Howling Frog Books

 The Strange House, vols 1 and 2, by Uketsu  This is at least a trilogy, but so far only the first two have been published.  Uketsu is an odd Japanese artist/ Youtuber /author, whose videos and books have made something of a splash.  As far as I can tell, no one admits to knowing who Uketsu actually is -- the artist is always masked. The unnamed narrator is asked to investigate an unusual floor plan for a house that previously belonged to a married couple with a child.  This doesn't seem like something she knows much about, so she asks an architect friend who is into the occult; maybe he can come up with something.  Kurihara studies the floor plans, notes its oddities, and spins the craziest, most macabre theories you've ever heard.   Then they connect this house to the inhabitants' previous home, which also seems odd.  And a woman claiming to be the wife of a murder victim shows up, asking for help.  Everything just gets more complex i...

 The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, by John Hendrix I recently read Hendrix' Faithful Spy , and now I've got his latest -- a chronicle of one of the most world-influencing friendships of the 20th century.  And I'm here to tell you, it's great stuff, a lovely biography/tribute to both men.  This is a graphic novel suitable for age 10 and up, but is equally absorbing for adults.  Give it to the Middle-Earth and Narnia fan in your life! Hendrix gives short biographies of each before they meet, and then he gets detailed, providing lovely illustrations in teal, lavender, and gold.  But there's just one problem; what they mostly did was talk, and that doesn't make for exciting reading.  So Hendrix introduces two metanarrating avatars: a wizard and a lion, who explain myth and epic, provide commentary upon the relationship, and generally facilitate the reader's experience, like a Greek chorus in a play.  The two s...

 The Faithful Spy, by John Hendrix It's a graphic novel biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, aimed at a YA audience!   While this story culminates in Bonhoeffer's involvement in plots to kill Hitler, and his subsequent imprisonment, it's not the sole focus of the book.  This is a biography that aims to give a full picture of Bonhoeffer's life, complete with his childhood and family, later studies, travel, and efforts to start a new kind of pastor training. The art is gorgeous -- complex and layered, but done only in scarlet, teal, and black.  Visually, this book is wonderful, but it does suffer from the size; I think it would be better in a larger size, which may have been too expensive to print or something.  The print is tiny, and I often struggled to read it. Highly recommended for an excellent angle on Germany in World War II* and a fascinating treatment of Bonhoeffer's life, plus the art.  It was really good. But I wish it was printed larger! *Alth...

 It's nothing but fun around here, as you can see by these very cheery selections.  Maybe I should try to read heartwarming Christmas tales for a bit?   Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women's Trauma Against Them , by Dr Jessica Taylor:   This is a UK book, and focuses on UK practices, though it's still relevant to the US.  But just so you know, she uses a lot of NHS terminology that I didn't understand at first, such as sectioning , which seems to be holding a patient for psychiatric reasons without their consent.  Anyway... Taylor's theme is that she has seen way too many women shoved into psychiatric diagnoses and  medication because they were upset about the abuse that they had suffered.  Say you get a teen girl who has been through some horrific abuse, and instead of receiving therapy and advocacy, she is told that she is making a lot of it up and has BPD.  Her distress is interpreted as mental illness instead of a normal perso...

 These are some bonus books I read in August.  They don't fulfill a single thing on my lists; they are not from other countries, or on my TBR piles, or anything; I just felt like reading them, which is the best reason of all.   The Way Home, by Peter S. Beagle: A short story and a novella set in the world of The Last Unicorn .  I only just got around to reading that, so I thought these would be good to read too.  They are both about Sooz, a little village girl.  In "Two Hearts," a griffin comes to terrorize the village, and eats not only sheep, but children.  Any knights who challenge it are killed, and Sooz sets off to see the king to convince him to come himself.  On the way, she meets Schmendrick and Molly Grue, and sees the king...who is Lir, now grown old and feeble.  Or is he?  Perhaps he's the only one who can challenge the griffin....and Molly tells Sooz to whistle a certain tune on her 17th birthday. In "The Way Home," Sooz kee...

 My semester is over and I'm on summer break!  And the weather has been absolutely fantastic, not too hot, so I've been trying to spend a lot of time outside and hiking.  My goal is to do plenty of that this summer.  I've also read quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and here is some of it, but it doesn't include the Louise Penny binge I went on of three novels in a row; they were good too! #antisemitism: Coming of Age During the Resurgence of Hate, by Samantha A. Vinokor-Meinrath : A survey and analysis of GenZ Jewish kids and how they feel about their Judaism and the rising incidence of antisemitism.  Most of these kids have GenX parents (like me) who grew up with very little antisemitism in the US, and I was shocked at how it's just common now for GenZ kids to have experienced, at the very least, comments from friends and schoolmates.                  A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabe...

 ...to read lots of books?  That doesn't rhyme.  I have to do it right. ...to be a robin lightly dressed, concocting soup inside my nest! Mix it once, mix it twice, mix that chicken soup with rice! No, actually, I'm not making soup, I'm reading books.  Quite a few books, so here at the halfway point I'm doing a post.  The Marquis' Secret, by George MacDonald:   I'm a bit of a sucker for these sort-of translated 1980s Bethany House versions of George MacDonald's very Victorian Scottish romances.  This one was originally The Marquis of Lossie , a sequel to Malcolm.  Malcolm, a poor fisher-boy, is the true heir to the estate of Lossie, but his half-sister Florimel (a definite Faerie Queene reference!) thinks she is, and so he becomes her groom in hopes of finding a way to break the news to her without ruining her life.  Confusion and hijinks ensue; Malcolm despairs of influencing his sister for good; and also he falls in love.  Can this ...

I had a nice time reading DWJ, and I read some other things too.  On the whole March was not a big reading month, which is a shame, but I got lots of other great stuff done. The Merlin Conspiracy : such a good one.  I paid a lot of attention this time to how intense Roddy is.  She knows she's got hold of something really important, and so she is intense about it -- which turns a lot of people off.  Some are inclined to dismiss her because she's so worked up, which isn't fair; but also Roddy in her turn dismisses anything she doesn't already understand, which also isn't fair.  The whole thing is a masterclass in how not to communicate. The Homeward Bounders :  I took this along on our trip!  So funny, and so tragic. The Crown of Dalemark : one of my favorites, so I read it more often than the other Dalemark books, but Spellcoats is another favorite. Minor Arcana , by Diana Wynne Jones: I mostly read this one for "The Master" -- one of the stranger sho...

 Burmese Moons, by Sophie Ansel and Sam Garcia I have just not been very diligent lately, and the result is that I have five or six posts that need writing.  Anyway, I've been looking for a book about Burma (aka Myanmar) for a while, and this graphic novel seemed just the ticket.  It turned out to be a harrowing read. A note about the Burma/Myanmar thing.  I don't know too much about it. Myanmar is the official name now.  But, when I got to know some international students from there last year, they were all quite firm that they are Burmese.  I gather that using Myanmar sort of implies that one accepts the military dictatorship as legitimate. So I'm going to stick with Burma because of the students. Thazama, a young boy of the Zomi, grows up in his beloved village.  Raised by his grandfather, he runs around with his best friend Moonpi and has a crush on his classmate Kim.  When the soldiers arrive and demand that villagers go with them to work for...

 Sandman: vols 7-9, by Neil Gaiman et al. Volume 7, Brief Lives , is somewhat ironically named, since nearly everyone in it is, if not immortal, kind of close to it.  Delerium -- once Delight -- approaches her siblings, asking them to help her find their lost brother.  Destruction abdicated his post a few centuries ago, and asked to be left alone.  But Delerium misses her brother and is impervious to argument, so Dream agrees to travel with her.  They go on a road trip to track down some of the people who may know where Destruction is, but those people are showing a worrying tendency to turn up dead.  Morpheus ends up having to consult his son, Orpheus.... Volume 8, World's End , uses an old device: it collects many people into an inn to tell stories as they wait out a storm.  But this is no ordinary inn.  The people are from many different times, places, and worlds, and they have all run into a reality storm that tore them from their moorings and...