Howling Frog Books

Culhwch and Olwen , trans. Patrick K. Ford This is one of the very early Arthurian tales, and of course it is Welsh.  It dates from something like the 11th century. The story has Culhwch, a king's son, put under a curse by his stepmother that he will never marry anyone but Olwen Giants-daughter.  Culhwch promptly becomes enamored of the girl he has never seen, but the task of winning Olwen is impossible; her father will never give permission for her marriage, as he is fated to die as soon as it happens.  Culhwch asks his cousin Arthur for help in the name of every single one of his warriors, which takes pages, but is very fun to read because they come with amazing descriptions.  (Sometimes you might see a familiar name some later author has lifted--there is for example a Fflewdwr Fflam.)  Arthur gladly agrees to help Culhwch, and together with the best men of the court, they set out. Culhwch asks the giant for Olwen, and is given forty impossible tasks to...

What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story , by P. L. Travers This is a collection of about 50 articles and essays published over about a 20-year period, mostly in the 1970s and mostly in Parabola , the magazine of the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition.  Each issue has a focus theme, and evidently Travers would take the theme and write on it in whatever way suited her fancy. The result is pretty nice, but it would have been better for me to get it in another way.  I got the book on an ILL so I had to read it in a big gulp, and it would be much more enjoyable to read one or three selections every once in a while.  All at once, it's overwhelming and you get tired of meditations and speculations on myth.  Sometimes when you read a collection of articles that one person wrote over many years, there is too much on a few favorite themes to really be able to handle all at once; it gets repetitive.  That happened to me.  Travers had ...

When I put Candide on my Spin list, Fariba at Exploring Classics let me know about her planned March readalong.  Perfect timing!  Candide is on my official TBR must-read list for this year, so it will be nice to share a readalong. Fariba says: I will be reading the work in the original language, but all posts will be in English. Here is the posting schedule: Monday, March 10 : chapters 1-8 Monday, March 17: chapters 9-16 Monday, March 24: chapters 17-24 Monday, March 31: chapters 25-30 (last post) After I post about a series of chapters, you have a whole week to comment on those chapters. I'm pretty nervous about it now that I've read up a bit on it.  I'm not sure it sounds very pleasant.  So we shall see.  But happily several of my bloggy friends have joined up too!

The Conjure-Man Dies , by Rudolph Fisher  The Classics Club theme for February just happens to be the Harlem Renaissance (plus more) , which gave me a good chance to start working on the challenge I signed up for too.  I decided to start with The Conjure-Man Dies , which is a mystery set in early 1930s Harlem. Dr. John Archer has his medical office across the street from an undertaker and a "psychist" who claims to be able to read faces so well that he can tell you all about yourself and your future.  When the conjure-man is murdered in the middle of a reading, Dr. Archer and the NYPD detective assigned to the case, Perry Dart, team up to solve the mystery.  Then the corpse disappears from a guarded room and walks in, claiming to have revived himself with his special powers--so the two men will need all their expertise to figure out the puzzle. I enjoyed this mystery so much!  I love a good mystery.  Here we have a seriously excellent puzzle and a c...

Everybody!  It's that time of year!  When we read Diana Wynne Jones and talk about her a lot!  Oh, I just love DWJ March.  As always, Kristen at We Be Reading is hosting , and she has scheduled out something for every single day .  Plus she is good at Twitter, so there is a hashtag #dwjmarch and has made something called a Tagboard that I cannot quite figure out how to use properly but it is neat. New button! There will be two readalongs, one of Enchanted Glass and one for the happy people who have been able to get their hands on The Islands of Chaldea , DWJ's final novel which has been released in the UK, but not anywhere else yet.  I won't be able to get it until late April, but we might do another one then.... Kristen says: Here is the prompt/feature schedule by day: Show Us Your Collection Series Highlight: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci Favorite Main Character Book Highlight: Eight Days of Luke Favorite Book Cover Book Highlight:...

The Sound of the Mountain , by Yasunari Kawabata Kawabata first became famous in the West for his short stories and two short novels.  He won the 1968 Nobel Prize for literature.  This novel was published in 1949, but not in English until after the Nobel Prize.  My book blurb lauds it as "one of his most important works--both longer and more complex" than his other novels.  The Sound of the Mountain describes the inner life of an elderly businessman named Shingo, who observes his dysfunctional family and his own old age.  His childrens' marriages are foundering, he is more fond of his daughter-in-law than of his own daughter, he is distant from his wife, and his most intense feelings seem to be reserved for flowers and art. I honestly did not care about this book, or the people in it, or anything much.  I planned to like it.  I expected to like it.  At the beginning I was rather tickled to see that Shingo lives in Kamakura, where my mom liv...

Playing With Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India , by the Sangtin Writers and Richa Nagar Uttar Pradesh is one of the most poverty-stricken areas of India, and there are many NGOs there trying to make a difference.  Some focus on people of the lowest castes.  One such NGO encouraged these women to form their own small group, which they called Sangtin.  As they met over years and told their stories to each other, they decided to write down their experiences and publish a book, and here it is.  It was originally published in Hindi and garnered a very strong reaction; in fact officers of the NGO concerned took great offense and there was something of a kerfuffle.  The book is here translated into English, bookended with explanatory chapters at either end. The introductory chapter is really quite academic in tone and even rather off-putting with its jargon, but it boils down to explaining that these seven women tried very hard for co...

Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart, by Chretien de Troyes Oh, my poor little neglected book blog!  I have missed you.  So many books to write about, so little time. Lancelot is a pivotal kind of text in the Arthurian tradition.  It's Lancelot's first appearance!  It introduces the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere!  Chretien builds these new pieces of the Arthur story on an older foundation, though; Guinevere's abduction was already a popular theme. Lancelot riding in the cart The story is too long and complex to summarize well here, but the high points are that Guinevere is abducted--along with many other people from Arthur's lands--by Meleagant, the wicked son of King Bademagu.  Lancelot sets out to seek her, and promptly runs into a dwarf driving a particular kind of cart reserved only for condemned criminals, which he must ride on in order to find out where the Queen is.  Other knights have refused to sacrifice their honor, an...

Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders To Better Understand the Gospel , by  E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O'Brien  I first heard of this book last year and it has been on my wishlist ever since.  Richards and O'Brien talk about the pitfalls of reading the Bible--a collection of books written anciently by people from a culture very different from our own-- from the point of view of a modern American (or Westerner generally).  They are specifically tackling the troubles a modern American might have, and suggest that others write books about different cultural blinders too, since of course we all have them.  Nobody is going to be able to read the Bible from the point of view of, say, a first-century Christian.  (In fact no one who has ever lived would be able to read the entire Bible from a 'native' viewpoint.) This is a concept that became very familiar to me in high school, when I spent a year as a foreign exchange stude...

Eugene Onegin Readalong, 7 & 8 Darn it, I finished Eugene Onegin days ago, but procrastinated my post too long.  I feel out of the loop now! Tanglewood is a little late too. Poor Lensky is gone, and Olga recovers quickly, marrying another young man.  Onegin has fled and is traveling to escape his guilt.  Tatiana is left on her own to brood, and winds up in Onegin's library, reading his books and realizing how little she knows this man.  (Small note: Onegin's favorite book is Melmoth , a fact I did not notice the first time around.  Now that I know what it is I see it everywhere.  I might need to read it for Gothic October...)  Is there even a real Onegin, or is he just a collection of literary tropes? Tatiana's parents decide that it is high time she stopped mooning about, and so they take her to Moscow in hopes of marrying her off. Several years later, Onegin returns to Russia and goes to St. Petersburg.  He is ready to be bored stiff...

This month's Classics Club meme is: “Dead white guys” are all too often the focus when it comes to discussions of the Western Canon. We’d love to see members highlight classic works or authors that are overlooked in the canon that deserve recognition. Pick one/or more and tell us how their work resonates for our century and/or for you. As always, you determine what is a “classic” in your point of view, including works from 2000+, and works from anywhere in the world.  //  Or , if you have trouble thinking of an author/work to highlight, you could simply discuss the topic itself: What is “The Western Canon” — have you thought about who/what determines which works are recognized from human history? Ah, the canon.  Good old canon.  Having been a literature major at Berkeley in the 1990s, I got more than my fill of discussion about what the canon is, who has gotten to decide what's in it, the fact that there is no One True List,...

The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm , by Juliet Nicolson This year I'm trying out a new thing for me--a sort of book club on Goodreads that reads a bunch of books centered around a theme and then discusses them.  It will just happen twice in a year.  Our first batch of books are all about World War I, which is of course very appropriate for the 100th anniversary this year.  The Perfect Summer is the only non-fiction title on the list, and it's really more of a look at the English society that is about to disappear forever. The summer of 1911 was unusually warm and sunny, and before too long it turned frighteningly hot and dry.  In this heat wave, George V was crowned King (and Queen Mary felt trapped).  Wealthy socialites attended endless parties, trying to stave off ennui with the help of drink and adultery.  Poor workers, fed up with horrific conditions, staged strikes and shut down London. The Russian ballet electrified everyone...

Our Spin number this time around is 20 .  To my surprise, I somehow put 21 titles on my list, and I'm kind of tempted to go with poor #21 that never had a chance (it's Chekhov's Uncle Vanya ) but I'd feel like I was cheating, so I am going to read #20-- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. I've been reading but not posting, and so I have a pile of books to tell you about.  Still, it feels like I have a lot of large books going on and am not making much headway!

Unaccompanied Minor, by Hollis Gillespie April is 14 (almost 15!) and living on the run--in airplanes, using her mother's flight attendant credentials to catch flights around the country.  She can often choose flights that her friend Flo is working on, and sometimes she can fly with her buddy Malcolm and his emotional support dog, Captain Beefheart.  April wants to live with her very nice mother, but for some reason the family courts awarded full custody to her horrible jerk of a stepfather, who leaves her on her own most of the time.  He hasn't actually noticed yet that April is gone.  Today's flight is looking good, with both Flo and Malcolm on board...until the body shows up.  The plane is being hijacked. Although this feels more like a thriller than a traditional mystery story, a lot of it is unraveling a mystery--a really complicated one.  There is lots of action and it's all very exciting and fun, plus I learned a whole lot about airplanes. ...

Cligès , by Chretien de Troyes Here we have Chretien's second Arthurian tale, and once again I could see that many common tropes (habits?) of the Arthurian tradition have not yet quite gelled.  There is a town or two and the traditional storyline is not there yet.  This all makes it really interesting to read, since Chretien is creating much of the tradition as he writes. Cligès proves himself at a tournament (in disguise, of course) Cligès does not show up until at least halfway through the story.  It starts with his parents!  Alexander is the crown prince of Constantinople (which seems to be the capital city of Greece; we never hear of an empire, but Alexander and all his knights are called Greeks), and as a young man he sets off for Britain, for he knows that all the best knights are there and he is determined to be knighted by none other than Arthur himself.  Alexander joins Arthur's court and falls in love with one of the queen's maidens, and there ...

It's time for another quartlerly Spin!  Check out the rules if you want to join.   Pick a number and watch out! Here is my list, in pretty random order. The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton Not Without Laughter, by Langston Hughes Picnic At Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay, Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Measure for Measure, by Shakespeare The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot Tristram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov Candide, by Voltaire  Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams  The Crucible, by Arthur Miller The Makioka Sisters, by Junichio Tanizaki My Antonia, by Willa Cather Our Town, by Thornton Wilder Henry V, Shakespeare Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov  Scariest book on the list: probably Kaffir Boy , since...

Eugene Onegin Readalong, 5 & 6 Here we are on chapters 5 and 6 of Eugene Onegin , and it's getting really sad.  While Lensky and Olga prepare for their wedding and live in bliss, Tatiana is melancholy and pining away after Onegin, who stays away as much as possible.  Tatiana has a truly bizarre dream that portends future events.  Then, at her name-day festival, Onegin is seated near her because of the local gossip that has paired them up; she is mortified, but he is so kind that she feels somewhat better.  During the dancing, however, Onegin is not so well-behaved.  Seized by a contrary mood, he monopolizes Olga, dancing and flirting with her.  Olga is flattered but doesn't seem to take it seriously.  Lensky becomes very jealous, and challenges Onegin to a duel.  Onegin regrets his actions and wants to make up with Lensky, but honor must be satisfied; the two men duel with pistols and Onegin promptly kills Lensky without ever speaking to him...

Travels in Siberia , by Ian Frazier I picked this book off the shelf at work on a whim just before winter vacation; I just happened to see it and thought it might be interesting.  Nope, it was fabulous!  At about 500 very dense pages, it is a slow and detailed read, and I enjoyed every minute.  Frazier, a well-known non-fiction writer, fell in love with Russia in the early/mid-1990s and visited as often as he could.  His Siberian visits started with a flight from Alaska, and eventually decided that he wanted to drive all the way across Siberia--an idea that daunted most of his Russian friends.  So he hired a guy, who hired another guy, and they got a van and packed it full of stuff, and they started driving.  They mostly camped along the way, washing in rivers, or sometimes visited people.  Then they did it again by train, and then Frazier went back for a mid-winter visit.   He describes all of it in fascinating and humorous detail, and delves...

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer's (& Editor's) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, & Myth, by Suzanne Alleyn I got a huge kick out of this book, despite the fact that I am not in the intended audience at all.  It's a fun book of hints for people who write (or want to write) historical fiction.  I have no desire to write anything much besides blog posts, especially historical fiction, and I don't even enjoy reading historical fiction all that much, but that's often largely because of the mistakes that Alleyn warns against here. Alleyn is witty and very funny as she warns against common mistakes like feeding your hero food he could not possibly have eaten, making someone pay three gold louis for a minor purchase, wrong usage of aristocratic titles (a minefield, admittedly), or giving your heroine underpants.   My husband was made happy by the existence of an entire chapter devoted to correctly describ...