Howling Frog Books

Every Secret Thing, by Patricia Hearst and Alvin Moscow Well this one was a little out of character for me, but after reading the description on another blog I was intrigued.  I knew some, but not a lot, about the SLA and the Patty Hearst kidnapping.  This is her version of the story, published in 1982.  As I understand it, there are some different versions, and some documentaries and whatnot.  I read some of a piece from the late 70s that definitely cast her as a willing member of the SLA.  But back to this story... Hearst starts with a short sketch of her early life as one of four Hearst daughters, wealthy and privileged but not famous.  At 18 she moved out to live with her boyfriend, a teacher at her former school (you can tell it was the early 70s because nobody seems to have had him arrested; she states definitively that she pursued him , but that's no excuse).  They moved to Berkeley, where he was doing grad work and she enrolled as an under...

Sigrid Undset Four Stories by Sigrid Undset Long, long ago I read Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter books and liked them fine, and I wanted to try something else she'd written, so I picked up this volume of four short stories.   The cover was not very promising as it said "Four touching, evocative, compassionate stories of 'little people' in modern Norway."  By modern they mean in the 20th century; the stories have no specific chronological settings, but they seem to me to be set before 1930, with at least one before World War I.   The book was published in 1959. "Selma Brøter" is about a single lady office worker -- a spinster -- who observes and becomes involved in her younger co-workers' romance. "Simonsen" is about an aging workman whose son finds him embarrassing. "Thjodolf" concerns a sailor's wife whose only baby died at birth.  She fosters a little boy and becomes deeply attached to him, but then ...

The Boy Who Couldn't Die Strange Attractors The Green Futures of Tycho We love William Sleator in our house.  My husband and I both grew up reading Sleator, and now we try to collect the books.  (Cheap on Abebooks!)  William Sleator specialized in YA/children's SF and horror, and boy he was good.   His most famous titles are Interstellar Pig (funny) and House of Stairs (Kafkaesque). The Boy Who Couldn't Die -- Ken's best friend is killed in an accident, and Ken resolves that he will not die.  His search for a solution leads him to a woman who says she'll make him invulnerable for the low, low price of fifty bucks.  And it works; Ken can't be beaten up, or burned, so he decides to go for the thrills and spend his spring break diving with sharks in the Caribbean.  But at night, he's having awful, horrifying dreams of doing things he doesn't want to do.  What will be the price of immortality?  Strange Att...

The Spin number was announced this morning, and it is....number 5!* My #5 book is The Bride Price , by Buchi Emecheta.  Yay!!  I love Emecheta, and I am excited to read this novel.  Here is the synopsis:  The Bride Price is the poignant love story of Aku-nna, a young Igbo woman, and her teacher, Chike, the son of a prosperous former slave. As their tribe begins to welcome western education and culture, these two are drawn together despite the traditions that forbid them to marry. Aku-nna flees an unwanted and forced marriage to join Chike, only to have her uncle refuse the required bride price from her lover's family. Frustrated and abandoned by their people, Aku-naa and Chike escape to a modern world unlike any they've ever experienced. Despite their joy, Aku-nna is plagued by the fear the she will die in childbirth--the fate, according to tribal lore, awaiting every young mother whose bride price is left unpaid. _____________________________...

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt, by Arthur C. Brooks It is now too long since I read this (very fascinating) treatise for me to be able to write a good post about it.  So I hope that even a fairly mediocre post will convince you that this is a good title to go out and read as soon as possible.  Also, it's not a very long book, only a couple of hundred pages, so there's no reason to put it off. Brooks asks: are you sick of fighting yet?  Of screaming at people who don't listen and only scream right back?  Maybe it's time we tried something a little different.  He figures the only way to get anything done -- to improve civic life, bring people together, look for some unity even when we disagree -- is to "practice warm-heartedness."  (He asked the Dalai Lama.)  Listen to others with an open heart, engage with love, will the good of others, and disagree with respect. ...there is a practical, albeit ...

The Chessmen of Doom The Secret of the Underground Room The Lamp From the Warlock's Tomb I have spoken many times of my adoration of the king of children's Gothic/horror, John Bellairs.  Despite the hot weather making it hard to get into RIP quite yet, I was really in the mood to enjoy some nice Bellairs reading, and I grabbed these three books while I still could, before I put so much stuff in front of that particular bookshelf that I could no longer reach anything on it.  (I know you will be happy to hear that the carpet is now finished, and it looks great, and we now face untold amounts of work hauling everything back into place.) The Chessmen of Doom is a particular favorite of mine because the chessmen in question are the Lewis chessmen.*  Professor Childermass' eccentric brother, Peregrine,** has died and asked his brother to spend the summer cleaning up his country estate in Maine.  Johnny and Fergie are keen to go along and have s...

The Green Face, by Gustav Meyrink Getting back into the swing of things -- I hope -- I'll start with a book I actually finished a while ago.  (As I type, the carpet guy is stretching the carpet, which seems to mean getting the edges in place.  Everything in the house is now so chaotic that there is very little for me to actually do except sit at the computer!  I already did the dishes.) I've been meaning to read this novel for so long, but I only had it on Kindle, and I'm not very good at reading books on my phone.  This book turned out to be quite hard to get into; it starts off with a man going into a shop with a strange sign that is nearly unreadable on a phone.  But, as I mentioned a month or so ago, I found a paper copy at the giant research library I visited in July, and I read the first few chapters there, which helped me get into it.  Then I read a lot on the plane home, which got me about halfway through.  Progress was quite slow after th...

Hooray, it's time for another Classics Club Spin!  Head over there to check out the rules, but they are very simple.  Choosing some titles, though, was a bit tricky for me.  A lot of my books are currently inaccessible, so I've had to be careful not to pick something that is not where I can get at it.  That said, here's my list: Sky Loom/Native American myth It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis Thus Were Their Faces, by Silvina Ocampo  The Obedience of a Christian Man, by William Tyndale The Bride-Price, by Buchi Emecheta Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens  Amerika, by Kafka Hunger, by Knut Hamsun The Leopard, by di Lampedusa  The Bride of Lammermoor, by Sir Walter Scott Subtly Worded, by Teffi The Red Cavalry Cycle, by Isaac Babel  Conjure Tales, by Charles Chesnutt Tales of the Narts (Ossetian myths)  Amrita, Banana Yoshimoto Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck The Gray Earth, by Galsan Tshinag Season of ...

Howdy folks!  It's been a busy couple of weeks and I have this ridiculous stack of books next to me on my desk, waiting for me to post about them.  I will try to this week, but there is still some busyness to go, so we'll see.  Every day just seems to be packed with stuff I have to do!  This is not a real book post, this is a 'what I've been up to' post. I've mentioned before that I'm a member of the local quilt guild, and last weekend we put up a mini quilt show at Bidwell Mansion.  The Mansion was the home of our town's founder, John Bidwell.  It was built in 1868, and this year is his 200th birthday, so there have been some celebrations, and since my mom is involved with the people who care for the Mansion, I knew something about it and I don't quite remember what happened, but it was partly my idea to get the quilt guild to do something at the Mansion this year, and it was decided to do a mini show of antique and reproduction quilts.  I wasn...

There's been no time to post, because I'm helping to organize a mini quilt show of antique, vintage, and reproduction quilts at our town's most historic location.  I'll tell you all about it afterwards, but here's a photo of a lovely hexagon quilt made sometime before 1900.  I'll be back when I can think of something besides keeping this event on the rails!

The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths (3 vols.), by Brian Froud, et al. A couple of years ago, we bought these graphic novels for our oldest.  With the release of Netflix' and Jim Henson Studios' new Dark Crystal series imminent, I decided I'd better get with the program and read them.  I'm glad I did that before we started watching the series (we've finished episode 2; we are no good at binge-watching anything and like to digest in between episodes). We got these in separate volumes; they were out of print at the time, but now everything is being re-published and you can get them in a collected volume as well.  So that's what I've linked to. A mysterious storyteller narrates the beginning of Thra and its peoples.  We see the origin of Aughra,  the arrival of the urSkeks from another planet, and their eventual division.  Gelfling folktales are sprinkled throughout, such as 'How the Gelfling Maiden Got Her Wings' or tales of an adventurous sailor lo...

Witch Week is coming up!  As we know, the days between October 31 and November 5 are Witch Week, when magic is abroad in the world.  To celebrate, Chris at Calmgrove and Lizzie Ross   will host the sixth year of Witch Week , and the theme this year is.....VILLAINS.  They'll be featuring posts about:  Shakespeare!  DWJ!  Joan Aiken!  Narnia!  and the readalong will be Cart & Cwidder , by Diana Wynne Jones.  Oooo, I'm getting excited just thinking about it.  Hooray for Witch Week!

RIP completely snuck up on me, as I suppose is appropriate.  But if 20 Books of Summer is still going on, and it's 95 degrees out, how can it be RIP already?  Well, luckily for us, it just can.  September 1st happens no matter what the weather.  And so here we are, for the 14th year of Readers Imbibing Peril.   The rules are easy and general: The purpose of the R.I.P. Challenge is to enjoy books that could be classified as: Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Dark Fantasy. Gothic. Horror. Supernatural. The emphasis is never on the word challenge , instead it is about coming together as a community and embracing the autumnal mood, whether the weather is cooperative where you live or not. The goals are simple.  1. Have fun reading. 2. Share that fun with others. As we do each and every year, there are multiple levels of participation (Perils)... Ooo, new color scheme!  Nice!  Head on over there to check out the Perils and...