Howling Frog Books

Spenser's Images of Life, by C. S. Lewis and Alastair Fowler This is my final preparation for the Faerie Queene Readalong next month!  Once upon a time, C. S. Lewis left Magdalen College at Oxford and took a chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College at Cambridge, where he lectured in English literature for the last years of his life.  (He commuted by train and went back to the Kilns on weekends.)  Lewis had meant to make a book out of his Cambridge lectures on Spenser, but died before he could do so.  His colleague Alastair Fowler took on the job of creating a book out of the lecture notes, and he succeeded well enough that Lewis' own voice still shows throughout.  I first read this book several years ago, before Cambridge brought it back into print, and it made me want to read the Faerie Queene and enjoy it.  I promptly failed, but this time I'm going to do it!  (With the help of o and Cleo and a lot of footnotes.) Lewis...

A Blink of the Screen , by Terry Pratchett As my final book for MarchMagics, I got this newish collection of Pratchett's short stuff.  I've never read any of it before, so it was a real treat!  I gather that it was originally published in hardback with a lot of fun Kirby illustrations, but I only have the paperback.  That's OK, because while I know Josh Kirby was a hugely popular Discworld illustrator, I don't personally care much about it one way or the other. The first half of the book is non-Discworld stuff.  We get Pterry's very first published story--at 13!--which is far better than most stories by 13-year-olds would be.  There are a couple of fractured fairy tales, some spoofy news stories, that sort of thing, and then a really great SF short story about Earth in a multiverse that eventually turned into The Long Earth , which I think is the only Pterry novel I haven't read, and clearly that is going to need to change soon.  A few other short sto...

I guess I've slacked off a little bit on the MarchMagics posting, but that's because I really have no shipping ideas.  That's not really how my brain works. But!  Since I last posted about DWJ and Pterry, I've read a couple more things. Obviously I had to follow Dark Lord of Derkholm with a re-read of Year of the Griffin .  That is such a fun book.  I love the portrayal of a group of college friends, and how each of them copes with their various problems.  I also really like how the world is a mess, and the university has become completely incompetent, and it all needs fixing up--which is exactly what would really happen, only unfortunately we don't have magic to fix our problems up with. This is another really terrible cover.  It's a scene from the novel, but a very confusing one and the cover makes no sense at all.  Also, you can't see any human faces, and the whole thing comes off as badly drawn.  Elda is the only reasonable thing on thi...

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos , by Patrick Leigh Fermor The original cover (not my NYRB edition) This is the concluding third volume in Patrick Leigh Fermor's wonderful travel memoir.  The first volumes are A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water.   I loved both of those, and the main reason that it has taken me nearly two years to read all three volumes is because I adore them so much that I spaced them out and read them slowly, so as not to finish them too soon.  This final volume is not quite complete; Fermor was working on it at his death, and he was an obsessive trimmer and re-writer, so this is longer than the other two--because he didn't get to trim it down as much--and also unfinished.  The tale never does quite make it over the final miles to Constantinople.  Instead, two of Fermor's close friends edited the material and added journal entries (very sparse ones) from time in Constantinople and a lovely long visit ...

Hey, if you haven't heard about Lory's upcoming Elizabeth Goudge event, head on over to her blog and take a look.  Lory says: I’m planning to celebrate Elizabeth Goudge’s birthday on April 24 . That means that I’ll be reading and posting about one of her books, and I hope that you will consider doing the same. There will be a giveaway! I have two Goudge books on my TBR pile right now: Green Dolphin Street and Gentian Hill.   I think I'll read the first one for this event.  It seems to be the most famous of her titles, so I ought to get around to it.

I just now happened to look at my "total pageviews" widget, and it says 199,199 which is kind of a fun number.  Nice and symmetrical. Here is the hexadecimal color #199199, a rather fetching teal:  Googling images mostly gets you houses selling for almost $200,000, but you also get plenty of Beverly Hills 90210 because it ran 1991-99.  (Please note that I do not recommend actually watching this show, as your brain will melt.)  I guess I had better think of something special for 200,000.  A party or something.  Any suggestions?

The cover of my paperback copy Our MarchMagics DWJ readalong selection was Dark Lord of Derkholm , a send-up of all the tropes that got so worn out in sword-and-sorcery fantasy novels.  DWJ pokes merciless fun at the whole genre, but it's not all comedy; there's more than enough moral complexity and emotional weight to ground the novel and make it much more than a simple spoof. Over forty years ago, the inhabitants of the world entered a contract to host tourist parties from another universe.  The tourists go on a quest to defeat the Dark Lord, led by a wizard tour guide, accompanied by a bard, and attacked by leathery-winged avians in the time-honored manner.  In the final battle, the heavily-outnumbered Forces of Good defeat the massed Forces of Evil, after which the tourists confront the Dark Lord in his lair and defeat him before heading home. Well, the tours are wrecking the world and the situation is desperate.  In an attempt to escape from the demon-en...

The Dead Mountaineer's Inn, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky When the Strugatsky brothers got tired of having their science fiction books constantly pushed around and censored by the Soviet government, they decided to take a break and write a mystery novel for a change. Inspector Peter Glebsky is on vacation, so he heads up to a remote ski chalet, intending to ski and drink a lot and generally lounge about in the peace and quiet.  At the chalet, he meets a bizarre conglomeration of people--a famous magician and his nephew (niece?), a physicist, a possible thug, a rich man and his socialite wife among them.  Plus maybe the ghost of the dead mountaineer, who steals things.  An avalanche cuts them all off and a Norwegian stranger is found dead, so Glebsky plans to figure this out--despite being the kind of police inspector who finds embezzlers, not murderers, and possibly not a policeman at all.  And the Strugatskys really can't resist throwing a little science-ficti...

Here it comes, the most challenging readalong of 2016: Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene ., published in 1590 and 1596, just exactly 420 years ago. O at Behold the Stars is hosting; it was her idea, and several others quickly jumped on board. Cleo , Cirtnecce , Ruth ,  Consoled Reader  and I will be joining in, and you are very welcome too.  Here's the (rather terrifying) schedule: April 25 – May 1 st   ~   Book I May 2 – May 8 th   ~   Book II May 9 – May 15 th   ~   Book III May 16 – May 22 nd   ~   Book IV May 23 – May 29 th   ~   Book V May 30 – June 5 th   ~   Book VI June 6 – June 12 th   ~   Mutability A book a week, egads.  I guess we'll be posting weekly as well.  And for two of those weeks, I will be on my big trip to the UK, so I will either have to read ahead very strenuously or catch up afterwards....probably that second option!  But it doesn't m...

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge , by Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke wrote one novel, and this is it.  At the time, he was living in Paris, having left his new wife and baby behind while he went in search of some income (and to get away from said baby, who was so inconsiderate as to cry and want to eat while he doing important stuff like being inspired and all; everyday life is too vulgar for a poet).  Notebooks was largely written out of his experiences in Paris. Malte Laurids Brigge is a young Danish aristocrat of sorts--the poor sort--living in Paris.  His two notebooks/journals consist of his experiences, memories, and imaginings.  There isn't really a plot to speak of; the thread goes back and forth and it's just like a real notebook in a real young man's life--a life based very much on Rilke's own.  Sometimes he's looking at young women students copying the Cluny tapestries (see?? I told you they were everywhere), and sometimes he's thinking of his chi...

Thursday, March 17 - Favorite Bad Covers Fantasy book covers can sometimes be, well, interesting. Share your favorite bad DWJ or Pratchett covers! Not at all bad, considering. So very many bad covers! I'm going to concentrate mostly on DWJ, because in my opinion Pterry had pretty good covers.  He had a few artists that habitually illustrated the Discworld books, and who were very popular.  His covers were practically iconic, and Americans tried to collect the more-popular British editions.  Even the original cover for The Colour of Magic is pretty decent! DWJ, on the other hand.  Oh, the poor woman.  Her covers were consistently hideous for decades.  I think, for one, thing, the 1970s and 80s were particularly bad; fantasy cover art wasn't really in great shape anyway, and it doesn't seem like the publishers tried very hard.  Then, it's possible that her stories do not really lend themselves well to illustration.  They make wonderful i...

The Lady and the Unicorn, by Rumer Godden The Universe wants me to know all about the Cluny tapestries.  That is my conclusion, after several months in which I have met them at every turn.  It started with a miniature embroidery pattern that I happen to want and have not yet bought.  A friend of mine ordered me to read the Tracy Chevalier novel, which I haven't gotten to yet, because I ran into this Rumer Godden one as well, but it's on the shelf.  I read Rilke (post pending!) and he makes them a feature.  Their presence in the Harry Potter films came up. These tapestries are everywhere, I'm telling you.  Even in Calcutta, which is where Godden sets her novel--rather unexpectedly I must say. Rosa and Belle are twins; their family occupies one part of a large tumbledown Calcutta mansion.  They are poor and their mixed race limits their social possibilities in this 1930s Raj setting.  Belle, ambitious and ruthless, sets herself to climb by beco...

Today's MarchMagics prompt is: Favorite Quotes -- This one might be tough to narrow down but also a lot of fun! Oh, I have so many favorite quotations!  I can't even mention them all, but here are some favorites from DWJ books: "All power corrupts, but we need electricity." -- Archer's Goon "Why not do both?  Walk into the sunset screaming?"   -- Luke, Eight Days of Luke "Because you're a person, of course!' Ann snapped at him. 'One person ought to treat another person properly even if the person's himself!" -- Hexwood “Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.”  --  Howl , Howl's Moving Castle “Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”  -- Tom (and, later, Polly) , Fire and Hemlock " Sentimental drivel."  -- Tom, Fire and Hemlock " But you wouldn’t believe how lonely you get.”--Ja...

Halfway through the month, and I've been able to spend some happy hours immersed in DWJ and Pterry books. After I finished Equal Rites , I wanted to revisit Wyrd Sisters , the next witchy book and the first Discworld book I ever read.  Granny Weatherwax is starting to look more like her eventual self, Nanny Ogg is an enthusiastically earthy presence, and Magrat Garlick is into modern witching, with its innovative new colors and belief in fairies.  I'm well into it now and enjoying every minute. Late last week, I read The Crown of Dalemark , and enjoyed its complicated story all over again.  One particularly fun detail of this story is the glossary, which collects terms and legendary characters from all four Dalemark books.  The tricky bit is that, as in the "scholar's explanation" in The Spellcoats , the glossary is written by a fictional Dalemark historian (Maewen's dad, maybe?), who knows many things, but does not know everything that is revealed in...

Today is the Equal Rites Readalong discussion!  Pop on over to We Be Reading to see what Kristen has to say. Was this your first time reading Equal Rites ? Did you like it? I've read Equal Rites a few times before, but it's been years, so it was nice to read it again.  Although I read Wyrd Sisters first, after that I went back and read the books in order, so Equal Rites was one of my first.  I still remember certain descriptions as forming my opinion of Pterry's writing, like the eagle's mind being "small, sharp, and purple, like an arrowhead." This time, I noticed more that Granny Weatherwax is being developed as a character.  She's more of an average formidable mountain witch, rather than the granite-with-a-heart, practically all-knowing Granny Weatherwax of later books. Pterry also wraps up the storyline rather neatly, leaving Esk and Simon to their cooperative destiny, and they don't really show up again (until Esk makes an appearance i...

The Allegory of Love, by C. S. Lewis I first read this, Lewis' first book of literary criticism, at least 10 years ago.  Last year after reading that book about the Inklings I thought I'd like to read it again, but when I took my copy (really my mother's, which I stole) down from the shelf, it seemed practically unreadable; it had tiny type in a 60s era paperback.  So I splurged a little and bought a new copy.  Then when Cleo mentioned it in connection with the Faerie Queene , I realized I really ought to read it before the readalong, not after, so I got going.  It was really nice to revisit, especially since I have now actually read the Romance of the Rose and understand a lot more of what he's talking about. Lewis starts off by explaining that allegory was how early medieval people first started to express psychological ideas, especially conflict.  Much as a cartoon might show an inner moral conflict by means of an angel and a devil on each shoulder, th...

The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain, by Bill Bryson Bill Bryson's big breakout book was Notes from a Small Island , a funny book about living and traveling in the UK.  That was 20 years ago, so he thought he would do another one and see how things have changed.  For some reason, he drew a line from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath (the farthest you can go in a straight line while on land), and then of course didn't stick with that line at all, except insofar as he started in Bognor and moved kind of north and eventually got to Cape Wrath--although really, he spent almost no time in Scotland at all, which was pretty disappointing. Much of the book is fun and enjoyable and lyrical about the beauties of the British countryside and the wonderfulness that is London.  I learned some good stuff for our upcoming trip, like that you can just walk into the West Kennet Long Barrow (this is completely stunning to me, but it turned out that my mom alr...

It's a new week in MarchMagics, hosted by Kristen at We Be Reading, and a new day to talk about Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett!  The prompt for today is to write about our Favorite Series --(or story arc if it's part of Discworld because just to say Discworld would totally be cheating) In DWJ, it's hard to choose.  I am probably in a minority when I pick Dalemark as one of the best.  I don't think it's hugely popular, but I love the green roads and all the mysterious twisty bits, and how the three earlier books, which aren't all that connected, are brought together in the fourth.  Of course, though, I also adore the Chrestomanci books.  They're so funny and wonderful, and there's a lot of variety.  Chrestomanci is possibly DWJ's overall best series. In Discworld, my favorite story arc has always been the witches.  They're my first and permanent love, and now that Tiffany Aching is part of it, well.  There is simply nothing mo...

Cambodia's Curse: the Modern History of a Troubled Land, by Joel Brinkley Ready for another fascinating, but grim, book about 20th century history and politics?  I hope so. Joel Brinkley has been reporting on the Cambodia beat for decades; he won a Pulitzer for his coverage in 1979, at the fall of the Khmer Rouge.  For the past 20 years or so, we've mostly been ignoring Cambodia, and Brinkley figures it's time somebody paid a little attention.  Here, he offers a quick run-down of Khmer history, followed by a much more detailed analysis of the past 30 years or so.  It's not good.  Cambodia today is still stuck in a paralyzing mire of corruption, brutality, and ignorance, and Brinkley calls them "the most abused people in the world."  (And he's counting North Korea and Darfur.) First we have the historical run-down, which starts over a thousand years ago with the glories of Angkor Wat.  All this glory was built upon the backs of ordinary Cambodian...

8. Which means I'll be reading....one poem.  "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufock," by T. S. Eliot.  Which is kind of funny, since most of the items on my list were long and heavy!  Oops, Eliot spotted a misprint. Also, happy 4th birthday to the Classics Club!  Which gives me exactly one year to finish my list off, so I'd better get moving.

Slade House , by David Mitchell This is a little short novel that is also a sort of minor spin-off of The Bone Clocks , which I read last year and half-liked.  Slade House I liked entirely; it was all the parts I liked about Bone Clocks , without all the boring parts or unpleasant people.  A few characters from Bone Clocks make an appearance, but I don't think it's really necessary to have read it to enjoy Slade House , which is almost entirely its own thing. In a tiny, ignored London alley, once every nine years a little door appears.  Those lonely few who enter find an unexpected country manor house and a congenial companion...until they realize they can't leave.  Anyone who discovers what happens at Slade House never leaves to reveal it to anyone else. It's a creepy haunted-house story, and I liked it.  Plus the inside cover is pretty cool too.

Metamorphoses , by Ovid I've been doing a readalong of this, sort of, with Cleo at Classical Carousel and o at Behold the Stars , before a more ambitious readalong of The Faerie Queene , which is set to start in April.  They have been much better at it, though, with weekly update posts discussing each book, whereas I just read the thing and didn't do anything else.  So you should check out their posts, because this is going to be on the minimal side in comparison. I actually wasn't at all sure if I had read all of the Metamorphoses before, because I know I read at least some in college, but how much?  Who knows by now (not me).  I got out my old copy--which is a Penguin prose edition old enough to be priced at seven shillings and sixpence!--and found a note used as a bookmark, scribbled with phone numbers and arcane things. There are fifteen books, each a nice length to read on its own.  They are not terribly separate, really; in each book, Ovid goes thr...

Yippee, it's another Spin!   I get so ridiculously excited about these.  It's getting tricky now, because I'm getting down to about 30 books left on my Classics Club list.  I've only left out a few of the very scariest ones (like William James' Varieties of Religious Experience , what on EARTH was I thinking?), but some of these are still pretty terrifying.  Faulkner is impenetrable, the History of the Franks is over 600 pages of medieval history, I'm not at all sure I'm going to like The Tin Drum , and everything from Latin America is just difficult.  This time I just put everything down in the same order that it shows up on my CC list: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery.  William Faulkner, US, 1929. Light in August .  “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder (1938).    The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams   Carl Sandburg, 1940, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King Jr. On the Origin of Specie...

Thursday, March 3 - Favorite Character There are A LOT of characters to choose from but is there one that stands out as a favorite? In Discworld -- Death and Susan, obviously.  They are wonderful.  As a teenager I had a fondness for Rincewind but not so much now.  Sam Vimes for sure, especially in the more recent books.  Vimes and Susan are the ones I could actually live with.  And who doesn't want to have the Luggage around the house? Susan, perfectly played by Michelle Dockery in Hogfather I think my all-time favorite DWJ heroine is Tanaqui, from the Dalemark books.  I adore Tanaqui and her stubborn refusal to give in.  She is also a bit grumpy and sometimes needs to be jolted into a new way of thinking.  (And here's a question: why did DWJ always describe curly hair as "wriggly"?  I don't think she ever says the word curl. ) I also like Sophie a lot, with her purpose and energy, but I'm kind of dubious about Howl.  He'...

The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England , by Ian Mortimer My mom gave this excellent book to one of my daughters for Christmas (which was pretty prescient of her, since we hadn't planned our UK trip yet), and I promptly stole it to read myself.  It was my lunchtime book for weeks!  This is such a fun and informative book; I loved it. If you were going to time-travel to the Elizabethan era, there is a lot of everyday stuff that you would need to know.  Luckily, Ian Mortimer is here to help, with a handy guide!  Really, of course, it's just a fun way to describe a book about everyday English life in the late 1500s. Mortimer gives excellent explanations of the people, landscape, religion, clothing, and everything else.  How to travel, where to stay, what to eat, it's all here and it's very well described.  He gives rundowns of the political climate and the pros and cons of various new laws. I learned a lot!  I hadn't realized before that ...

 It's March, and that means it's #MarchMagics time, hosted by Kristen at We Be Reading !  I have really been looking forward to this, and I simultaneously managed to forget that March was coming up really fast.  I was going to pre-write a bunch of articles and all, and the next thing I knew, it was actually March and I haven't been near the computer for a week.  (My kids have been using my computer a lot for schoolwork.  I haven't had a chance to write anything!  I'm writing this on my tablet while kids work, and while I love my new keyboard, Blogger doesn't always want to cooperate.) Well, today's theme is: Share your books! Show us your own DWJ/Pratchett books and/or the books that you are planning on reading this month. Here's my DWJ shelf.  I have very nearly everything, though I don't think it's all present on this shelf.  I do not have Everard's Ride in its own volume, but I do own Yes, Dear , and Chanegover !  In fact, her...