Howling Frog Books

I've been having a lovely time reading all the Chrestomanci books; it's been a really nice respite for me.  The Pinhoe Egg is the last, and one of the best!  Kristen says she thinks it's one of DWJ's best books overall, and yeah, I think I'd put it in the top ten.  It's just so much fun -- she was really at the top of her game and you can see her doing all the great DWJ things, but a bit more so.  Marianne's village is full of interesting characters (almost none of whom are very good people), and I love watching Marianne and Cat solving problems together and becoming a team. Question of the Day:  There are three different kinds of magic in this story: enchanter magic, dwimmer (natural magic), and the hybrid tech-magic that Joe uses. Which kind of magic would you most like to have? First, I'll note that the three nine-lived enchanters -- Gabriel de Witt, Christopher Chant, and Cat Chant -- have magic that differs completely from the others.  It...

The Fellowship of the Ring , by J. R. R. Tolkien Brona is hosting an LOTR readalong , and in March we read The Fellowship of the Ring .  It's been a long, long time since I read it, and I enjoyed it so much!  I just didn't put it down for a few days.  Since there's no point in talking about the plot, I'll just put down a few random thoughts. It really does take Frodo forever to get going.  Reluctant to leave the Shire and venture into danger, he waits until danger is on his doorstep.  I can't help thinking about Tolkien's experiences in World War I, which was so horrifying that in the 1930s, both Britain and France waited until it was just about too late.  The peoples of those countries didn't want to have to get into another awful war; they wanted to live decent, quiet lives in safety.  No wonder they hoped it would go away.  But just as for Frodo and the Shire, evil was coming for them regardless, and looking away only made it worse in t...

The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey Into the Disturbing World of James Bond , by Simon Winder Remember a month or so ago, I read and enjoyed Germania ?  Well, I happened upon another, earlier Winder title at the public library, and I think it's pretty obvious that if you find a whimsical book about the cultural implications of James Bond, you have to read it.  At least, I do. Here's the funny part, though: I've never been a Bond fan, and have not seen most of the older movies.  I don't think I've ever watched a whole Connery Bond movie, and I'm pretty sure the only one I've seen all the way through is the terrible Live and Let Die with Roger Moore (it's the one with Jane Seymour in).  I have seen some of the newer Daniel Craig films -- for some reason I've seen Casino Royale three times, why? -- but I haven't searched them out or anything.  I think Daniel Craig looks like a chimpanzee.  My Bond knowledge is therefore extremely p...

The Skies Belong To Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking , by Brendan I. Koerner This has been on my wish-list for quite some time, and I finally got tired and ILLed it.  Oh, it was so fascinating!  I learned a ton.  Koerner gives a general run-down of airplane hijacking history in America and focuses in on one particular and intriguing case, along with some large dollops of relevant current events. People, America in the 60s and 70s was kinda unhinged, at least where hijacking was concerned.  Airplanes were interesting, a symbol of power and the future, and there was no security whatsoever.  Passengers didn't have to go through any kind of procedure at all -- they didn't even have to show ID.  Once people figured out how easy it was to gain national attention and power, however fleeting, by hijacking a plane, a lot of them decided it would be a good way to solve whatever problems they had. A fun fact I learned: one of the very earliest ...

Today we're talking about Conrad's Fate , a story I just love.  We have Conrad, a great narrator who has to figure out that he's been lied to his whole life, and get to see more of Christopher and Millie before they grow up.  I would have been perfectly happy to read endless adventures of Christopher, Millie, and assorted friends, but DWJ was not that kind of writer. One character I both love and cringe at is Conrad's mother, who ignores everyone and everything in order to write books of academic feminism.  She is awful, sometimes in an over-the-top, funny way, and more so in a truly tragic way.  I suspect that DWJ was poking a little fun at herself here, magnifying the way all writerly mothers have to neglect other things in order to write at all.  Conrad's mother is not the usual hungry mother of DWJ writing -- that element shows up in the Countess -- but the way she utterly neglects her children and even succumbs to spells pushing her to forget them makes h...

Today Kristen is posting about Reaper Man .  Again, it had been so long since I'd read this that I'd forgotten most of it -- though not the Death of Rats.  He is a favorite character in our home!  Today's question is a toughie.  Kristen asks: Some of the extra life force in Ankh-Morpork causes head-wizard Archchancellor Ridcully's swears to be personified. They remain in a little swarm above his head and perched on his hat.  If your favorite swear word/phrase turned into a creature, what would it look like?   My problem here is that my usual swear words run along the lines of 'dangit,' 'drat,' or in moments of real heat, 'hell.'   My mom suggests that a dangit would be small and fluffy.  I envision it sort of like those dust sprites in Totoro, only in color.  They could be little floaty green and blue puffballs.  Probably Archchancellor Ridcully's swears would then eat them as snacks.   But now seems like ...

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, by Bill Gammage This book wins the prize for Most Mind-Blowing Book of 2017 So Far.  Way back during Brona's AusNovember event, she posted about this book, and obviously I was going to have to read it.  I don't really know diddly-squat about Australian history, except for a vague impression of hunter-gatherer Aborigines decimated by British colonialism/prison settling.  I certainly did not know that the Australian landscape of 1788, when the First Fleet arrived from Britain, was a very different place than it is now. The native Australians were running the entire continent as a vast...park.  Like a "gentleman's estate in England" kind of park, with lots of grassland and trees scattered about, with places for game to feed and multiply.  They had every inch of the land covered and took care of all of it, encouraging different habitats and plant varieties in carefully planned patterns.  Thousa...

Throgmorten! Today, we're reading one of my all-time favorites, and certainly my favorite Chrestomanci title, The Lives of Christopher Chant .  This is just such a great story!  Kristen comments on Christopher's sullenness through a good half of the book.  He's got good reason to feel put-upon; although he doesn't understand or articulate it until the Goddess does, Christopher is a kid who has never had anybody love him.  He gets pulled and pushed around with no warning, so it's no wonder he's rude and grumpy when he is taken away from school (which he loves) to go to the rather grim Castle.  But at the same time , he has to figure out that he bears some responsibility for his unhappiness too; his behavior has alienated the Castle people, who are sympathetic, even if clumsy.  When he makes an effort, things change for the better, and stubbornly clinging to his misery has done him no good at all. On to the question of the day -- Kristen asks, Whe...

12!  Which means I'll be reading Sir Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian , which is very long and very wordy.  I hope I can bash my way through it!  It's not exactly scary, but it's a bit intimidating. It turns out that "Heart of Midlothian" is also the name of a Scottish soccer team (OK, football club) and a piece of Edinburgh paving that apparently you spit on.  I'll have to investigate that a little further, but right now I have to go to a work meeting.... A small mystery to unravel

Kristen at We Be Reading has put up her question for Mort , th e 4th Discworld novel and the first one about Death.  I've been recommending this one for years but haven't read it in ....I don't even know how long.  So while I remember the characters -- Mort, Ysabell, Albert, and Death himself -- I didn't remember the plot at all.  And it's kind of a weird plot!  Death is always hoping to figure out people a little better, though, and I did enjoy Mort's realization of his boss' complete loneliness.  Question of the Day:  Death has a soft spot for Discworld's kittens and cats. If you were not fully of this (our) world, what would be the thing that would attract/intrigue/charm you the most?   Kittens is a pretty good answer!  Otherwise I might go for human babies.  Or art; the amazing stuff that people do just to make something they enjoy making or think looks pretty.  Oh!  Penguins!  I vote penguins.

Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History, by Simon Winder I was attracted to this book as soon as I saw it in the store, and it's been on my TBR shelf for a little while.  Once I began reading, I was charmed by Winder's fun writing style and by his prompt mention of Regensburg, the only German city I have really properly visited.  Right there in the introduction he talked about the centuries-old bratwurst restaurant right by the bridge!  I've BEEN to that restaurant, and so from that moment on I was completely enamored.  Winder did not disappoint. Simon Winder has an unusual love for many things German, and here he indulges it freely, wandering around history, poking here and there for treasure.  He stops at 1933 for obvious reasons, but especially because a large part of his goal in writing is to bring up a lot of the wonderful stuff about Germany that got buried by the horrific 20th century.  The result is a really neat book th...

Aha!  It's my favorite classics event, the Spin, and I have a brand-new shiny list to choose from!  I was right to get the second list started, which makes me feel comfortably smug.  The rules for the Spin are familiar to most at this point and can be checked at the link -- join me, won't you? Since I have many books piled around this house waiting to be read, I'm going to populate the list mainly with those, plus some at random.  The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas  The Claverings, by Anthony Trollope  First Love and Other Stories, by Turgenev Sport of the Gods, by Paul Dunbar  Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell  Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz  The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, by Henry Handel Richardson  Steppenwolf, by Hesse  The Dybbuk and other stories, by Ansky  Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell  Marie Grubbe, by Jens Peter Jacobsen  The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott ...

Messy: the Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives , by Tim Harford This was a pretty enjoyable, semi-light non-fiction read.  I am a messy person, and always trying to improve, so I wondered what Harford would have to say  However, this book is not an excuse for we messy housekeepers to slack off and stop trying -- he's talking about entirely different sorts of mess.  Which I approved of, because I don't need any convenient excuses to hide behind, and I already knew that being a not-especially-good housekeeper doesn't really do me any favors. Nope, this book is all about messy circumstances -- the interesting, unexpected, and often brilliant things that can happen when a monkey wrench is thrown into the works of our nice neat plans.  Having our plans messed up, or being shoved out of our comfortable bubble zone, is something we are usually not too happy with.  It makes us anxious and angry.  But it also usually makes us sharper, as we are forced to t...

Brona is hosting a long, leisurely readalong of The Lord of the Rings , and this month we're reading The Fellowship of the Ring .  I haven't read it in years -- before the movie came out! -- and I've really been enjoying it.  Brona asks that we do a signup post and answer these questions: Tell us your history with Tolkien and the LOTR. I first tried to read LOTR in 8th grade, but got bogged down in The Two Towers .  After that, I didn't get around to reading it properly until I was in college; I had a lingering feeling that LOTR was boring, when in fact I just hadn't quite been there yet.  Thus while I've read the whole thing more than once, this is probably only going to be about my third time through it. Why are you reading or rereading it now? Doing it as a readalong is a great idea; I plan to enjoy this a lot!  And it's high time I re-read it. Have you learnt Elvish? Or read any other Tolkien books? I have never learned any Elvi...

It's our first DWJ book, Charmed Life !  I had so much fun visiting Cat and the rest of the crew.  Kristen at We Be Reading says: Many will see this story as a cautionary tale -- either about choosing carefully whom you trust or about telling the truth and not holding things back. If Cat had done any of these things, he wouldn't have already (unknowingly) lost some of his nine lives. I also think it's a tale about finding your place and your talents and embracing them. If only we all had the chance of our place being Chrestomanci Castle! I do think it's about finding your place.  I'd add another thing -- it's about how growing up helps you to understand other people better and see them more clearly.  Cat clings to the people he knows because they're familiar, but as he grows, he learns to see them for who they really are -- and eventually he even manages to do something about what he sees, which is very difficult for him.  He is far too used to bein...

The Great Wheel, by Joyce Ballou Gregorian In January, I read the first two books in the Tredana trilogy , in which Sybil travels (at 11 and 19) to another world and takes part in world-changing politics.  I was really interested to read this last one, because while the first book, The Broken Citadel , was your basic fantasy novel, the next, Castledown , had some unusual elements and departed from the template in interesting ways.  The third features Sibyl in her 30s and I figured it might continue being unusual -- having an adult woman as the heroine of a fantasy novel is fairly unusual all on its own.  And yep, it delivered. Sybil has no memory of Tredana and is just trying to build a life for herself while divorcing her husband when she is suddenly transported elsewhere.  She finds herself a prophesied sword-bearer in the entourage of Tibir the Lame, nomadic conquering king -- think the Golden Horde -- and he's in the midst of taking over all the lands and ci...