Howling Frog Books

Isis: a play by Nawal El Saadawi Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian writer (and physician too) who has been fairly prolific over her long career.  She has focused a lot on women's issues -- FGM in particular -- and has been imprisoned and exiled for her anti-religious and feminist writing.  Until I started writing this post just now, I was under the impression that I had read one of her novels in the early days of this blog, but it seems our library did not own her works at that time and I didn't read it after all....so I'm a newcomer. Isis is the earliest of El Saadawi's seven plays and was written in 1986 in Egypt.  El Saadawi seems to identify a good deal with the ancient Egyptian goddess; she titled her memoir A Daughter of Isis (as in, she considered her actual mother to be Isis-like), and calls her a "personal muse." In the play, Ra has taken over all of creation and thrown out Geb (god of earth) and Nut (the sky goddess).  Ra insists that he is t...

Danubia, by Simon Winder Last year I read and loved Germania , Winder's book about all the things he likes about Germany and its history.  That book led to this one, in which he tackles the absurdly impossible task of explaining the Habsburgs -- the European dynasty that ruled huge (and varying) swathes of Europe for centuries, from Rudolf I in 1282 to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I.  Luckily for all of us, Winder does not even try to cover everything; this is an "interesting bits" selection.  It's still 500 pages long, and I ran out of steam about halfway through and left it alone for a little while before picking it back up again, but it's a highly entertaining 500 pages and just as good as Germania . (Note: This kind of stuff is right up my alley, and Simon Winder, if you ever read this, I would like to volunteer for a job as, say, secretary.  I would happily wander around Brno looking at old churches and residential neighborho...

Doomsday Book , by Connie Willis Reading the Chronicles of St. Mary's was fun, but it got me longing to read more about time travel in done in a way that I just like better.  I've only read Doomsday Book once before (as opposed to To Say Nothing of the Dog , which I've read many times) because Doomsday Book will break your heart into bits and then jump up and down on them.  But all of a sudden I really wanted to re-read it, and so I pulled it off the shelf. In future Oxford, historians can time-travel to observe real historical events, but nobody has ever gone as far back as the Middle Ages.  Kivrin, however, is determined to go and has been training for two years.  She's got it all planned out and will stay for two weeks, seeing the Christmas of 1320. Nothing goes right.  Kivrin falls ill as soon as she arrives, and as all of future Oxford falls to the same influenza virus, they can't get her back.  She takes shelter at a small manor where th...

The Tick: The Naked City , by Ben Edlund My kid got me a present, and it was a good one!  We are all Tick fans here, but it's a long time since I saw any of the graphic novels.  This is a collection of the first six Tick comics, in which he arrives in the City in order to greet his destiny.  Destiny takes the form of a lot of ninjas!  And there is plenty of other action to keep Tick amused, until he meets Arthur, his sidekick, and his new nemesis....the Red Scare.  Oh, I just love the Tick.  SPOON! They're in disguise.  As a hedge.

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book: a Facsimile , ed. Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett After reading Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts , I wondered what else de Hamel might have produced, and I found this neat book!  With the magic of InterLibrary Loan, it was soon in my hands. This is a facsimile of an unusual manuscript.  It's not very long, and it dates from the late 1400s.  It's a sort of design or idea book for the fancy initials in illuminated manuscripts!  It contains fourteen different kinds of decorative letters: a sort of blackletter type, several with leaves, and some very whimsical alphabets made of human and animal figures.  Most aren't colored in or anything; they're diagrams. It's a lot of fun to look at and full of great design ideas.  I'm very tempted to use some of them in embroidery, and maybe someday I will (I've got plenty to do right now).  If you're interested in lettering, this is a great resource!

These are my favorites of the shorts, and I saved them for last!  I hadn't realized how very early they had been written; both date from the mid-1960s, which also accounts for their similar semi-Elizabethan air.  Neither were actually published until the mid-1990s. "The True State of Affairs" is written by a modern English woman who has somehow ended up in another world, one in which she is promptly fooled into being a fall guy.  She is now a political prisoner in a late-medieval sort of world where a couple of factions are fighting for dominance, but since the only information she gets is from her jailors, it's really hard to figure anything out.  (The country is called Dalemark, but none of the other names match, so I'm going to presume that it's an early version without too much connection to the Dalemark Quartet.) From her balcony, she can just see a bit of another prisoner's balcony, and without much to do, they each think a lot about the other.  ...

Craeft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True meaning of Traditional Crafts, by Alexander Langlands I got wind of this book when it was published in the UK because I subscribed to the Heritage Craft Association's Facebook page .  (Why did I do that?  Who knows, it's interesting!)  I've been waiting for it ever since, and I finally got it. Alexander Langlands is a British archaeologist who I gather is fairly well known if you pay attention to these things.  He started off as a jobbing archaeologist (because in the UK, you have to pay archaeologists to check out the ground if you want to build anything; who knows, maybe Richard III is down there) and then did a bunch of things for the BBC that I would probably enjoy watching, like Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm , only I never seem to have time for much TV.  So he's the kind of guy who really likes to do things like thatch roofs or learn how to mow hay with a scythe.  And that is what this book is ab...

The Wonderful Garden, by E. Nesbit A few weeks ago, the mood hit to read an E. Nesbit book I haven't read for quite a while: The Wonderful Garden.  We have most of the Nesbit books here but apparently not this one, so I downloaded it (with illustrations!) for a buck on Kindle , figuring that was a pretty good deal to satisfy my whim. Caroline, Charles, and Charlotte's parents are stationed out in India, and they've had to come back to England for school, to their disappointment, and they stay with relatives for holidays.  They're quite excited when their wealthy and eccentric great-uncle invites them to stay in a house crammed with old treasures, and on their way they meet a boy who is clearly not at all thrilled to be spending the summer in the care of a schoolmaster.  So when Rupert runs away from "the Murdstone man," they hide him. They've also gotten into magic, in a way.  They've got a new book, The Language of Flowers , and they spend a lot...

Just a little post to cover some extra bases.  I've been reading Unexpected Magic , the largest collection of DWJ short stories and the only place to find the excellent novella "Everard's Ride" (besides the very rare volume that has it and "The True State of Affairs" -- only Lory has that!).  Most of the stories in this volume are collected in books I've already covered, so this is just the few that aren't, plus another sort of rare story, Wild Robert . When my husband and I were first married in 1996, we took a trip to the UK and of course, I figured I'd look for DWJ books.  A friend of ours, also a diehard fan, asked particularly for us to look for Wild Robert as his copy had been lost in a house fire.  Luckily we were able to buy two, and I'm not sure I've ever seen it again. "The Green Stone" is a very short story with a fun punch at the end.  It's one where DWJ is playing with the fantasy trope of a 'tour,'...

Eight Whopping Lies, and Other Stories of Bruised Grace , by Brian Doyle Brian Doyle was an Oregon and a Catholic writer; he wrote a lot about Oregon (though he was a transplant from New York), and he wrote a lot about being Catholic, and about lots of other things too.  He does not appear to be terribly famous, but those who know his works love them, and you should try them out because they are great stuff. This book is a collection of very (very!) short essays, which as far as I can guess he must have put together shortly before his untimely death at only 60.   They were mostly published in the American Scholar , but sometimes in other magazines, like First Things .  A lot of them are about family: about being one of many brothers, or a particular moment with a kid.  Some are about being Catholic.  And a good many are about moments of ordinary life that all of a sudden aren't ordinary at all. These are lovely and wonderful little pieces of writing, and I...

Witi Ihimaera: His Best Stories , by Witi Ihimaera I was not familiar with Ihimaera's name until I came across this collection of short stories.  From what I can tell, he's pretty famous as a Maori writer (Wikipedia says he was the first published Maori novelist).  He's mostly written short stories, which are mostly about living as Maori in a Pakeha-dominated world.  This collection was selected by Ihimaera himself and contains 24 stories, so it's really packed.  The stories are arranged in chronological or thematic sections, usually in threes, and he introduces each section with a short explanation, which is great.  Since I didn't really know anything about his writing, it was nice to get some background right along with the stories. The stories about Maori life tend to fall into three generations; some of them are set a ways back, and others are more modern.  I particularly liked "The Seahorse and the Reef" and "The Halcyon Summer" from the...

New and pretty cover! Early Christian Writings (a Penguin collection) , trans. by Maxwell Staniforth I've had this collection of very early but non-Biblical Christian writings on my TBR pile forever, and I finally read it!  Of course, what we have is a small surviving fraction of the writings and epistles that once existed, so while there is a "First Epistle to the Corinthians," there aren't any more.  My own copy is about as old as I am, in the earlier Penguin format, but there's no good photo of it online, so you get this attractive new cover as an illustration. Clement: First Epistle to the Corinthians : This letter is from the church in Rome to the congregation in Corinth, and it's very early indeed, about 96. It is unsigned but is traditionally assigned to Clement, who was bishop of Rome at the time.  (He was fourth in line, it goes Peter, Linus, Cletus, Clement.)  Apparently, nobody thought of Clement as a pope; nonetheless, he writes a letter to...

Believing is Seeing: Seven Stories , by Diana Wynne Jones Since the first story in this collection is "The Sage of Theare," I'm really only going to talk about six.  By the way, this collection is nearly identical to the earlier Minor Arcana, except Minor Arcana does not have "Enna Hittims" and does contain the very rare "The True State of Affairs," which I'll cover later.  Even the introduction is re-used for this volume! "The Master" is one freaky terrifying story.  DWJ said it was a nightmare that she had to write out, and yeah, if I kept having that dream I'd have to write it out too!  The narrator is a vet, called out to an urgent case.  There's a forest, a murdered woman, and wolves right outside a very strange house.  "Enna Hittims" starts off as fun but becomes frightening in its own way.  Anne has been ill and, to pass the time, tells stories to herself about tiny adventurers in the hills made by her blan...

The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien Flann O'Brien was a pen name for Brian O Nuallain (O'Nolan) -- he seems to have had a few.  He was born in 1911 in an Irish-speaking home, where his father was reluctant to send the children to an English-speaking school; they could all speak English just fine, and he preferred that they be taught in Irish, but such a school was not to be found.  O'Brien became a comic, satirical writer -- and he drank a lot -- and The Third Policeman was his last novel, written in 1939 but not published until 1967, after his death. The blurb on the back cover says O'Brien was "one of Ireland's great comic geniuses" along with Joyce and Beckett. The narrator, who never gets a name, is a young man, a fanatic scholar of the great philosopher de Selby, and he's going back to the family farm after university.  He's an orphan and the farm is run by one John Divney, who suggests they remedy their lack of money by killing a...

  Mixed Magics, or, short stories of Chrestomanci Yay, Chrestomanci stories!  DWJ wrote more Chrestomanci stories than anything else, but there are not enough of them.  The four short stories: "Warlock at the Wheel" stars the Willing Warlock from Charmed Life , who escapes from the law to our world.  He steals a car, and from then on it's pretty much O. Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief," as a demanding little girl and her giant guard dog torment the poor Warlock into a breakdown.  It's funny, especially for younger kids ($5 says it also started as a bedtime story!), but not stellar. "Stealer of Souls" is a fairly recent story, published in 2000 and only in this collection.  Tonino Montana visits Chrestomanci Castle, and Cat is charged with looking after him (this takes place some time after Charmed Life and just after Magicians of Caprona ).  Cat is an utter brat about this and dislikes Tonino, but then they are both kidnapped by a terri...

And the number is....3! I will therefore be reading And So Flows History , by Hahn Moo-Sook.  It's a three-generational Korean family saga that starts in the late 19th century and continues until, I think, the end of World War II.  It was published in 1947 and does not include the ideological battles that turned into the Korean War. Hahn Moo-Sook was quite a young woman when she wrote the book; she must have been about 30, and a young mother, when it was published.  Her daughter, Young-Key Kim-Renaud, is the translator.  (To clarify, on the book, Hahn's name is written in the Asian way, and Kim-Renaud's in the Western way.) Should be interesting!  I'm supposed to finish and post by April 30th.  Surely I can manage that.  And it will count for South Korea in my Read All Around the World Project too!

  Stopping for a Spell and some other stories for younger ages I thought I'd write about most of the younger stories all at once.  I started with them and figured on working my way up in complexity. Stopping for a Spell has three stories, and I think they must have started off as bedtime stories for little boys who wanted a lot of laughs.  DWJ, after all, had three boys, and she said they always wanted funny stories.  "Chair Person" brings a family's hideous old armchair to life, "The Four Grannies" features Erg, who accidentally turns his four bothersome grannies into one great big Supergranny, and "Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?" has a horrible houseguest who is finally evicted by the fed-up furniture, since nothing less will shift him. None of these are big favorites of mine, but I can imagine little boys in pajamas absolutely screaming with laughter over them.  They all feature outside intruders into family life, and the horrified parents...

Just One Damned Thing After Another and A Symphony of Echoes , by Jodi Taylor These two books about time-traveling historians came across the donation table, and I nearly didn't take them, but then I did.  They turn out to be the first two books in what is now quite a long series, The Chronicles of St. Mary's.  They're more adult fiction than YA; that is, everybody in it is over 25 and it just feels more like adult fiction, plus people die at a fairly high rate.  The back blurb calls the series "madcap," so watch out, I guess. Max is a historian with no family ties, which makes her a perfect recruit for St. Mary's, an outfit that secretly does historical research in person.  Max's training and first big assignment comprise the first book; she becomes close with all the other trainees and, once qualified, she and her partner head off to the Cretaceous to study actual dinosaurs!  But!  Tyrannosaurus Rexes are not the only danger.  St. Mary's has a...

The Green Unknown: Travels in the Khasi Hills , by Patrick Rogers I was offered a review copy of a book about walking through part of India!  How could I pass that up? Meghalaya is an Indian state in the far northeast, on the northeaster border of Bangladesh and not too far from Myanmar.  It's a steeply mountainous area covered in jungle, with the highest rainfall in the world, leading to waterfalls and floods.  The people live in villages scattered throughout the mountains, often having different dialects just a few miles apart, even though they travel around a lot.  Tourism is mostly confined to one or two points of view, but Patrick Rogers became fascinated with the area and wanted to explore more. In particular, Rogers was interested in the root bridges that the locals have built over generations.  The native ficus trees have long, strong roots that can, over years, be trained into bridges spanning the chasms all over the landscape.  To the inhabi...

The Long Utopia and The Long Cosmos , by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter I finished the Long Earth sequence just in time for March Magics! These are the last two in the series of five, and Baxter notes at the beginning of the last volume that, sadly, he had to finish the last one on his own.  It's a nice tribute. The Long Utopia , again, jumps a decade or so forward and has several storylines that follow our protagonists.  Joshua, is learning about the father he never knew and some weird family history, and he's also called to find out about a new phenomenon -- the Next, superintelligent (and not terribly empathetic) humans who are no longer quite human, and who get together to build their own society and discuss: what to do with the regular humans?  Maybe cage them for their own good in a utopia?  Lobsang has retired to a remote world and is trying to live as a human with a family, but he winds up running straight into a problem that requ...

Woohoo, it's time for another Spin!  I've done all of them, so you know I can't miss out.  I love the Spin, and if you're not familiar with it, the rules can be found here, at the Classics Club blog . Join us! We'll know the Spin Number on Friday, the 9th.  Nearly all of these titles are books that are in my house right now, whether they're on my TBR pile or on the library shelf.  I have far too many books waiting around to be read to have any business bringing more in (which I do all the time).  But these are a good mix of titles from all over the world, some scary and some I'm looking forward too, with a couple of chunksters thrown in. The Glatstein Chronicles Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell   And So Flows History, by Hahn Moo-Souk Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich  Walls of Jericho, by Rudolph Fisher  To Live, by Yu Hua  The Plague, by Albert Camus Miss MacKenzie, by Anthony Trollope The Dawning, by Milka...