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

Esther | Chapter Adventures said…
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 ;)
July 29, 2016 at 5:07 PM
Jean said…
Hi Esther! Yep, I am; I'm just out of town at the moment. Will get back to you asap.
July 30, 2016 at 11:22 PM
Post a 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

The Blazing-World

By
Image
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Here we have a thing we could probably call a proto-science-fiction novel.  It's got a story and a plot, but it also has massive amounts of talk about natural philosophy.  It was written in 1666 (the year of the Great Fire of London!) to go along with her serious scientific work, the Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.    Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne   The story features a young woman who is taken captive on a ship, and travels to another world via the North Pole: But alas! Those few men which were in it, not knowing whither they went, nor what was to be done in so strange an Adventure, and not being provided for so cold a Voyage, were all frozen to death; the young Lady onely, by the light of her Beauty, the heat of her Youth, and Protection of the Gods, remaining alive: Neither was it a wonder that the men did freeze to death; for they were
Read more