Howling Frog Books

I think it is pretty hilarious that April's question for day 12 is: How do you fight blogger fatigue? And this is my first post in a week.  Ahem.  But it wasn't really blogger fatigue, so much as life: I'm in the middle of 2 super-long books so I don't have much to post about (though I do have one finished title to write up, so it's not that much of an excuse), we're getting settled into our school routine and I am running a new science group that is taking lots of time, and I started back at work this week too.  I've hardly been on the computer, but I have been making strenuous efforts to set aside reading time, so I'm happy about that. Really, I might deal with blogger fatigue in a few ways: I am OK with taking a week off to do something else; though I usually do like to produce a fairly steady stream of posts, I dislike making myself stick to a strict schedule.  If this becomes a job, it's no fun anymore and then I won't want to d...

Today April at Good Books and Good Wine wants me to show off five of my best blog posts.  I went through my archive--though I left out my first year on the theory that it probably wasn't that great--and picked some favorites.  Here you go: My post on What Makes Diana Wynne Jones Magical from DWJ March of this year.  I can't say it does any justice whatsoever to the amazingness of DWJ, because I am not that articulate, but I tried. In January, I co-hosted a children's literature event.   This post on 19th-century illustrators was fun to write. I love books like Pink and Blue , with lots of cultural history and information about clothing. Last October I read The Castle of Otranto for a Gothic novel event.  I had fun reading it and writing what I hope was a sort of humorous post. I'm including this one because I'm such a sucker for ancient British history and antiquarians: Ancient British Trackways. Bonus post: I had a really good time writing up a ...

Today April wants to know how I choose what book to read next. Mood, mostly.  I have my TBR/classics pile, and a bunch of books out of the library, and I choose according to what mood I'm in.  Since I always have several going at once, it's easy to make room for another one if I really want to read it right away. I also follow along, mostly, with the WEM Ladies' reading list, if it's something I haven't read and want to read.  Right now they're doing Native Son , and I've read that so I'm skipping it this time. Since I'm signed up for lots of challenges, that gives me plenty to pick from, plus of course whatever I happen to want to read just because.  

I have finished Sarah's Back to the Classics Challenge!  This year, there were 6 required categories and 5 optional categories.  I did all of them: The Required Categories: A 19th Century Classic-- T he Red and the Black, by Stendhal A 20th Century Classic-- Botchan , by Natsume Soseki  A Pre-18th or 18th Century Classic-- Pamela , by Samuel Richardson A Classic that relates to the African-American Experience - The Souls of Black Folk , by W. E. B. DuBois A Classic Adventure-- Last of the Mohicans , by James Fenimore Cooper A Classic that prominently features an Animal - My Family and Other Animals , by Gerald Durrell Optional Categories:     A.   Re-read a Classic-- Sense and Sensibility , by Jane Austen     B.   A Russian Classic-- In the First Circle, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn     C.   A Classic Non-Fiction title-- The Life of Olaudah Equiano , by Himself     D.   ...

My Family and Other Animals , by Gerald Durrell In order to finish Sarah's Back to the Classics challenge , I was supposed to come up with a book having something to do with animals.  This stumped me.  Look at my CC list--nary a critter to be found.  So I wandered around my bookshelf and found one of my all-time ever favorite books. Gerald Durrell was a famous naturalist, and started one of the first conservation zoos in the world-- Durrell Wildlife Park on Jersey Island.   He publicized and partly financed his conservation efforts by writing books about his adventures with animals, and My Family and Other Animals is probably the most famous of them. For five years in the 1930s, the entire Durrell family lived on the Greek island of Corfu.  This consisted of Mrs. Durrell, widow; pompous Larry,* gun-obsessed Leslie, fashion-conscious Margo, and Gerry, age 10 and animal-mad from birth.   Durrell combines animal adventures with stories about his ...

The World's Strongest Librarian: a Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family , by Josh Hanagarne I've been looking forward to getting this book!  I had to wait my turn at the library, but once I got it (yesterday), I gulped it down. Josh is a librarian at the main Salt Lake City library (I've been there, it's really nice.  After all, when you're visiting a new place you have to see what the library is like, right?).  He's got lots of good library stories, which is of course my favorite part.  This is a guy who understands the librarian soul: I also work here because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else.  As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists.  I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live. SEE? Josh's story is about how he wound up where he ...

The Classics Club posted the spin number today and it is:  4!  Which means I will read Jens Peter Jacobsen's great Danish novel, Niels Lyhne .  I'm very excited.  It's another title that I really liked in college, and now cannot remember one thing about.  It's a later novel than The Queen's Diadem , and at the moment I'm kind of thinking it's going to be a bit like The Sorrows of Young Werther , but hopefully without the suicide. Looking at ebook offerings, I see that you can get it for free on Kindle if you want a German edition, but the English costs $5 or so.  Penguin has a nice-looking paperback, too.  My own copy is hardback, and I can't find an image of it at all. In other news, today was our first day of school.  It was a very good day; we reviewed math and grammar skills, started modern history with a discussion of the British Empire in the 1850s, and began a study of American government.  This year we are hosting a physics class,...