Howling Frog Books

How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids , by Jancee Dunn As soon as I heard of this book, I had to have it.  Really, that has got to be one of the best parenting/family-advice book titles of all time.   I had to read it despite the fact that my kids are now teenagers and we have sort of passed the time of small children that this book mostly talks about (and anyway it was still full of good stuff). Dunn almost comes off as a project author: "I will do X for a year and write a book about it!"  Except, it's not so frivolous; she really did need to spend a year or so working on her marriage and figuring out how to re-negotiate their workloads.  He tended to withdraw and not live up to his part, while she was angry all the time and had a serious yelling problem. So Dunn tried various things: a marriage counselor who will brutally tell you what's up in one gruelling afternoon, hostage negotiation techniques, and some interesting stuff like that.  She talks...

Last week I told you that I was heading out of town to go to Cal Day, which is a big open house at UC Berkeley.  I did have a lot of fun wandering around campus!  I didn't really take pictures to share, but I visited the libraries (partly to see what they've done in remodeling the interior of the quite hideous Moffitt Library).  I went to a special Bancroft Library exhibit with some fantastic historical books: an 1811 Sense and Sensibility , a Wycliffe Bible with a stunning rare binding, and an elderly little Piers Plowman with marginalia from various readers, among many other treasures.   The best thing was that I went to a lecture on the Canterbury Tales given by my old Shakespeare professor, Steven Justice.  He was a favorite of mine, and now I realize why; he's a phenomenal lecturer!  Wow, I was just blown away.  I want to read the Canterbury Tales again, too.  (Pondering: can I justify buying a Riverside Chaucer, 20+ years after takin...

My paperback cover -- terrible, isn't it? Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse In my endeavor to appreciate Hesse, I've now read Siddhartha and Steppenwolf .  I'm working my way up to The Glass Bead Game .  Of course, this novel is indelibly and vaguely associated with 70s late-hippie music in my brain, as I'm sure it is for most people my age, but I never really knew what 'steppenwolf' was supposed to mean in English.  It turns out to be very simple: wolf of the steppes, or as we'd say, a lone wolf.  The title could be rendered as Lone Wolf and that would work.  (For some reason, Wikipedia claims that a wolf of the steppes is a coyote, but it isn't and that doesn't work at all.  My advice is not to try to think of this as Coyote .  No.) Harry Haller, mid-50s, thinks of himself as a double-natured being.  One side of him is an intellectual, high-culture sort of man, and the other is a wild and bloodthirsty lone wolf, always on the move and nev...

The Two Towers , by J. R. R. Tolkien Brona's LOTR readalong has been so very fun!  I haven't read these books in years and (as we all know) they are just so fantastic. And I have a little treat for all lovers of Middle-Earth; my mom sent me a link to this letter from Tolkien, describing various details of things.  It's good stuff: The Tolkien Letter That Every Lover of Middle-Earth Must Read. In The Two Towers , the Fellowship splits into two groups (well, three for most of it).  Tolkien does this funny thing; where most writers (especially now) would alternate chapters, keeping both storylines going at once, he does not.  He simply splits the book in half and tackles each story separately, which means we are consecutively immersed in each one.  It's quite a shock, halfway through, to suddenly leave Aragorn and company in order to find Frodo and Sam. Everybody knows the plot, so I don't know that I need to recap it.  Instead I'll just talk about some...

The Valley of Song , by Elizabeth Goudge Lory's Elizabeth Goudge event is now something I look forward to a lot.  This year, I splurged a little bit and bought two (used) books I've never read, but I am still saving those for later; I also got The Valley of Song through ILL.  It's a strange and charming story; a children's fairytale, but a long and complex one that makes me think of....oh , At the Back of the North Wind , maybe.  Goudge mixes her Christian imagery and older mythology with happy abandon, like Lewis does in Narnia, but it's a very different feel, and her story is set maybe 250 years ago, in the late 18th century, I think. My ILL cover -- charming Tabitha, age 11, would always rather be outdoors exploring, or visiting her little town's shipyard, than anything else.  She has discovered a magical place she calls the Valley of Song, and when she takes her friend Job to see it, he is transformed from an elderly woodcarver into the boy he on...

I've been quite pleased with my two-week streak of posting (with time off for Sunday).  And I still have more books to write about; there are six on my desk at this moment.  But I'm going away for the weekend, on my own little adventure all by myself!  I always love to go to Cal Day, when UC Berkeley opens up the campus and there are lots of fun events.  And this time I'll go to some things for adults!  I'm excited, so maybe I'll post a picture or two when I come home. Two years ago!

Where Nothing is Long Ago: Memories of a Mormon Childhood, by Virginia Sorensen This lovely childhood memoir by a Newbery-winning author evokes a subculture that is now as foreign and puzzling as almost any you can think of.  Virginia Sorensen writes about life in a Utah farming town with strong Danish roots, and it seems to cover approximately 1917-1924 or so.  And she really knows how to start a story... Virginia is about nine, playing in the hot summer weather, when Brother Tolsen comes running over, having just killed his neighbor during a dispute; the neighbor had twice blocked Tolsen's water in order to take it himself.  In the dry Utah climate, water for irrigation was of the first importance, and access to streams was carefully scheduled so that everyone would get a fair share.  Water-stealing was a terrible crime, and the entire community agreed that Brother Tolsen had acted in the defense of his family and livelihood.  They were relieved when the ...