Howling Frog Books

 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , by C. S. Lewis A delightful project, to read one Narnia book a month and discuss it.  Chris has posted his first discussion prompt, which I answered there, and now I'm going to set down a few of my more random thoughts about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe . Well, we all know the story, in which four siblings find their way into a magical land ruled by an evil witch, who can only be defeated when the true king, Aslan, arrives and sacrifices himself to redeem the world from her grasp.  It's an exciting children's story that:  contains layers and depths that can be endlessly discussed, that  many people dislike or resent, and which also  features a rather gleeful hodgepodge of elements from every mythos, legend, and sweet shop that Lewis could think of.  I bet Lewis just liked the word wardrobe .   It is a funny and unexpected sort of word, which lends excellent rhythm to the title.  There are all sorts of ways to play with a w

I had some fairly ambitious reading plans for 2021, and while I'm pretty happy with what I did, I still wish I'd done more.  I guess that's always the way.  I felt like I had a hard time focusing on my reading this year.  Still, I had plenty of great titles!  Let's see how my challenges turned out... The World War II Reading Challenge at Becky's Book Reviews :  12/12 Choosing WWII as a focus this year was fascinating (although not cheerful) and cut my WWII reading pile almost in half.  I wanted to read 12 titles, one each month, and though I am on about page 3 of my December pick, I still got 12:  The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard P. Evans   Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning  Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, by Alison Owings Midway: the Battle That Doomed Japan, by Fuchida and Okumiya Last Witnesses:  An Oral History of the Children of WWII, by Svetlana Alexievich For Two Thousand Years, by Mihail Sebastian Book Smugglers, by David Fishman T

 Our Exploits at West Poley, by Thomas Hardy Did you know that Thomas Hardy wrote one single children's story?  It's quite exciting!  It's written like an account of a real event of his childhood.  It was written in 1883, and set in Somerset. Leonard, age 13, arrives at his aunt's farm for a holiday visit (although it's in early autumn, so I don't know why he's not in school).  His cousin Stephen is a couple of years older, and very willing to show off the caves in the Mendip hills nearby; the local boys like to get into a small one named Nick's Pocket, and Steve has found a way to get further in.  They're going to be explorers! The caves are wonderfully explorable; the boys have a grand time and find a cave formation they want a closer look at.  It's on the other side of a little stream, which they could easily cross, but it's more fun to divert the stream with a few stones and shovelfuls of sand, and let the water go down a chasm.  When th

 Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia In a remote Mexican village in the 1920s, Casiopea Tun is the poor cousin, made to skivvy for the rest of the extensive household run by her autocratic, though frail, grandfather.  Cousin Mart í n, the heir apparent, is especially nasty to Casiopea since she isn't servile enough to suit him.  And then she notices an old trunk in her grandfather's room, and opens it.  Inside is a pile of old bones, but once freed, they assemble themselves into... Hun-Kam é, Lord of Xibalba, the Mayan god of death. Hun-Kam é recruits Casiopea to his quest -- to find and reclaim his missing pieces, and to defeat his younger brother, Vucub-Kamé, who imprisoned him and usurped the Xibalban throne.  Well, maybe not so much a recruiting...although Casiopea is up for an adventure, she also has to go along.  A splinter of Hun- Kam é's bone lodged in her hand, and soon it will kill her.  Likewise, while her drop of blood revived Hun- Kam é, it also

 Plum Bun, by Jessie Redmon Hughes (1928) Jessie Redmon Fauset Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882 – 1961) was a prominent writer, editor, educator, and poet in African-American letters.  She edited the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis , from 1919 - 1926, and mentored many eminent writers, including Langston Hughes.  She then taught French and published four novels, Plum Bun being the second, and usually wrote about discrimination, passing, and feminism.  She wanted to portray African-Americans in a realistic and positive manner, celebrating Black culture and family.  While she was celebrated in her day, she was quickly forgotten as literary fashion moved on,  and she remained obscure for several decades until feminists revived her writing in the early 80s.  She's now recognized as an important part of the Harlem Renaissance.  The subtitle of this novel is -- intriguingly -- A Novel Without A Moral .  The title itself is based on a nursery rhyme, and I don't think I've eve

 The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle I've had a vague intention to read The Last Unicorn for many years.  The main thing that stopped me was that any time I see the words 'last' and 'unicorn' together, the theme song from the movie starts playing in my head and doesn't stop for days.  So in order to read the book, I had to mentally prepare myself for hearing that song for at least a week.  It's a very nice song, but it's not that nice! In the end, I even went and dug up other songs from the movie, which I have not seen in many years, but which I must have watched a whole lot as a kid, since it's evidently buried deep within my brain.   I remembered the songs, the voices, and much more.  I should really watch the whole thing, because now I'm curious about how various book events were translated (or not) to film. OK, so: a unicorn has lived in her forest for centuries, until she hears a hunter say that all the unicorns were driven away by the Re

 Chris at Calmgrove is hosting a leisurely tour of Narnia, starting this month.  Chris writes: ...we’ll be reading all seven titles of The Chronicles of Narnia in publication order, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950). You will have a month to read each title at your own speed, in your own time, until the last Friday of the corresponding month when you’ll be invited to comment. Here’s the schedule: December. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. January. Prince Caspian . February. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. March. The Silver Chair. April. The Horse and His Boy. May. The Magician’s Nephew. June. The Last Battle . July . Optional read: From Spare Oom to War Drobe by Katherine Langrish. At the end of the month you’ll be invited to join a conversation here — and also on Twitter — about that month’s instalment. If you find yourself at a loss as to where to begin, I’ll pose three general questions which you can either respond to or ignore, as yo

 Sandman, vols. 4, 5, and 6, by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, et. al  In my continuing project to read the complete Sandman : Season of Mists, 1991: Death points out to Dream that 10,000 years ago, he was a real jerk.  In an earlier issue, this story was told; Dream fell in love with a mortal woman from an early civilization, but in punishment for this illicit affair, her city was destroyed.  She killed herself in atonement, and her refusal to join Morpheus made him so angry that he sentenced her to Hell*.  Now he realizes that that was maybe kind of a mean thing to do -- so he's going to have to go down and get her out.  This is a difficult job, because Lucifer is angry at him and has vowed revenge. Lucifer, however, takes his revenge in a strange way.  When Dream arrives, Hell is empty.  Lucifer has thrown everyone out, and he announces his retirement and gives the key to Hell to Dream.  This throws everything else into confusion, as the previously-damned dead show

 A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist With the Red Army, 1941 - 1945, by Vasily Grossman, edited by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova Wow, this book packs a whole lot into what looks like a medium paperback.  It took me much longer to read than I thought it would! Over a year ago, I read a biography of the writer and journalist Vasily Grossman , and this was next on the list of his works that I want to read.   Grossman was attached to the Red Army as a journalist throughout World War II, and he always wanted to be on the front lines.  He was present for the early days of the invasion, the Battle of Moscow, most of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, and for much of the Soviet advance through Germany and Berlin.   This book collects Grossman's notes taken down in real time; it does not reprint the articles he wrote for the Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) newspaper.  The editors give context to the notes, telling us what's going on and who everybody is.  The notes make up