Howling Frog Books

I haven't done the Classics Club's monthly memes in a long time; usually I can't think of much to say that wouldn't sound utterly trite and vapid, so I leave it to people like Lory and Cleo, who can think of insightful things to say.  This one, though, I can get behind!  The question is: What Kinds of Classic Books Do You Prefer? Last month’s discussion about what a classic book was very interesting and provoked a lot of response, I thought, so I figured I would suggest another topic, this one much more subjective. When you read classic literature, what’s your preference, or will you read anything? Do you prefer the “literary” authors, like Dickens, Hugo, Austen, Eliot, or Thackeray, or do you like swashbuckling adventures, historical fiction , science fiction, mysteries, children’s literature? Or do you prefer nonfiction? Are you interested in reading books from many different parts of the world, or are you more interested in books from...

The Bride of Lammermoor, by Sir Walter Scott The Classics Club issued a dare to pick a spooky classic from our lists to read.  My CC list has already had most of the spooky classics taken, but I did have one left: The Bride of Lammermoor, by Sir Walter Scott.  I knew it featured a bride who goes mad and stabs somebody, and that an opera, Lucia di Lammermoor , was based on the novel.  Also, the novel was published in 1819.  But it's historical fiction, set at the end of the 17th century, over 100 years before Scott wrote it. Edgar, Master of Ravenswood, has been dispossessed of his ancestral property.  His father was a Jacobite and was stripped of his title and everything else, too.  Edgar has a single tower left to him, Wolfs Crag, and no money whatsoever.  He has to find a job overseas, because he's certainly not welcome in Scotland, but first he would like to take his revenge upon the man who persecuted his father and then got all the property:...

I joined the Classics Club in March 2012 and set a goal of 150 books by March 2017.  I'm just about done now, and the of the four titles I have left, I really don't want to read two of them.  Pretty soon there's going to be another Spin (right?  I hope!  I love Spins!) and I want to be ready.  So as of today, I'm going to declare my old list finished and publish a new one!  I've rolled the last two titles over. This new list is ....a bit unhinged, but you probably should have expected that.  Mostly I've just been writing down titles as I run into them, so I haven't done any research for this one or planned it out much.  It's still woefully short on some things, but let's not call it finished. It's also far too long to plausibly finish in five years.  So while I'm going to give it a start date of March 2017, the due date of March 2022 is wildly theoretical.  I can't think that far ahead anyway. So here we go... .meet the Classics Cl...

It's time for another Classics Spin, yippee!  If you're not familiar with it, head on over to their page for an explanation.   I'm really running into trouble these days, because if you don't count the two giant, slow books I already have going, I only have sixteen more titles on my CC list.  I'm supposed to read them all by next March, and I'm not at all sure that I'm going to manage it, but I'm going to give it a good try. As I've come to the end of the list, I've also had to trade out a few titles that weren't really working out, especially in the Latin American section, which I knew nothing about in the first place and don't know much more about now.  I think I have a slightly better handle on those now, though (actually I have a bunch of modern titles on my TBR, but what constitutes a classic is still tricky for me).  So here we go--the sixteen CC titles I haven't read yet, with four random selection repeated to make 20: ...

8. Which means I'll be reading....one poem.  "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufock," by T. S. Eliot.  Which is kind of funny, since most of the items on my list were long and heavy!  Oops, Eliot spotted a misprint. Also, happy 4th birthday to the Classics Club!  Which gives me exactly one year to finish my list off, so I'd better get moving.

Yippee, it's another Spin!   I get so ridiculously excited about these.  It's getting tricky now, because I'm getting down to about 30 books left on my Classics Club list.  I've only left out a few of the very scariest ones (like William James' Varieties of Religious Experience , what on EARTH was I thinking?), but some of these are still pretty terrifying.  Faulkner is impenetrable, the History of the Franks is over 600 pages of medieval history, I'm not at all sure I'm going to like The Tin Drum , and everything from Latin America is just difficult.  This time I just put everything down in the same order that it shows up on my CC list: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery.  William Faulkner, US, 1929. Light in August .  “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder (1938).    The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams   Carl Sandburg, 1940, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King Jr. On the Origin of Specie...

The Adventurous Simplicissimus: Being the description of the life of a strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim , by H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen Full disclosure: I had already started this book before I put it on my Spin list, but I felt it was pretty fair because it's not an easy read at all, and I could use the help!   This is a very early German novel, from 1668.  Like Don Quixote , it's a picaresque novel, consisting of one adventure after another and not too linear in plot.  It is set during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and the beginning, at least, is a fairly savage satire on war and soldiers, but then it moves into the picaresque adventures. The narrator is born a German peasant, but his home is plundered and ruined by soldiers looking for food, women, and loot.  Believing his whole family dead, he wanders in the forest and ends up living with a hermit, who teaches him religion and names him Simplicius Simplicissimus, because...

...or now, really.  The Classics Club is running a long-term event/celebration on great literature by women.  And there's a questionnaire and all!  So I don't know that I'll point it out every single time I read a classic work by a female-type person, but at the very least I'll answer these questions and talk about it every so often.  My first post for this event was Wives and Daughters the other day!  It took me a while to get all this stuff written out. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you are most looking forward to in this event.  I'm Jean, I'm a librarian and sewist and homeschooling mom, and I will most enjoy reading others' posts about women in literature. Have you read many classics by women? Why or why not?  Yes.  The fact is that I gravitate towards women writers anyway; this is not exactly an event that will push me out of my comfort zone.  Maybe I will search out lesser-known works or something. Pick a classic female writ...

A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul This was my Classics Club Spin title!  V. S. Naipaul is a British writer, born in Trinidad, who started off writing Trinidad-based novels and moved to international waters.  He's pretty international himself, being of Nepalese descent by way of India and Trinidad.  He has won a Booker Prize, a Nobel, and a knighthood. A Bend in the River , published in 1979, describes ordinary life in modern, post-colonial Africa through the eyes of one man.  He does little himself; he is an observer of the events around him.  The location is deliberately general; it's not too far from Uganda and South Africa, and inland, so I guessed at western Tanzania, but the point is that it's Post-Colonial Anywhere, Africa.  The colonial government is gone, there has been violence, and now a new president promises a new life, but he progresses from popular leader to tyrant.  Naipaul shows us what that looks like for the ordinary people o...

5 , so I will be reading V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River.   Well, this should be exciting!  I've never read Naipaul before.

It's Spin time again!  I'm hoping this one will help to pull me out of my slump, which I am only slowly getting out of (but hey, I just finished Kate Chopin's The Awakening , so there's that). The rules are simple and can be found here .  Just make a list of 20 books from your classics TBR list, wait for the random number to pop up on Monday, and then you're committed to read whatever you get. All the excitement of roulette, but for free! Better for your waistline, too. Since it's getting towards fall, I'm going to load my list up with anything remotely scary that I can find, either because of the story or because it's long, or difficult, or unknown.  Hurry up, fall!  I'm tired of being too hot, and this smoke is the worst. Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum Edgar Allen Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie   VS Naipul, Trinidad, 1979. A Bend in the River Carl Sandbur...

My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok Here we have my Classics Spin #9 title.  I am so glad I put Chaim Potok on my Classics Club list; I read The Chosen some time ago (and I'm glad I got that one first) and was looking forward to Asher Lev.  There will be more Potok in my future, but I have to go slowly, what with all the heartbreak. Asher's story starts with his birth and family background; he's born into a sect of Hasidic Judaism (in the book called Ladover, but resembling Lubavitch Hasidism).  His father works for their beloved Rabbi, traveling to help European Jews, especially those in Russia.  Asher is only little when his mother's beloved younger brother dies and she is thrown into a deep depression and breakdown, which marks him deeply.  He loves to draw--in fact he has to draw--but his father strongly disapproves of such time-wasting nonsense.  Fearful for his mother and pressured by his father, Asher stops drawing but has...some issues....

Is 2 ! Therefore, I shall be reading Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev .  I'm very excited!  I have no real idea what the novel is about, besides the obvious, but I enjoyed The Chosen very much and have been wanting to read more Potok.  I suppose it's a little ironic that I loaded my slate up with long, difficult books and got the one title that will probably be a relatively fast read.  Hope the rest of you Spinners got a good one too! It was a good thing I checked for the Spin result fairly early this morning.  Just afterwards, the power went out...for hours.  An insulator at a large power station blew and the whole county went dark.  All is now well, but I'm glad I remembered to check before that happened! Meanwhile, in other news, I've chosen to read Dr. Wortle's School for Anthony Trollope's 200th anniversary.  I also have the first Palliser novel, in case I suddenly get loads of time.  Dr. Wortle's School is in fact ...

Hooray, it's time for another Classics Spin!   Head on over and take a look at the rules.  The goal is to read the chosen title by May 15.  And...t his time I decided to stuff my list with the giant scary chunksters.  Not all of them are giant and scary, but really quite a lot of them are. This does mean that there's a good chance I won't be able to finish my title by the deadline, but what is life without a little danger? Henry James, 1902, The Wings of the Dove.   Chaim Potok, 1972, My Name is Asher Lev. Eugene D. Genovese , Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made.    Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. On the Origin of Species , Darwin (1859) Elizabeth Gaskell , Ruth.   Gregory of Tours , History of the Franks Thomas Mann, Germany, 1924 . The Magic Mountain . Gunter Grass , The Tin Drum Grimmelhausen , Simplicissimus Feodor Dostoevsky, Russia , Brothers Karamazov Junichio Tanizaki, Japan, 194...

I haven't gotten around to answering the monthly Classics Club meme question lately, so I thought I'd try to jump back in.  December's question: Let’s talk about children’s classics! Did you read any classic works as a child? What were your favorites? If not, have you or will you try any classic children’s literature in the future? (We’re aware children often read at an adult level. Please feel free to share adult OR children’s classics that you treasured in childhood OR children’s works that you’ve recently fallen for.) Did I read any classic works as a child?  Well, yes.  My mother is a children's librarian and storyteller.  Our house was stuffed and overflowing with children's literature--a large percentage of them were library discards, so they were often pretty beat-up even before we got to them.  I was fairly resistant to reading anything that said CLASSIC on it, but I was also unaware that most of the books in the house probably counted in th...

You have to be a little mad to participate in this survey. The Classics Club has posted a survey of 50 questions.  It's huge!  I've enjoyed reading everyone's answers, but I quite understand if you get bored and move on.  Also, I can't get the formatting to behave very well, so it's often all a giant block of text--sorry about that. Fun fact: images and numbered lists fight with each other.  I was going to throw a bunch of nice pictures in, but that turned out to be a bad idea. 50 Club Questions: Share a link to your club list.   Here you go . When did you join The Classics Club? How many titles have you read for the club? (We are SO CHECKING UP ON YOU! Nah. We’re just asking.) :)  I was in on it from the beginning, which I think was March 2012, so I ought to be at least halfway through by now, right?  I'm at 82 out of 150. What are you currently reading?  The long-awaited Tristram Shandy !  And poetry by a Senegale...

The number, as they say, is unlucky 13, but it works for me.  I'll be reading Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible .  I've been meaning to get to it for some time but I keep putting it off, so this will be good for me.

Time for another Spin at the Classics Club!  Oh I just love these.  The rules: Go to your blog. Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List. Try to challenge yourself: list five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.) Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog by next Monday. Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1-20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted, and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce. The challenge is to read that book by January 5, even if it’s an icky one you dread reading! (No fair not listing any scary ones!) Here's my list, arranged suitably randomly: Chaim Potok, 1972, My Name is Asher Lev.   Pensees , Pascal Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy. Divine Meditations , John Donne Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum   Mohandas Gandhi, ...

Today we find out our lucky Spin number !  And that number is 17, which means I'll be reading Trollope's The Small House at Allington.   Fun!

 It's time for another Classics Club Spin!   I love these.  Haven't missed one yet.  Here are the rules: Go to your blog. Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List. Try to challenge yourself: list five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.) Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog by next Monday. Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1-20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted, and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce. The challenge is to read that book by October 6, even if it’s an icky one you dread reading! (No fair not listing any scary ones!) Ha ha! :D All for fun, and of course, the “rules” are, as always, very relaxed. Really, you can make up your own rules. We don’t actually care. :P   So, here's my list.  As usual, I...