Howling Frog Books

My copy--pretty good for 1977 Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Ekaterina at In My Book reviewed this Russian SF classic for Vintage SF Month , and I was intrigued but didn't expect to get to read it very soon.  Then I started back to work for the new semester and found a copy in the stacks!  Wow!  I feel so lucky.  It's the first English edition from 1977, and includes another short novel, Tale of the Troika.  I'll be reading that too. In the not-too-distant future, a bunch of alien artifacts landed on Earth in 6 locations, as though shot in packets.  Redrick Schuhart has grown up right next to one of the Zones, and he's a stalker--he makes illegal runs into the Zone to find alien artifacts to smuggle and sell.  Stalking is an incredibly dangerous job; the Zone is filled with bizarre phenomena and invisible deadly dangers.  You might find so-so's, which act like batteries and multiply spontaneously, but you might also fal...

Richard III , by William Shakespeare Richard III, as everyone already knows, is Shakespeare's most villainous villain, embracing evil and having people murdered left and right until he comes to a well-deserved end in battle.  And as a cartoon villain he's pretty great; he thinks of everything and tirelessly makes everything terrible for everyone around him, even his poor old mother.  He even tries to marry the older sister of the princes he had killed! Evil Richard III I really liked the prominent roles that the women played towards the end.  Possibly because there were no men left, having all been murdered by that time, but the ladies have these wonderful scenes where they lament their losses and blame Richard III for everything--just as he deserves. I did find this play quite difficult to read, just because there are all these characters, all with titles that make it tricky to keep track of them, and anyway which Edward or Richard or Elizabeth are we talking a...

Dune , by Frank Herbert I hadn't gotten around to reading Dune before.  I've seen two film versions, though (the one with Sting and the SciFi Channel's miniseries).  I guess it was high time I read the real thing. In the very far future, there is a galactic empire--but an empire without computers or artificial intelligence.  Instead, certain people are trained to calculate.  Mentats are coldly logical and concentrate on math; the Bene Gesserit learn to manipulate emotion and influence politics, using religion as their tool.  The desert planet of Arrakis produces one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy, and it is therefore exploited and oppressed--but the desert people of Arrakis are waiting for their savior.  He is Paul Atreides, and he's going to change everything. The setting is clearly based on the politics of the Middle East.  Spice is oil, the Fremen are probably Bedouin, and much of the vocabulary is based on Arabic.  The Ar...

Rose City Reader's 2013 Challenge actually extended to the end of this month, so as to give space for wrapping up anything that needed finishing--a great idea, I thought.  Now it's time for the final post and count.  Here are the different countries I visited.  Many of them got several books, really.  I ended up reading maybe 4 books set in Poland, for example, and I don't even know how many UK titles.  And for this purpose, I can only count one UK book, not separate titles for Scotland, England, Wales, and NI.  So here it is: Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon, by Iosif Shklovsky (Ukraine) Anna Karenina, b y Lev Tolstoy (Russia)   The Middle Window, by Elizabeth Goudge (UK) Portrait of a Lady, by Hen ry James (Italy) Sister Queens, by Julia Fox (Spain)    Zaremba, or Love and the Rule of Law, by Michelle Granas (Poland) T he Red and the Black, by Stendhal (France)  The Trial, by Franz Kafka (Austro-Hungary/Czech Re...

The Winter's Tale , by William Shakespeare January is Shakespeare Month at the Classics Club , and so I read "The Winter's Tale."   I knew the basic storyline, and I may have read it in college, but I'm not sure about that.  Anyway, it made for a nice Shakespearean interlude, and after that I got ambitious enough to start "Richard III," which I'm hoping to finish before the month ends.  Wish me luck, since I'm still on I.3. Leontes, King of Sicilia, and Polixenes, King of Bohemia, have been best friends since boyhood.  Polixenes is on an extended visit with Leontes and his queen Hermione, but when he accedes to Hermione's request to stay longer, Leontes becomes uncontrollably jealous and paranoid.  Although everyone in the court reminds him of Hermione's perfect character, he convinces himself that she is unfaithful and that her children are not his.  He orders his new infant daughter taken away and exposed, and even assurance from t...

 This was a fun idea I saw at ipsofactodotme .  I didn't do a proper 2013 retrospective, since I felt the constant challenge wrapups were more than enough, but the idea here is to post the first sentence of the first post of every month and see what it says about me.  Let's give it a try, shall we? I discovered that I sometimes had to use the first book post of the month instead of the actual first post, and sometimes I've skipped a tiny non-sentence.  Otherwise this would be a boring list. January: I was planning to start a really big chunkster today, preferably Anna Karenina , but I woke up with a hangover--which is hardly fair, considering my revels last night consisted of fizzy lemonade, Just Dance 4, and card games, and ended before midnight. February: Aren't fashions in titles funny?  Title trends come and go, and right now very long subtitles seem to be the thing.  The shorter and/or more cryptic the main title is, the better, and the...

Eugene Onegin Readalong, 3 & 4 I've read two more chapters, and Tatiana has met Onegin.  Although she has only met him once, and barely spoken with him, she falls for him hard.  Her habitual pensive mood becomes a fretful preoccupation that follows a time-honored formula: as any proper heroine would do, she can't sleep or eat.   Finally she does something that would be truly shocking to her family and society: she writes Onegin a letter declaring her feelings, and waits on tenterhooks for a response.  Onegin gently but firmly refuses Tatiana and leaves her to yearn and pine away, which she does, while he leads a solitary and restful country life.  But then Lensky wants him to go to dinner and meet the whole family again--oh, dear. Tanglewood has more questions : Chapters 3 & 4 Questions - Impressions of Tatyana and Olga? They are both so young!  Poor Tatiana, she's never met young men or had crushes before, and this just bowls her over...