About Howling Frog Books

By
Hello and welcome to Howling Frog Books!  I read a lot of books, and here is where I tell you about them.  You'll find that I will read most things, but I particularly like classic and world literature, history, a certain amount of SF/fantasy, and weird old books in general.

I love comments, so please do me the honor of arguing with me or just saying hello.  I don't accept many requests for reviews, but I do accept some; feel free to ask.
 


The motto of Howling Frog Books -- "To be literate is to possess the cow of plenty" -- is taken from the motto of the Madras Library Association (MALA).  S. R. Ranganathan helped to found MALA and was its first president.  Ranganathan was not only the father of librarianship in India, but a great world influence; he developed the "Five Laws of Library Science" and invented faceted cataloging.  I think it's pretty much the best motto ever.  Pictured with the motto is Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and wisdom, music, and the arts. This image was on the cover of the original edition of The Five Laws of Library Science.

The name of my blog is taken from one of my all-time favorite books, Daniel Pinkwater's The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror.  The three friends -- Walter Galt, Winston Bongo, and Rat -- go to a scruffy old mall to look for a guru, and find a bookstore:

“Welcome to Howling Frog — Books of the Weird,” the fat bald guy said. “I am Howling Frog, the owner, general manager, clerk, stock boy, and janitor — and this is my good friend and spiritual guide, the Honorable Lama Lumpo Smythe-Finkel.”

The guy's name was Howling Frog! Never in all my life had I heard such a neat name....

“Books of the Weird is the bookstore in which you can find those books you never dreamed of finding, books you never knew existed. I have books about unheard-of places, seldom visited and practically unknown. I have books dealing with miraculous events and strange occurrences. I have books on obscure topics, such as knot-worship in fifteenth-century Switzerland, and how to tell a person’s character by the shapes of his ears..." 

I recommend that you read many Pinkwater books at the first opportunity.





Comments

  1. Esther | Chapter AdventuresJuly 29, 2016 at 5:07 PM

    Hi there! I'm Esther from the blog Chapter Adventures. We were paired together for the 2016 Comment Challenge (for August). You are participating, right?
    I'm making the sign up post for today (the deadline is the 31st) and I wanted to check with you first just in case. Let me know ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanJuly 30, 2016 at 11:22 PM

    Hi Esther! Yep, I am; I'm just out of town at the moment. Will get back to you asap.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

Dewey Readathon post

By
Image
Good morning!  I am not actually awake yet, because it's 5am and I need my sleep, and I will be mostly unable to join in the readathon until this afternoon.  But here is the post where I will make updates. I'm supposed to answer these questions: 1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?  Sunny California!  Emphasis on the "sunny"--after a nice cool spring it's in the 90s now.  I live in the rural northern part above Sacramento that everyone forgets about--we hold 2% of the total population of California. 2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?  It's a smorgasbord of delight!  I don't even know. 3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?  ...you think I'm well-prepared, don't you?  I have a bag of sunflower seeds/Craisins/almond M&Ms, and I'm thinking quite seriously about treating myself to Indian food tonight.  That's all I've got. 4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
Read more

The Four Ages of Poetry

By
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

Howl's Moving Castle

By
Image
1986 edition It's Diana Wynne Jones Day!  Kristen at We Be Reading, our host, decreed that today we would discuss Howl's Moving Castle.   And she has a great think-out on the different kinds of magic found in the story.  Throwing several different kinds of magic into a world or a story seems to have been a bit of a DWJ trademark. I can remember quite well where Howl's Moving Castle lived on the shelf in the library where I grew up.  It was not the first DWJ book I read (that was Witch's Business ) but it was one of the early ones.  I must have found it right after it was published in 1986.  As a result, I practically have it memorized -- I could not tell you how many times I've read it.   Even so, I enjoy it anew every time, and I still have new realizations about what's going on.  (Though possibly I have the same ones over and over, and just forget!  My kids tell me so sometimes.) When I first met my husband, he had kind of forgotten reading for fun, a
Read more