Howling Frog Books

 I'm way behind on documenting my reading in September, but here are two books that go together.  In our family, we love the 90s TV show Babylon 5 .  We especially love Lyta Alexander!  So a while back my husband got me the actress' memoir, and then I thought I ought to follow it up with another one.... Pleasure Thresholds: Patricia Tallman's Babylon 5 Memoir, 2020 edition, by Patricia Tallman : While there is plenty of Babylon 5 in here, I would not at all call it a B5 memoir, because it covers her whole life.  From a difficult childhood to work as a stuntwoman (especially on Star Trek ), a wobbly beginning on Babylon 5 , and life after that, and happily with lots of photos, Tallman talks about her experiences, difficulties, friends, and life with her son.  It's highly readable and a lot of fun, and (this is my preference) lacks snipy Hollywood gossip. Instead there are lovely stories about various co-stars and friends, and an abundance of snapshots of people in and

 These are some bonus books I read in August.  They don't fulfill a single thing on my lists; they are not from other countries, or on my TBR piles, or anything; I just felt like reading them, which is the best reason of all.   The Way Home, by Peter S. Beagle: A short story and a novella set in the world of The Last Unicorn .  I only just got around to reading that, so I thought these would be good to read too.  They are both about Sooz, a little village girl.  In "Two Hearts," a griffin comes to terrorize the village, and eats not only sheep, but children.  Any knights who challenge it are killed, and Sooz sets off to see the king to convince him to come himself.  On the way, she meets Schmendrick and Molly Grue, and sees the king...who is Lir, now grown old and feeble.  Or is he?  Perhaps he's the only one who can challenge the griffin....and Molly tells Sooz to whistle a certain tune on her 17th birthday. In "The Way Home," Sooz keeps the 17th birthday

 Did I do it?  Did I hit my goal of 20 books by September 1st?  I did, and also I've been very busy and unable to finish this post.  So here we go... Summerbook #17: The Way to the Sea , by Caroline Crampton:   Crampton does a podcast I listen to ( Shedunnit ), so when she wrote this book I wanted to find a copy, but it was only published in the UK.  It's all about the Thames estuary - the bit between London and the sea -- which is where Crampton grew up, on a boat half the time.  She actually starts at the source of the Thames, but covers from there to Tower Bridge in the first chapter.  After that she gets down to business and covers history, the state of the river, ecology, and throws in bits of her own memory.  People have tended to ignore the estuary or use it as a place to dump things they don't want to look at, from actual garbage to sewage treatment and power stations.  These days the shipping is there too; an absolutely massive port that takes in shipping containe

I've got some good reading going on!  Here are the two latest, including my WIT title. Summerbook #15: The Story of Hong Gildong :  This is a Korean classic of literature, and the author is unknown.  For a long time, Koreans were taught that this was the first story written in Hangul, the Korean script, and that it dated from the 17th century, but our translator argues that modern Korean scholarship has found that it dates from the late 19th century.  Anyway, Hong Gildong occupies approximately the same spot in Korean literature that Robin Hood does in English, that of a delightfully tricky noble robber who steals from rich and advocates for the poor, but Gildong has another dimension -- he rebels and argues against Korean laws that, back then, discriminated against illegitimate children.  Hong Gildong's father had a beautiful prophetic vision of having a brilliant son, but this son is born to a lowly concubine, and so despite his intelligence, prowess, and mastery of magic, he

 First Love and Other Stories, by Ivan Turgenev Wow, Turgenev sure could write.  Here we have short stories written over 20 years of his writing career.  Most of them illuminate a short episode and its meaning for a whole life, or a zeitgeist. "The Diary of a Superfluous Man" is the final diary of a dying man -- though he is only about 30, he has just days to live, and decides to set down the one significant thing that has ever happened to him, and in which he was utterly futile, as he believes his whole life to have been.  He got to know a local family, and fell in love with the daughter (age 17), but Liza never noticed him at all.  She fell instead for a visiting nobleman, and at the end of a romantic summer, he of course left without proposing.  Our narrator wanted to warn her, to help her, to marry her afterwards, but she never wanted any of his warnings or help and married another man. "Mumu" concerns a well-to-do widow living in St. Petersburg -- really, the h

 I think I'm a bit behind on my reading; if we count my Spin title, I've now read 14 books of summer and have six to go, which isn't terrible.  But I'm going to need to buckle down a bit in August.  And I had this month off!  In August I have to go back to work!  I've admittedly been rather lazy, pottering about, working on crafty projects, and watching too many YouTube videos (but stitching while I did so!).  I've also done some day trips and hikes, and enjoyed air conditioning a whole lot.  And I've been getting a bit involved with the local public library!   How has your summer been going? Summerbook #9: Notes From the Burning Age , by Claire North :  Centuries after the apocalypse, humans live in a carefully balanced world built from the ruins of the old one.  At some point during a destructive world war, chimaerical monsters -- kakuy -- arose from the depths and wreaked destruction upon humankind in revenge for their hapless destruction of the earth.  N

Here we are with some bonus reading.... The Scouring of the White Horse , by Thomas Hughes : History? Novel?  What is this thing?  This 1859 publication is a novelization of Hughes' actual attendance at the 1857 scouring of the Uffington White Horse, which also serves as a sort of summary of what was then known about the chalk figure, and the history of its maintenance.  Reading it was a slightly odd experience because I thought it was supposed to be a simple account of the customs around the figure, commissioned by the heads of the nearby towns, but it reads like a novel, complete with the narrator deciding to take his annual two-week holiday at a friend's farm and falling in love with the friend's sister. Apparently Thomas Hughes, better known as the author of Tom Brown's School Days , came from the area around Uffington.  Maybe this explains it.  In the novel, while he's staying with his friend, he attends this scouring event and gets talking with an antiquarian

 Happy July!  I had an unexpectedly busy week so I'm a couple of days late but who cares.  One thing I did was spend an afternoon at the county board of supervisors' budget meeting, lobbying for them not to cut the library budget (which they already did last year).  It would have brought the largest branches in the system down to three days a week.  To our great surprise, it actually worked and the board decided not to enact the cuts -- but only for one year.   We also held an unexpected early birthday party, due to various factors such as the presence of the person involved and another friend being present from out of town.  So I spent a lot of time thinking about food -- a thing I don't do a lot any more now that I'm an empty nester.  And now, on to the books!  Actually, I have been too lazy.  There are too many books here for just one post.  I'm going to put my Books of Summer here, and do another post on the books I've read that weren't on that official

 13!  That gives me First Love and Other Stories, by Turgenev.  Not bad!  

 Guess what time it is?  That's right, it's another Spin!  Huzzah!  Here's the post, and you know the rules.  The lucky number will be posted on Sunday, and we'll have until August 6th to read the book.  Only one of these is on my 20 Books of Summer list, and if I get a different one that is long I might have to do some trading.  There are some awfully long Victorian novels on here.  Wish me luck!   The Well at the End of the World, by William Morris The Story of Hong Gildong (a Korean classic) The Black Arrow, by R. L. Stevenson Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich Conjure Tales, by Charles Chesnutt The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott Second-Class Citizen, by Buchi Emecheta Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell The Tale of Sinhue (ancient Egyptian poetry)   I Served the King of England, by Bohumil Hrabal It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis First Love and Other Stories, by Turgenev Sybil, by Disraeli The Law and the La

 How's your summer going?  We've had just the most wonderful weather, a good ten degrees cooler than usual because a string of thunderstorms keeps coming through.  I've been on some hikes, I've picked cherries and boysenberries, I finished an embroidery project!, and I've read some great books.  Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War And Ukraine's Fight for Survival, by Luke Harding : The first serious books about Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine started coming out last fall (another I've seen highly recommended is Overreach ) and I finally got my hands on this one.  Harding has been reporting on Ukraine and Russia for years -- he's now banned from Russia, of course -- and includes material from the past ten years here so the reader can know some background.  Each chapter covers a particular place and time: first Kyiv in February 2022 as the invasion started, and then places such as Bucha, Chernobyl (Russian invaders were kept so ign

 My semester is over and I'm on summer break!  And the weather has been absolutely fantastic, not too hot, so I've been trying to spend a lot of time outside and hiking.  My goal is to do plenty of that this summer.  I've also read quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and here is some of it, but it doesn't include the Louise Penny binge I went on of three novels in a row; they were good too! #antisemitism: Coming of Age During the Resurgence of Hate, by Samantha A. Vinokor-Meinrath : A survey and analysis of GenZ Jewish kids and how they feel about their Judaism and the rising incidence of antisemitism.  Most of these kids have GenX parents (like me) who grew up with very little antisemitism in the US, and I was shocked at how it's just common now for GenZ kids to have experienced, at the very least, comments from friends and schoolmates.                  A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order, by Judith Flanders: It was the cover tha