been working on this one for a while. It is just about the most unremittingly grim and tragic book I've ever read.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, because YOU SHOULD.  But it won't be fun. Timothy Snyder illuminates a whole lot of history that we in the West haven't really been very aware of until recently.  Since the fall of the Communist bloc, a lot has come to light about World War II in Eastern Europe that we didn't easily see before.  By "bloodlands," Snyder means the part of Eastern Europe that suffered most in the first half of the 20th century--first from Stalin, then from Hitler, and then from Stalin again.  This area, which is now mostly contained in the countries of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and the Baltics, suffered three invasions, all of which involved deliberate mass murder.  In total, the Nazi and Soviet regimes put about 14 million people to death.

Unnatural Creatures: Stories selected by Neil Gaiman This was an excellent spooky read for fall!  If you're doing RIP, be sure to grab this new collection of stories chosen by Neil Gaiman.  They are all stories about creatures.  And it's brand-spanking-new--for once I got in early! There is a great variety--some stories are old, some are contemporary.  They are funny or creepy--or both.  I particularly liked the first selection (which does not have a pronounceable title), "The Compleat Werewolf," and "Come, Lady Death."  Gaiman's own contribution is "Sunbird," which I have read somewhere before but is well worth a re-read, and of course he had to include a Diana Wynne Jones selection, which is "The Sage of Theare."  (I don't know why that one; I can think of a few others that are more in line with the creature theme, but hey, I like the story just fine.) Pick this up if you like creepy, or fantasy, or Halloween reads.