Howling Frog Books

Rose City Reader hosts the Book Beginnings meme.  Here's my latest book: At Or ș ova, there was the Danube again. It was nearly a mile broad now, but immediately west it swirled and boiled through the narrow mountain defile of the Kazan - the Cauldron - which is only 162 yards across. Since I had turned my back on it at Budapest, this insatiable river had gorged itself with the Sava, the Drava, the Tisza, the Maros and the Morava, and a score of lesser-known tributaries. A little way downstream from Or ș ova, in the middle of the river, the small island of Ada Kaleh divided the current. Plumed with poplars and mulberries, the line of the wooden roofs was suddenly broken by a shallow dome and a minaret. This is from The Broken Road , by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  It's the third in his memoir trilogy about his walking tour across Europe in 1933/34.  At this point, he's entering Bulgaria and will spend the book there, in Romania, and in Greece.  The book is unfin...

Let's peek into my current vintage SF title, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic :   AN EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH DR VALENTINE PILLMAN BY A CORRESPONDENT FROM HARMONT RADIO, AFTER THE FORMER RECEIVED THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS. INTERVIEWER: … I suppose that your first important discovery, Dr Pillman, was the celebrated Pillman radiant? DR. PILLMAN: I wouldn’t say so. The Pillman radiant wasn’t my first discovery, it wasn’t important, and, strictly speaking, it wasn’t a discovery. It’s not entirely mine either. Roadside Picnic is a great SF novel, originally published in the Soviet Union in 1972.  It has cult status and inspired a movie, the series of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games, and the slightly foolhardy Russian pastime of sneaking into abandoned buildings to take pictures. The story is about Red, an average schmo who works as a stalker--he sneaks into the cordoned-off Zone to retrieve alien artifacts.  The Zone is extremely dangerous, but stuffed f...

Gillion at the Rose City Reader blog (home of the European Reading Challenge, which I enjoyed in 2014) has a weekly event on Fridays where you post the first line of your current book and something about it.  I figure I'll try to keep up, but notice--I'm already late. Yesterday I started a book from my TBR pile!  It's Rumer Godden's novel, Cromartie v. the God Shiva Acting Through the Government of India. "Cromartie versus the God Shiva.  No, thank you," said Sir George.  "Walter, I really don't think I can take this case."  A priceless 11th century Shiva statue has gone missing and turned up in the hands of an antique dealer, who insists he got it fair and square.  Young Michael Dean, QC, is taking the case on behalf of the Indian government, and that's as far as I've gotten.  It looks to be a nice little novel though, and I'm looking forward to the rest.