Howling Frog Books

 I haven't been able to do much reading (my poor neglected summerbooks!), because I've been having adventures all over the place.... My good friend Melanie wanted to do a hot-air balloon trip for her birthday, and her husband was like 'no way' so I said I'd do it and she asked all her friends.  We got a total of just three -- Melanie, her friend Bryn (who lives near Seattle) and me.    We set out from Chico with many snacks, and dilly-dallied our way down to Tahoe.  There was no hurry, so we stopped a few times.  We went to Donner Pass and walked through the disused railroad tunnels above Donner Lake.  That was super fun, and I highly recommend it.   There are four tunnels along the hillside, with space between them.  Parts are blasted rock and other parts have been smoothed out with concrete, and a whole lot of the space is covered in graffiti.  There's still snow melting in June, so it was pretty drippy, and the four...

 Usually I would sum up all the challenges I finished and the best books of the year, and so on, but this year I didn't finish any challenges and in fact I hid in the familiar and in children's literature for months on end.  And that is just fine!  2024 was an extremely difficult year, with the exception of the fantastic adventure of the Ridgeway hike , and I lost almost all my reading energy. I took refuge in Diana Wynne Jones, Joan Aiken, and other children's literature or Ridgeway books (not enough of those, I have quite a few now).  I'm only slightly disappointed in myself for not reading the many, many heavy-duty books on my library and TBR shelves.  This was not the year.   So what's my plan for 2025?   I hope to regain my reading energy, but I'm not taking on any challenges.  I do want to keep posting here, even though I'm so bad at it these days and so few people are book-blogging at all; it's really valuable to me to be able to ...

 Last week we had the start of another giant wildfire, which is why I haven't been posting.  It started with a guy, already a double felon, who seems to have set his mother's car on fire and then shoved it into a gully in the park, right in front of witnesses and while there were lots of people there.  He was 'heavily intoxicated' and wanted the insurance money or something.  None of it makes any sense.  Firefighters got right on it, but the blaze quickly got way out of control, ripping through miles of hot, dry foothills to the north.  It moved even faster than the Camp Fire, and within a few days was over twice the size. The first night, fire all along the ridge above Chico The scale of this fire is just unimaginably huge.  It stretches for miles, right up to Lassen Park.  Most of this area is not inhabited by humans, so there hasn't been the loss of life and structures that the Camp Fire entailed, but some of the tiny places up there have been ...

 My local library has decided to host a fun reading challenge this year!  I thought I'd just let you know in case you are local and want to participate (or hey, do it from afar!).  Finish up, and you get a nice custom sticker featuring the library's new mascot, Felix.  Isn't he a cutie?   Some of these are a little tricky for me.  A western?  A fanfiction??  Help!  I've seen the list of best-sellers from my birth year and I was not impressed.  I bet there was some decent children's literature being published then, though...maybe Zilpha Keatley Snyder? I'll see how it goes, and let you know.  I really like stickers...  

This year I cut way back on the challenges, and then I just about didn't keep track of the ones I did have going.  I know I hit my goals, but I can't prove it.  The only one I officially finished was Adam's TBR Pile Challenge, which is being retired: Not sure I ever got the right graphic... Map Drawn By a Spy, by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba) The Green Roads of England, by Hippisley-Cox The World of Odysseus, by M. I. Finley How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, by Drakulic Wife of the Gods, by Kwei Quartey (Ghana) Pageants of Despair, by Dennis Hamley (this is a children's book??) The Way to the Sea, by Caroline Crampton Ransom for a Knight, by Barbara Leonie Picard The High Book of the Grail (Perlesvaus), ed. Nigel Bryant How Democracies Die, by Levitsky and Ziblatt Samson's Hoard, by John Verney Hippolyte's Island, by Barbara Hodgson Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Red Famine, by Anne Applebaum    I definitely hit my goals for Bev's two T...

 Hey all!  Happy Magic March!  I hope you're reading lots of DWJ and Pterry.  It's spring here, but we're also having incredibly cold and precipitous weather.  I live on the valley floor, so it's just been lots of rain, but anybody with any elevation has gotten inches, if not actual feet, of snow, which is wild.  Precipitation is great, but it's also almond blossom season, so I'm kind of worried about the bees getting the job done.  One of my best friends is a co-manager at our local quilt shop, and she came up with the idea of having a featured quilter every month.  It's not fame, just encouragement to get to know each other and share ideas.  She asked me to be a guinea pig, I agreed, and for the sake of posterity I thought I'd save it here too.  Here you go: Honey Run Featured Quilter March 2023 This is the latest in our series of monthly emails detailing a customer's background and interest in quilting. We hope you enjoy and are fasci...

 Sorry, I couldn't resist the pretentious title.   Taking the last few months off has been really nice, but I've also missed the blog and all of you nice folks out there in book-blog land.  I've decided to slow down from my previous posting rate -- I was aiming for 2/3 a week but then I'd skip a while because I was tired.  I'm going to try for fewer posts, and will probably cover groups of books and/or the titles I really want to talk about.   In 2023, I'm going to sign up for my usual challenges (see below), which don't really cost me any thought, and skip pretty much everything else.  My TBR shelf is far overladen, and so is my library pile, so I'm going to concentrate on those.  In 2021, I focused on WWII and aimed for one book a month.  In 2022, I was going to try for chunksters but didn't really succeed much there.  In 2023, I'm going back to the idea of a historical focus, and I'm going to work on making a dent in my large Russian/...

We're getting down to the wire, so here's one big long wrap-up post for 2022: Using only books you have read this year (2022), answer these prompts. Try not to repeat a book title… (Links in the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist) In high school I was a Goblin People might be surprised by a Runaway Robot I will never be [one of the] Model Children My life post-lockdown was: Being Seen My fantasy job is The Prince of Morning Bells At the end of a long day I need Celestial Bodies (I like stargazing!) I hate being The Seventh Bride Wish I had a Chess Set in the Mirror My family reunions are A Sudden Wild Magic At a party you’d find me with Our Mutual Friend I’ve never been to The Lost Island A happy day includes The Secret of Zi Motto I live by: "We Never Make Mistakes " (ominous!) On my bucket list is The Gate of Horn In my next life, I want to have a Cathedral of Mist My kid assures me that this is a good meme for the Ge...

 I think it's been nearly a month since I posted, and I missed Witch Week!  I just got kind of overwhelmed.  I think I'm going to take the rest of the year off, with occasional posts to wrap up challenges or have a Spin, and I'll see how things go.  I'm still reading your blogs, so I won't completely disappear, and I hope everybody is having a lovely fall/winter (or spring, as the case may be)! Also, I made a meme at work for a newsletter post encouraging students to use library resources for their research papers.  I consulted with my 19yo to see if it was reasonable or hopeless.   See what a hip, with-it librarian I am?

 Well, how did I do with the 20 Books of Summer?  I managed to blog about 17 books, most of which were on my original list.  I did get an 18th book read, but it's for Witch Week so you'll have to wait!  I'm not thrilled with my performance, but all things considered I'm happy and I had a really nice summer, which is the important part.  I got some quilting done too! I did fall down a bit with WIT August.  The first books I chose turned out not to be translated at all; it was written in English.  (Every other book I've gotten from that 'Emerging Voices' series has been translated!  I just assumed!)  I'm still reading my other choice, which is a very long mystery novel from Spain, set in Basque country.   Now it's back to work/school and there's plenty going on, which is keeping me from doing a whole lot of posting at the moment.  My younger kid is preparing to move out next week, into an apartment here in town with a friend....

 I'm getting on an airplane and going to Germany, so it will be a couple of weeks before I post again.  Happy summer and happy reading! Regensburg!   CC BY-SA 3.0 de , Link

Difficult to think of anything to say but this seems appropriate.    

I had some fairly ambitious reading plans for 2021, and while I'm pretty happy with what I did, I still wish I'd done more.  I guess that's always the way.  I felt like I had a hard time focusing on my reading this year.  Still, I had plenty of great titles!  Let's see how my challenges turned out... The World War II Reading Challenge at Becky's Book Reviews :  12/12 Choosing WWII as a focus this year was fascinating (although not cheerful) and cut my WWII reading pile almost in half.  I wanted to read 12 titles, one each month, and though I am on about page 3 of my December pick, I still got 12:  The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard P. Evans   Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning  Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, by Alison Owings Midway: the Battle That Doomed Japan, by Fuchida and Okumiya Last Witnesses:  An Oral History of the Children of WWII, by Svetlana Alexievich For Two Thousand Years, by Mihail Sebastian Book ...