Howling Frog Books

Week 4: (November 22-26) – Stranger Than Fiction with Christopher at Plucked from the Stacks : T his week we’re focusing on all the great nonfiction books that *almost* don’t seem real. A sports biography involving overcoming massive obstacles, a profile on a bizarre scam, a look into the natural wonders in our world—basically, if it makes your jaw drop, you can highlight it for this week’s topic.   I've read a lot of jaw-dropping non-fiction this year, so it's hard to pick.  I'm going to ignore the WWII titles, because so much of it is just inherently insane.  From the rest, I've chosen two titles, and the links go to my original posts: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal :  De Waal chronicles the ineptitude of many of our attempts to categorize animal intelligence, and offers a whole lot of wonderful observations.  I wrote... ...critters are constantly surprising biologists with what they can do, and cognition seems to wo...

Week 3: (November 15-19) – Be The Expert/ Ask the Expert/ Become the Expert with Veronica at The Thousand Book Project : Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).   For week 3, I decided to Be The Expert (and do a little Becoming) about the history of fabric, thread,  the development thereof, and its place in societies and history.  I stayed away from fashion -- that's not my area.  But I sure do love reading about fabric!    These are the books I've read so far: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber : My favorite book comes first, and is about the invention of string, w...

It's the second week of Nonfiction November, and here is my second entry, much more on time than the first:   Book Pairing with Katie at Doing Dewey : This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.   I think this year I will make a somewhat unusual choice.  At the last Spin, my title was the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of scripture, history, and legend .   While the general understanding of non-fiction is that it's factual, or at least somebody's opinion, mythology counts too, and I enjoyed the Popol Vuh so much.  Here's a short paragraph from my post about it: One and Seven Hunahpu are ballplayers, gamblers, and adventurers.  They go to Xibalba (the underworld of death) and are defeated and killed by the Xibalbans, b...

 To absolutely no one's surprise, I am late to November Nonfiction, which is an event I really enjoy.  Week #1's question is hosted at Rennie's What’s Nonfiction blog, and asks: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?     Right now, my pick for favorite is The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore , but I warn you that I also started All That She Carried and that bids fair to match or surpass it.   I have only had a few weeks to recommend the story of Elizabeth Packard, but I did tag it a 'book everyone should read,' so I think that's the one. My nonfiction focus this year has largely been on World War II.  There's a WWII challenge for this year, and I...

It's Nonfiction November -- which starts in October to make the weeks come out right -- and this week's post is hosted by Julz Reads .  Head over there to see everybody's posts!  This week's topic is Your Year in Nonfiction : Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? Themes that cropped up this year have been: German/Eastern European/Russian history, as usual, with some literature thrown in too.  There is not enough time in my life to read all the history I want to, especially for that area.  I was particularly excited to read Tacitus, followed by A Most Dangerous Book , followed by Black Earth .  And Svetlana Alexievich is always a big deal to me; this year it was ...