Howling Frog Books

I saw several posts that combined the Top Ten and the November wrapup, so I like that idea, and here is my Top Ten of nonfiction books I'm excited to read as soon as I can!  I don't think I can manage all of them this winter, but I can give it a good try... 10. Individualism and Economic Order, by F. A. Hayek -- I have no less than three Hayek works on my TBR.  They make me nervous. 9. The Story of Western Science , by Susan Wise Bauer -- My guru has written a book I have not yet read!  This must be rectified. 8. Memoirs of the Crusades -- I want to read more medieval literature!  I've had this a long time! 7. Lectures on Russian Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov -- A few years ago, I read Nabokov's lectures on various English classic works, and it was really fun.  I put off reading the Russian stuff until I'd read a reasonable amount of the books he talks about.  I've been looking forward to this for a while. 6. Tales of the Narts, ed. by...

 Something on Sunday is a weekly event hosted by Jenny , in which we talk about what got us through the week. This week is Leaf-Raking Week in my neighborhood, as all the trees dump at once.  I really like raking leaves, and plan to do it some more tomorrow.  We cleared a lot yesterday, but that only lasted a few hours, and the lawn is covered again.  Those mountain ash trees hold an incredible amount.  We are pretty lucky in that we have to pile all the leaves in the street, in a nice neat bank, and every couple of weeks a truck shows up to scoop them up and take them off to be ground up and added to a giant compost heap of doom.  I feel that this is a much better system than bagging, like what my brother has to do. I feel weird talking about Thanksgiving, since it involves a bunch of family members who didn't sign up to be featured in a blog post.  It was a nice day and my daughter and I got to tromp around the riverbank a bit.  The cranber...

I love this cover but it needs a microscope As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture , ed. Julie M. Smith Laurie at Relevant Obscurity hosts this monthly event!  I've been reading this intriguing little book that is unlike religion books I've read before.  The editor, Julie M. Smith, explains that she was reading a book on how to make sense of the cultures described in the Old Testament (which is now on my wishlist) and it included a fictional dialogue between Ruth and Ezra about marriage outside the covenant, something Ruth did and Ezra fought against. They both advocate for their positions with clarity and charity.  There is no "winner" here -- just a wrestle with the complexities... Smith goes on to wonder if the differing points of view and ideas we find in scripture, and sometimes outright contradictions, are "not a bug but a feature?"  Modern Christians often try to reconcile different accounts to find one 'a...

Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton In honor of Brona's Australian November event, I read Cloudstreet .  I'd heard it was great, but I didn't know a thing about it otherwise.  It turned out to be a sort of different take on a family saga novel, and indeed it was pretty great reading, even though it's not quite my usual sort of thing. Two disasters lead to two families heading to Perth in the early 1940s.  The Pickles family -- hard-drinking, shiftless, prickly, and always trusting to luck -- inherit a large ramshackle house, and rent half of it to the Lambs -- industrious, full of rectitude and driven by a drill sergeant of a mother.  The only thing they have in common is poverty, and for twenty years they share the house but not a lot else.  Eventually, though, they pull together and find means of unity and forgiveness -- of a sort, anyway -- in the younger generation. It's a hardscrabble story, with plenty of rough edges.  It also has some supernatural ele...

Comes with secret extra chapters! The Man in the Iron Mask , by Alexandre Dumas I'm always nervous about French literature, but I really liked The Count of Monte Cristo a few years ago, and lots of people love The Man in the Iron Mask , right?  It can't be that difficult.  So this has been on my TBR pile for a while now, and I started it with high expectations for a lot of excitement and intrigue. I was having a hard time, though; 50 pages in, and nothing much had happened except a lot of intriguing over money between incomprehensibly-named people.  I recognized Aramis, one of the three musketeers, and figured out that this story takes place years later, but otherwise I was a bit lost and concluded that I should take a look at a plot summary, maybe a character list, so I could figure out what was going on.  And I was immediately stumped.  Every plot summary I looked at said that the story starts with Aramis in a secret meeting with a prisoner (the titul...

I've missed two weeks, but I'm back for the 4th week of Nonfiction November!  This week is hosted by Doing Dewey , and the question is: Nonfiction Favorites: We’ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I’m excited to talk about what makes a book you’ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone? Let us know what qualities make you add a nonfiction book to your list of favorites. I like a nonfiction book to be pretty serious, but not too serious.  It's helpful to have interesting anecdotes or witty comments!  I've read some books that were just heavy theory all the way through, and they're quite difficult to read without some leavening.  There is a line, though; if an author is spending too much time on frivolous asides, ...

It's Something on Sunday, Jenny's weekly event wherein we share a few things that got us through the week.  And what a week it was, hm?  Mine was made even better by wrestling with medical insurance for a few days, but it seems to have ended up okay.  We hope.  I'm officially ready to move to Finland now.  Anyway, here we go: Every year, our county's literacy service holds a trivia contest for its fundraiser.  Each team has three members, and there are three rounds of progressively more difficult questions.  I've been on a team for, I think, five years now, and Friday was the day.  The competition was tight, and came down to a difference of just one point for the first place winners; then there were two sudden death rounds for second and third.  We took third place and got bronze medals to put next to our two previous golds.  (Actually, it doesn't matter that much who wins...as long as it's not the DA!)  It's neat to see people ge...

Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery, by Jan Messent This is such a great book, people.  If you are at all interested in textile arts, or the British Isles a thousand years ago, you've got to find a copy of this and sink into it. Jan Messent has been doing various forms of textile arts, painting, and design for a long time, and if you look you can find a fairly long list of books to her name, most of which are about design or knitting.  She's also written a lot of historical romances under the name Juliet Landon.  In the 1990s, she produced an entire panel of Bayeux embroidery that was a theoretical fill-in for the missing final panel of the Bayeux tapestry (several people have done this).  And in about 2010, she was amusing herself by making mixed-media embroidered books and items in homage to Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Saxon styles, which became this book. Messent gives some nice history about the clothing and textile styles, and she explains what sh...

Last Sunday, I woke up with a nasty tension headache and didn't write a post, but I had some neat stuff to share.  This week has been very long and busy, so maybe it's just as well; I can squeeze one post out of two weeks! Last weekend was our local quilt show, and my first time exhibiting at said show.  I entered a quilt for judging, and guess what?  It won third place in its category!  (Which would be pieced quilts of medium size.)  I also got to have some fun setting up, taking down, and attending, and admiring  many impressive works of art. Friday I went to a play with a friend.  The play wasn't much but the company was good. I went to the symphony too!  Unbelievably, one of the pieces was the first performance of a symphony by a local musician, and it was commissioned .  So somebody out there still likes classical music.  Well, the whole place was full of people who like classical music, but most of them probably couldn't a...

Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, by Paul Collins Years ago -- probably over a decade -- a good friend of mine told me that I really ought to read this great book about a town of books.  I filed it away in my head, and I did kind of mean to read it, but also...books about the greatness of books aren't always my cup of tea, so I wasn't sure I wanted to read it.  Anyway, eventually a copy came into my hands through no effort of my own, and I figured I would read it.  But here's the funny part: if I'd realized that Sixpence House was written by the same guy who wrote Banvard's Folly , I would have gone right out and gotten it.  I loved Banvard's Folly , and if you haven't read it, you should!  So my skepticism just stopped me from enjoying a pretty good book for over 10 years. This is a sort-of memoir of the months that Collins, his wife Jennifer, and their toddler son spent in Hay on Wye, the little town on the border of England and Wales that s...

My copy's goofy cover: pure 1970 The House on the Strand , by Daphne du Maurier I actually read this for RIP a few weeks back, but then I didn't get around to reviewing it in time.  (I had a very busy, but fun, Halloween.  How about you?)  This book has been on my TBR shelf for a little while and I'm no longer sure where I picked it up.  I knew it would be some sort of suspense/thriller/Gothic thing, but I didn't really know what it was about at all.  It turned out to be....well, kind of science fiction?  Maybe? Dick is alone for a week at an old, small Cornish manor house, but pretty soon his wife and step-sons will arrive.  In the meantime, his friend Magnus wants him to experiment with a drug -- which takes his mind (but not his body) back 600 years into the past.  There, Dick follows Roger, a slightly schemy estate steward, through the complex relations of three local families and an abbey.  As Dick starts to lose his hold on real...

Hooray, it's my favorite thing, a Classics Club Spin!   I have plenty to choose from now, since I'm on my new list and I've barely made a dent in it.  I spent a good part of the year reading books for my Reading All Around the World project, for one thing.  Some of these titles work for both at once!  My problem is that there is just too darn much good stuff to read....anyway, here are my 20 Spin titles.  You probably know the rules, or you can visit the Spin page to learn them.  Join in! Palm-Wine Drinkard, by Tutuola Memoirs of the Crusades Walls of Jericho, by Rudolph Fisher   Henry IV, Part I, by Shakespeare  Selections of Anglo-Saxon literature (aka The Age of Bede) The Faithful River, by Stefan Zeromski Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell  Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson Stories/essays of Lu Xun Lais of Marie de France Miss MacKenzie, by Anthony Trollope   First Love and Other Stories, by Turgenev   Th...

November is here and that means Aussie literature! Brona is doing a weekly challenge this year.   Last week, she started us off easy with an introduction question, which I didn't post at the time because I'd already done the Q&A: Who are you? And where in the world are you? I'm Jean and I'm coming up on 8 years of blogging here at Howling Frog.  I'm a librarian, mom of teens, and enthused quilter/sewist -- and this weekend is the first time I'm entering a quilt show, so wish me luck!  I live in rural-ish northern California, the part everyone forgets about.  There are a lot of almonds and walnuts. What are your reading goals for this year's #AusReadingMonth? I'm hoping to read two novels, Cloudstreet and A Descant for Gossips. The rest of this post is the Aussie Q&A that I already posted! The Week II challenge is:  Post a photo (or ten) to show us where in the world you are reading your Australian books. Post on Insta, Lit...

Witch Week this year is all about the Arthurian literature .  I hope you're following Lory at Emerald City Book Review to read the guest bloggers, enter the giveaway, and all that good stuff.  The readalong is of Kazuo Ishiguro's Buried Giant, which I read a couple of years ago.  So I decided not to read along, but I did really like the book, and if you wish to see my thoughts you can read my review. I've read a bit of Arthurian literature during the life of Howling Frog, so I thought it might be useful to collect some of the links.  If you're interested in reading some of the older material, this might be helpful.  Some random links: Yvain, by Chretien de Troyes Poor Heinrich, by Hermann von Aue The Fall of Arthur, by J. R. R. Tolkien Ritual and Romance, by Jessie Weston (old folkloric speculation, now totally discredited, but fun to read) In 2014, I ran a year-long Arthurian challenge and read some great stuff.  Here is what I said at the ...

Hello, Nonfiction November!  I'm already late, because I was thinking November, and it started at the beginning of the week...anyway, Julie at Julzreads is hosting this week and she says: Your Year in Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? At first I thought I hadn't read that much non-fiction, but looking back, I had some great books!   It's very difficult to pick just one; several of them seem to me to be very important books that everybody should read.  So I'll pick Voices From Chernobyl as the top title, though not because it was fun to read.  I'd also like to give a shout-out to Last Things, because it's an excellent and heart-wrenching grap...