Howling Frog Books

Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from Tibet , ed. by Tenzin Dickie When I saw this cool collection of Tibetan stories, I knew I had to have it and read it for my world project.  I guess Tibet is not currently considered to be a 'country' since its annexation by China, but so what, we'll count it anyway.  When I was in college, "Free Tibet" stickers were everywhere; do people still have those? The blurb gives some good information so here it is: The first English-language anthology of contemporary Tibetan fiction available in the West, Old Demons, New Deities brings together the best Tibetan writers from both Tibet and the diaspora, who write in Tibetan, English and Chinese. The stories are varied: set in Tibet (pre- and post-occupation), or in various diaspora locations, such as India, Nepal, or Bhutan.  They are about all kinds of people and their struggles to survive or to be accepted, and a lot of them explore how Chinese occupation and exploi...

The Seven Madmen , by Roberto Arlt Why did I pick this novel?  Well, it came along and I was looking for an Argentinian title that wasn't Borges.  I love Borges!  But I thought I ought to branch out a bit.  And this has a pretty intriguing title, plus I had heard of Erdosain before.  Upon such frail whims are my reading choices based. Background: this novel was written around 1929, thus before anything I know about Argentinian history.  No Peron yet.  (Probably Hercule Poirot's buddy Hastings is running a cattle farm somewhere!)  The Depression hasn't even begun yet. Erdosain is a hapless guy who is getting fired from his sad little job as a bill collector.  He embezzled 600 pesos* and he's got to pay it back right away.  Then his wife leaves him, and all he's got left is this awful cousin he hates.  Erdosain wanders the streets of Buenos Aires and meets up with a bunch of guys, most of whom are pretty strange, but the strange...

Autumn Equinox, by Jabbour Douaihy In Lebanon, in the mid-80s, an unnamed young man writes in his diary.  He has studied in the US and sometimes writes to the girl he met there, but since he doesn't know her address and she can't write to him anyway, he's sending his letters into a void.  He has no job.  He's trying to improve his life -- he makes his mom and sister sit for three formal meals a day, throws out nearly all his books, and practices sitting so that he'll look confident.  All summer, as violence simmers under the village's ordinary life, he makes strange attempts at normalcy and writes about his life and his relatives, and his diary ends on the autumn equinox. This is kind of a quiet but odd little novel, and although it's set in the middle of the Lebanese civil war, that war only breaks in to the story a few times.  The diarist seems like an ordinary young man at first, but his actions get stranger as the summer goes on.  Various quotation...

Everything Happens As It Does , by Albena Stambolova, trans. by Olga Nikolova Published in 2002, in English in 2013, winner of 2013 Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest Now that Bulgarian Literature Month is almost over at GLLI , I can publish my post here.  Head on over to see what's been going on before it's all done!   Thomas has been doing a great job. Albena Stambolova, originally from Sofia, is a psychoanalyst and writer.  She lived and taught in Paris for some years in the 1990s, but returned to Bulgaria and won recognition with this, her first novel.  Since then, she has published two more novels, as well as essays and short stories. Everything Happens As It Does is something of a mosaic whose pieces, some not visibly related, eventually go to make up a complete and satisfying pattern.  We follow characters who then disappear for a while as others take the stage without warning, and we are left to draw connections between them.  Every...

Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire, by William Rosen (So I went on a trip!  I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time in a car, not driving, so I took five books along, thinking that I would get a ton of reading done.  Ha ha.  I read about 150 pages of this book, and no others, in 5 days.  It was pathetic.  Every time I opened it up, I fell asleep.  (This is not really the book's fault, as I was not getting enough sleep and driving usually makes me sleepy anyway!)  I'll tell you more about the trip at the end, since it did feature some bookish goodness, but for now, it's on to the plague... This is such an intriguing title; I've been looking forward to reading this book for quite some time.  But I was quite disappointed!  Rosen is analyzing why the Roman Empire fragmented, while the somewhat similar Chinese Empire stayed in pretty much one piece.  He posits that among other often-discussed ...

Don't Look Now: Stories by Daphne Du Maurier Look what came across the donation table!  I grabbed it up (it will go back later) and had a lot of fun reading this collection of creepy stories. "Don't Look Now" is the first story and takes place in Venice.  It is weird, the ending is completely not what I expected, and I got a fun kick out of it. OK, probably everybody knew that Du Maurier wrote the original story for "The Birds."  I did not, and I didn't even really look at the title, so I got partway through and had a revelation all of a sudden.  This story is a good deal scarier than the movie, so pick it up sometime. There are ghost stories, alternate universe stories, and creepy murder mysteries.  I particularly liked "The Blue Lenses," which could have been a Twilight Zone episode, and the final story, "Monte Verita," would have made a movie once upon a time. A very worthwhile collection for those who like this sort of...

The Pocket Enquire Within: A Guide to the Niceties and Necessities of Victorian Domestic Life , ed. by George Armstrong Once upon a time, in 1856, a general book of knowledge, mostly domestic, was published under the delightful title Enquire Within Upon Everything .  It continued in print for over a hundred years and over a hundred editions!  My mom gave me this "pocket" version, containing the most interesting and entertaining parts of the original 1856 edition, for Christmas.  It's a fun book to dip into! Chapters deal with such topics as housekeeping, home remedies, family life, and entertaining.  And wow, I learned a lot!  The Enquire Within people were very big on leeches, for example.  My first clue was a piece on "how often to change the water in which leeches are kept," which as you'll note, implies that keeping leeches is not unusual .  The medical section then has lots of information on leeches, including how to use them (be careful wh...

Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff I've been meaning to read this for years, and it turned out better than I anticipated!  I hardly put it down for the day it took me to read it.  I originally heard of the book from my non-fiction loving buddy Maphead , who routinely supplies me with titles to put on that ever-growing TBR list. Charlie LeDuff, journalist, decided to come home to Detroit in hopes of raising his daughter closer to family while simultaneously telling the world about the disintegration of Motor City.  He combines Detroit history with current politics and his own experiences to tell a story of corruption, decline, and loss of hope.  The book was published in 2013, just as Detroit was filing bankruptcy, and it seems that things might possibly be looking up a little bit these days -- let's hope so. LeDuff keeps public servants, especially firefighters, at the center of his narrative.  Arson is both entertainment and income for som...

June is Bulgarian Literature Month!  Thomas of My Two Stotinki has hosted events in June before, and this year he is hosting an entire month of posts at the Global Literature in Libraries Initiativ e, which is an organization encouraging....global literature in libraries!  I've been following them for quite some time, so when Thomas put out a call for people to review Bulgarian books, I was both excited and very intimidated.  I took a deep breath and volunteered to read and review Everything Happens As It Does. Take a look and read the other articles too!  There's a lot of neat stuff happening over there this month. My post went live over a week ago, but I've been overwhelmed with the end of school.  It turns out that getting a freshman and a senior through finals (and graduated!) is way more work than I was expecting, and WAY more work than homeschooling them.  Massive final projects, frazzled nerves (theirs and mine), and endless ceremonies and ga...

It's the last day of Book Blog Expo, hosted by Donna at Girl Who Reads! Day 4 - June 2 - Blogging Advice. Do you have tips to share or need help with some aspect of your blogging? Today is the day to give and ask! This is a time for the blogging community to shine by helping one another out. Well, I have very little advice to give.  The way I do blogging is not really designed to bring in the numbers!  I figure, if I start thinking of it as a job -- thinking in terms of audience and what my focus ought to be -- it won't be fun any more and I won't want to do it.  So I just do what I like. What I would like help with is the design.  I like my fairly minimalist setup, but I would love to have a custom image/template like a lot of people do, and the person that was recommended to me seems to have stopped doing it, to my great sadness.  So if you have any recommendations for a not- too -expensive designer, let me know! I'd also like to know the secre...

I found this Book Blog Expo hosted by Donna, which is happening instead of Armchair BEA.  It looked like fun so I hopped on board. Day 3 - June 1 - Most Anticipated Books & Giveaway Day. Tells us all about the books you are most looking forward to this year (share even if your most anticipated book of the year has already come out). And since we are talking about anticipated books, what more anticipated than winning a great prize? If you are doing a giveaway, please include it in this day's post. Here is where I have to confess that I am really bad at reading brand-new books.  I do look forward to some!  But most of my anticipated reads are books that are already on my shelf; I just need to get to them. Here are three 2018 books I'm looking forward to.  One of these things is not like the other: The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt -- I just love these guys.  I'll listen to Greg talk anytime, and I did mee...