Howling Frog Books

The Rose Rent , by Ellis Peters It's been a while since I read a Brother Cadfael mystery, and it was about time.  And I found one I'd never read before!  The Rose Rent is about a wealthy widow who has given her house to the abbey because she couldn't live where she had been so happy and lost her husband and child-to-be.  In a gesture worthy of a chivalric ballad, she requires that the abbey pay her a yearly rent of one perfect rose from the white rosebush in the garden.  But then a young monk is murdered beneath the rose-tree, now hacked and mutilated--and the widow herself is kidnapped. A nice mystery, short, but as good as the other Cadfael mysteries.  Though I certainly got tired of hearing about the widow's "great sheaf of hair."  That image must have been repeated 10 times in a 200-page story.

Ake: The Years of Childhood, by Wole Soyinka This was my Classics Club Spin title!  It was great and I'm very happy with my luck.  I actually had this out of the library over the summer, but the first couple of pages didn't hook me in and I didn't continue, though I meant to read it properly eventually.  I'm glad to have gotten the chance, and I'll be trying out more Soyinka at some point. Wole Soyinka, born 1934, is a Yoruba Nigerian.  He has been a vocal critic of dictators for a long time--by now he is world-famous for his writing on "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it."  His writing is very eloquent and written at a high level, to the point that he is sometimes criticized for being too difficult and obscure.  He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the first African and the first black person to do so.  These days he is very elderly, but still going and currently focusing on religious tyranny...

The Souls of Black Folk , by W. E. B. DuBois  In 1903, W. E. B. DuBois published this collection of essays to portray the character of black people in America and the conditions they struggled against.  He says: Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century.  This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. DuBois calls the color line "the Veil," meaning that the real lives of black people are lived behind a veil that ensures that white people will never see their true feelings.  Each chapter is headed by a verse from a white poet and a phrase of music from the oldest black songs, in order to show that the races have equal artistic genius.  DuBois has a lot to say about old songs, especially the ones he considers to be most authentic. The early essays are set as response...

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde Lately I've been wanting to re-read some old favorites, and I picked up The Eyre Affair.  I love the Thursday Next books but haven't re-read them at all, and I'd forgotten a lot! Thursday is a Special Operations officer in the Literary Fraud division--she tracks down counterfeit Cardenio s and the like.  In the alternate Britain she lives in, the Crimean War has been going on for over 100 years, genetic sequencing has allowed everyone to have dodos and thylacines for pets, and literature is a national obsession.  Radical Marlovians firebomb Baconian meetings, thousands of people have changed their names to Percy Shelley or John Milton, that sort of thing. The super-criminal genius Acheron Hades has stolen both Thursday's Uncle Mycroft and the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit .  With Mycroft's invention that allows entry into books, he plans to kill off beloved literary characters until the ransom is paid.  And Jane Eyre i...

You Can Understand the Bible: A Practical and Illuminating Guide to Each Book in the Bible , by Peter Kreeft I've been going through this book slowly for some time, but it's not a difficult read at all.  Kreeft just gives a summary and discussion--from the Catholic POV plus of course his own thoughts--of each book in the Bible.  He wants to point out the main purpose and message of each book.  It's very interesting, full of good insights and things to think about.  Kreeft is clearly an intelligent guy (he seems to be a respected author in the Catholic world, but I've never read him before).  He uses an informal and often humorous style, and I often quoted pieces to my husband. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Job, Jonah, and the Psalms in the Old Testament section.  There is a section on the Deuterocanonical books and the Apocrypha, which was great since I don't know much about those.  And the New Testament section is very good, with descript...

The Laughter of Dead Kings , by Elizabeth Peters I found another Vicky Bliss novel!  It's a new one!  Oh wow!  If you're not familiar with the Bliss stories, there are only a few of them and they are older.  Vicky is a historian who gets caught up in international intrigue at the drop of a hat. And Elizabeth Peters wrote just one more! This time, Vicky's boyfriend (reformed international art thief John) and good friend Faisal (Egyptian historian) arrive at her apartment at the same time.  Faisal needs help, because the single most famous mummy of all time has been stolen!  Off they go to figure out who has the mummy before the theft is discovered, and lots of adventure happens. There are a few inside nods to Peters' other series and even an appearance by the author herself, so it's just a really fun read--a perfect Peters story.  If you're a fan of her stories, by the way, you'll want to visit Bookshelves of Doom the week of March 3, because s...

The Return of Captain John Emmett , by Elizabeth Speller This is an extremely complicated murder mystery set just after World War I.  Laurence Bartram, veteran and widower lacking in direction, is asked by his old friend's sister to shed a bit of light on why the friend might have committed suicide.  Captain John Emmett was living in a sanatorium for shell-shock victims, but seemed to be improving; why would he commit suicide?  The more Laurence looks into John Emmett's life, the more puzzling that question becomes, and soon Laurence is discovering how very much Emmett hid from his family. I'm feeling kind of lukewarm about this novel.  It wants to be a more serious and literary mystery than your average cozy British mystery, and that's fine, but the result is more verbiage than I was really interested in.  The mystery is pretty difficult to follow, though it resolves well enough.  But I felt like my interest was smothered a bit by those elements. ...