Howling Frog Books

 Letters From My Mill, by Alphonse Daudet I came across this some months ago while weeding the French literature at work. We had a lot of ancient copies of modernist plays that needed replacing.   I took it home to get around to, but Fanda got there a lot faster than I did.  I'm completely unfamiliar with Daudet; as we know, French literature is my weakest point.  This was his first published work, in 1866, and it became a popular success, and it remained a favorite of his. The conceit is that Daudet has rented a disused windmill, where he often goes for holidays or perhaps to live for periods of time.  The first few pieces are written as letters to friends in Paris, telling charming stories of the Avignon countryside -- some are cast as local incident, and some as legend.  After a while, we get reminiscences of former days in Paris or Algeria, or stories told by sailors. On the whole it's charming, though the Algerian stories I could do without. ...

Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo It's the big ambitious 2024 book, Les Misérables !  The book I was most afraid of reading!  And I read it all!  This was enabled by a) my sister and b) a Substack that posted one chapter a day.  It so happens that Les Misérables has 365 chapters, so if you read one chapter a day, you'll get it done in a year. I was always about as ignorant of Les Misérables as it is possible to be.  I saw a local production of the musical once because some friends were in it.  So pretty much everyone else in the world knows more than I do, and I won't presume to tell you the plot, but just a couple of things I learned. I'd always assumed that this story is set during the French Revolution, but it isn't.  Jean Valjean is released from prison in 1815, and the story ends in about 1833.  The revolt that is the big climax of the story is one of the students of Paris against the government -- an anti-Orléanist demonstration.  It ...

 I'm going to give in and admit that I have more books to post about than time to post in.  Besides, it's a beautiful spring outside!  So here we go: I continued my March Magics reading with Pyramids by Terry Pratchett , which I haven't read in many years.  It's an early one, about #7, and comes after Wyrd Sisters .  Pteppic, only son of the king of the narrow desert/river land Djelibeybi*, spends his youth in Ankh-Morpork, training as an assassin, but right after he survives his final exam, his father dies and he becomes king himself.  His ideas about bringing Djelibeybi into modern times are not welcomed; here, everything is done exactly as it has always been done, and head priest Dios is present to make sure of that. This is such a fun story, absolutely packed with mayhem, humor, and satirical insight.  I really enjoyed revisiting it. *A pun Americans may not get, since we don't have the British candy jelly babies -- which are basically gummy bears...

The Lais of Marie de France I didn't know anything about Marie de France, and I wanted to find out, so here we go.  Marie is the earliest French woman poet we know of, and she was writing in the late 1100s.  It seems that she was born in France and then moved to England, and we do not know her real name.  She just said (in Old French) "My name is Marie, and I am from France," and that's what we've got.  Scholars have looked at several Maries of the day, but there is no certain identification.   She was almost certainly known at the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her poems were popular in  aristocratic social circles. Marie wrote "lays," that is, narrative poems of a few hundred lines each, and they were based on Breton tales.  We have twelve of these stories.  The majority of them are about knights who fall in love with ladies, or vice-versa, and how they evade one or more spouses in order to carry on affairs.  One lay ...

The Plague, by Albert Camus I've been meaning to read this book for something like 20+ years, and I finally got around to it, and it's about...the plague.  A real honest-to-goodness episode of bubonic plague.  Which is great!  But I had somehow developed the impression that it was a metaphorical, not-actual plague, so I was surprised when it really was plague. In Oran, a largeish North African port city, in the 1940s, rats start staggering out into the street and dying -- by the thousands.  Nobody quite knows what this could mean, but pretty soon there are a few sick people...and then a lot of sick people.  The story is told by four or five men, but primarily from the perspective of Dr. Rieux.  He sends his wife off to a TB sanatorium just before the outbreak, and he is the first to realize that the mystery illness is plague, and urges quarantine measures and closing the city to reluctant city councilors.  Throughout the epidemic, he works himsel...

Memoirs of the Crusades, by Geoffroy de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville I've had this kind of ancient Everyman paperback book on my shelves forever, and it's high time I got around to reading it.  The trouble is, while I love medieval literature, I find war stories -- that is, accounts of battles -- to be fairly boring, so it was hard to pick up.  But really, these memoirs were pretty fun to read and contained some entertaining moments amid the incredible misery of Crusader life.  Neither Villehardouin nor de Joinville are all that interested in recounting miseries; they skim over a lot of that.  Being in charge probably helped that part too. Both of these men were French (Franks, in their terms), and highly placed in their homelands and in the crusading hierarchies.  They served in different crusades and went to completely different locations, and neither of their crusades accomplished the stated goal of conquering Jerusalem (again). Villehardouin wa...

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo , by Tom Reiss This book is fascinating!  I've never been all that interested in French history, but I'd heard great things about this book, and it was sitting there on my TBR shelf when I started reading The Man in the Iron Mask .  I thought they'd be good to read together, and indeed it was; The Black Count more than lived up to expectations.  It's a Pulitzer Prize winner too, so you don't have to take my word for it. Alex Dumas died when his little boy was only four, and that boy spent the rest of his life idolizing his father.  You could hardly find a more heroic father even without the rose-colored glasses, and Alexandre Dumas wrote his father's experiences into many of his stories, eventually turning Alex into Edmond Dantes to imaginatively take revenge on the enemies who brought him low and then made sure that France forgot him. Reiss starts with the sugar cane plant...

Comes with secret extra chapters! The Man in the Iron Mask , by Alexandre Dumas I'm always nervous about French literature, but I really liked The Count of Monte Cristo a few years ago, and lots of people love The Man in the Iron Mask , right?  It can't be that difficult.  So this has been on my TBR pile for a while now, and I started it with high expectations for a lot of excitement and intrigue. I was having a hard time, though; 50 pages in, and nothing much had happened except a lot of intriguing over money between incomprehensibly-named people.  I recognized Aramis, one of the three musketeers, and figured out that this story takes place years later, but otherwise I was a bit lost and concluded that I should take a look at a plot summary, maybe a character list, so I could figure out what was going on.  And I was immediately stumped.  Every plot summary I looked at said that the story starts with Aramis in a secret meeting with a prisoner (the titul...

Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval , by Robert de Boron It's Witch Week!  The focus this year is on Arthurian literature, a favorite of mine, and so I read Merlin and the Grail , which I've been saving up for a treat.  This one was new to me, and I found out that it's an important piece in the Arthurian jigsaw puzzle, so read on. We don't know much about Robert de Boron, but he was writing right after Chretien de Troyes, around the 1180s, and he was the first writer to write the Arthurian cycle -- the whole story from beginning to end.  He managed to smush the important elements into just three tales (two, really), and he added a whole lot as well with Joseph of Arimathea .  He also converted the Grail into an overtly Christian relic. Chretien had a Grail that was a kind of platter, which served a host, and there was a spear dripping blood; these were obviously Christian allusions.  Chretien's audience would have immediately thoug...

The Treasure of the City of Ladies , by Christine de Pisan I love Christine de Pisan so much, I cannot even tell you.  I discovered her Book of the City of Ladies several years ago, and it's a must-read if you like medieval literature.  Widowed at 25 with three children, a mother, and a niece to support, she became a professional writer to pay the bills, but she did it in about 1390.  She started with lyrics -- your standard love ballads and so on -- and then moved into longer poetic and historical works.  The popularity of the Romance of the Rose inspired her to argue with the misogynistic portrayal of women in Jean de Meun's part of the poem and she took a large part in "the debate of the Romance of the Rose," a literary and scholarly correspondence with various other writers.  In 1404 she wrote the Book of the City of Ladies as her public answer to the whole question of women.  In the next year, she wrote this 'sequel,'  of which more anon....

Eneas: a Twelfth-Century Romance , translated by John Yunck Storytime: way back in college when I was taking literature classes, one of my favorite classes was on medieval literature, and it was taught by one of my favorite professors, who had a newly-minted Oxford PhD and probably not much familiarity (yet) with Berkeley students.  She threw a mass of really weird stuff at us, which in retrospect was probably not the usual kind of fare for an average introduction to medieval literature -- though of course I had no idea at the time.  We started with the Aeneid , because it was so admired and emulated, and then at some point we read Eneas , a medieval re-telling of the Aeneid that is also really the first of the French romances.  The author took the old-fashioned chansons de geste about heroes (like The Song of Roland ) and combined them with the new fashion for romantic love and psychological evaluation.  So this story features Sir Eneas, the prince and knight, a...

  The History of the Franks , by Gregory of Tours I was pretty scared of this book, which is a solid 600 pages of early medieval history.  I should not have been nervous at all, because this history is crammed full of gripping stuff!  Feuds, intrigues, miracles, and weird stories spill out all over the place.  I had about as much fun with this as it is possible to have with 600 pages of early medieval history. Gregory was the bishop of Tours in the late 6th century, during the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings.  He served through four reigns.  His history is in ten books, and starts with the creation of the world, moving to Frankish history, and then to the history he personally witnessed.  Of course he wrote in Latin. Book I is a summary of Biblical history, pretty much, except that Gregory continues through early Christian history up to the death of St. Martin of Tours in 397.  I will admit to skimming this one, since I am already pr...

The Case of Comrade Tulayev, by Victor Serge Here we have a Russian novel, except that it's written in French.  Victor Serge was born Russian, was a young anarchist, joined the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919 and rose fairly high, but joined the Trotskyites and got really critical of Stalin.  He was in and out of prison before being deported and spent the rest of his life in Belgium, France, and Mexico--where he died in 1947.  (This is a very short and cockeyed summary of a very complicated life, so by all means look Serge up properly.)  Comrade Tulayev was written near the end of his life.  Serge remained a Marxist until the end--though I certainly couldn't tell from this novel. In Moscow in the 1930s, the Terror is well underway.  Comrade Tulayev, an official very high in the government, is shot dead on a quiet street one night and the Soviet machinery swings into action.  Anyone associated with Tulayev is under suspicion, and suspicion means gui...

Tristran , by Thomas of Britain One of the earlier versions of the Tristan and Isolde tale is one by "Thomas of Britain," who was probably writing for the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine.  It's all rather fuzzy, but the clues seem to point that way, and certainly Thomas was writing for a courtly audience who expected certain things out of the story.  This divides Thomas' story from the earlier Beroul, who is known as 'primitive' in contrast. This tale of Tristran and Ysolt only survives in fragments.  There are about 50 pages of material, and they start with the story already well underway.  Tristran is living in the wilderness alone, after King Mark's suspicions got to be too much.  In a truly strange addition, Tristran has life-like mechanical statues made of Ysolt and Brangvein (and their dog!).  He keeps them in a cave, which he visits to lament his awful fate.   Before long he marries Ysolt of the White Hands, and Thomas includes a long lament o...

Although I haven't posted about it at the right times, I have been reading along in Candide and finished it on time. In the later part of the book, Candide and his friends travel around the world.  They discover that South America is mostly just as cruel and awful as Europe, but there is one isolated and secret place--El Dorado, where everyone is happy and kind, and gold and jewels are just dust by the wayside.  Candide loves it there, but must continue to seek Cunegonde, so he takes lots of jewels with him and goes back to ordinary civilization.  He promptly loses most of the wealth, but he's still quite well-off.  Traveling back to Europe, he gains a new companion, Michael, who expects only suffering.  They meet many miserable people and dethroned kings.  They suddenly find all their old companions, even the dead ones, who aren't so dead after all.  Cunegonde has lost her beauty and Candide no longer loves her, but marries her anyway out of duty....

The Candide Readalong has begun , and I'm already kind of behind schedule.  I tried to get hold of a copy that would have more helpful notes and whatnot, but my attempt failed, so I'm reading my little Dover Thrift Edition, which to my surprise actually does have some footnotes, but not many.  There are maybe 15.  Anyway, I read chapters I-VIII last night (except I'm posting this two days later) .  They are very short, but you have to pay close attention or you'll miss something. Candide was written as a vicious satire of the brand of philosophy that insisted that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that everything happens for a really good reason and it couldn't be better.  So we are about to read a story in which Candide, an innocent young man, and his teacher Pangloss, the tutor who preaches this philosophy and insists that there is no free will but everyone makes choices, are about to spend the next 100 pages seeing horrible disasters, sufferin...

When I put Candide on my Spin list, Fariba at Exploring Classics let me know about her planned March readalong.  Perfect timing!  Candide is on my official TBR must-read list for this year, so it will be nice to share a readalong. Fariba says: I will be reading the work in the original language, but all posts will be in English. Here is the posting schedule: Monday, March 10 : chapters 1-8 Monday, March 17: chapters 9-16 Monday, March 24: chapters 17-24 Monday, March 31: chapters 25-30 (last post) After I post about a series of chapters, you have a whole week to comment on those chapters. I'm pretty nervous about it now that I've read up a bit on it.  I'm not sure it sounds very pleasant.  So we shall see.  But happily several of my bloggy friends have joined up too!

Cligès , by Chretien de Troyes Here we have Chretien's second Arthurian tale, and once again I could see that many common tropes (habits?) of the Arthurian tradition have not yet quite gelled.  There is a town or two and the traditional storyline is not there yet.  This all makes it really interesting to read, since Chretien is creating much of the tradition as he writes. Cligès proves himself at a tournament (in disguise, of course) Cligès does not show up until at least halfway through the story.  It starts with his parents!  Alexander is the crown prince of Constantinople (which seems to be the capital city of Greece; we never hear of an empire, but Alexander and all his knights are called Greeks), and as a young man he sets off for Britain, for he knows that all the best knights are there and he is determined to be knighted by none other than Arthur himself.  Alexander joins Arthur's court and falls in love with one of the queen's maidens, and there ...

The Count of Monte Cristo , by Alexandre Dumas I finished the readalong!  Wow, this was a much better book than I had expected.  I'm not that big a fan of the Three Musketeers , you see, and I really had very little idea of the plot. So, as everyone else in the world besides me knows, Edmond Dantés is a young man with everything to look forward to.  He is an excellent sailor with a good career ahead of him and he's about to marry his true love.  But!  Edmond is betrayed and framed by three envious rivals.  Arrested at his own betrothal feast, he is thrown into the dreaded Chateau D'If without trial or sentence.  During his long years of imprisonment, he meets an old priest who teaches him and tells him about a fabulous treasure hidden on the uninhabited rocky island of Monte Cristo.  Edmond becomes determined to escape, find the treasure, and exact his revenge on the people who ruined his life. Wow, this is an exciting book.  It's al...