Howling Frog Books

Isis: a play by Nawal El Saadawi Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian writer (and physician too) who has been fairly prolific over her long career.  She has focused a lot on women's issues -- FGM in particular -- and has been imprisoned and exiled for her anti-religious and feminist writing.  Until I started writing this post just now, I was under the impression that I had read one of her novels in the early days of this blog, but it seems our library did not own her works at that time and I didn't read it after all....so I'm a newcomer. Isis is the earliest of El Saadawi's seven plays and was written in 1986 in Egypt.  El Saadawi seems to identify a good deal with the ancient Egyptian goddess; she titled her memoir A Daughter of Isis (as in, she considered her actual mother to be Isis-like), and calls her a "personal muse." In the play, Ra has taken over all of creation and thrown out Geb (god of earth) and Nut (the sky goddess).  Ra insists that he is t...

Danubia, by Simon Winder Last year I read and loved Germania , Winder's book about all the things he likes about Germany and its history.  That book led to this one, in which he tackles the absurdly impossible task of explaining the Habsburgs -- the European dynasty that ruled huge (and varying) swathes of Europe for centuries, from Rudolf I in 1282 to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I.  Luckily for all of us, Winder does not even try to cover everything; this is an "interesting bits" selection.  It's still 500 pages long, and I ran out of steam about halfway through and left it alone for a little while before picking it back up again, but it's a highly entertaining 500 pages and just as good as Germania . (Note: This kind of stuff is right up my alley, and Simon Winder, if you ever read this, I would like to volunteer for a job as, say, secretary.  I would happily wander around Brno looking at old churches and residential neighborho...

Doomsday Book , by Connie Willis Reading the Chronicles of St. Mary's was fun, but it got me longing to read more about time travel in done in a way that I just like better.  I've only read Doomsday Book once before (as opposed to To Say Nothing of the Dog , which I've read many times) because Doomsday Book will break your heart into bits and then jump up and down on them.  But all of a sudden I really wanted to re-read it, and so I pulled it off the shelf. In future Oxford, historians can time-travel to observe real historical events, but nobody has ever gone as far back as the Middle Ages.  Kivrin, however, is determined to go and has been training for two years.  She's got it all planned out and will stay for two weeks, seeing the Christmas of 1320. Nothing goes right.  Kivrin falls ill as soon as she arrives, and as all of future Oxford falls to the same influenza virus, they can't get her back.  She takes shelter at a small manor where th...

The Tick: The Naked City , by Ben Edlund My kid got me a present, and it was a good one!  We are all Tick fans here, but it's a long time since I saw any of the graphic novels.  This is a collection of the first six Tick comics, in which he arrives in the City in order to greet his destiny.  Destiny takes the form of a lot of ninjas!  And there is plenty of other action to keep Tick amused, until he meets Arthur, his sidekick, and his new nemesis....the Red Scare.  Oh, I just love the Tick.  SPOON! They're in disguise.  As a hedge.

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book: a Facsimile , ed. Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett After reading Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts , I wondered what else de Hamel might have produced, and I found this neat book!  With the magic of InterLibrary Loan, it was soon in my hands. This is a facsimile of an unusual manuscript.  It's not very long, and it dates from the late 1400s.  It's a sort of design or idea book for the fancy initials in illuminated manuscripts!  It contains fourteen different kinds of decorative letters: a sort of blackletter type, several with leaves, and some very whimsical alphabets made of human and animal figures.  Most aren't colored in or anything; they're diagrams. It's a lot of fun to look at and full of great design ideas.  I'm very tempted to use some of them in embroidery, and maybe someday I will (I've got plenty to do right now).  If you're interested in lettering, this is a great resource!

These are my favorites of the shorts, and I saved them for last!  I hadn't realized how very early they had been written; both date from the mid-1960s, which also accounts for their similar semi-Elizabethan air.  Neither were actually published until the mid-1990s. "The True State of Affairs" is written by a modern English woman who has somehow ended up in another world, one in which she is promptly fooled into being a fall guy.  She is now a political prisoner in a late-medieval sort of world where a couple of factions are fighting for dominance, but since the only information she gets is from her jailors, it's really hard to figure anything out.  (The country is called Dalemark, but none of the other names match, so I'm going to presume that it's an early version without too much connection to the Dalemark Quartet.) From her balcony, she can just see a bit of another prisoner's balcony, and without much to do, they each think a lot about the other.  ...

Craeft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True meaning of Traditional Crafts, by Alexander Langlands I got wind of this book when it was published in the UK because I subscribed to the Heritage Craft Association's Facebook page .  (Why did I do that?  Who knows, it's interesting!)  I've been waiting for it ever since, and I finally got it. Alexander Langlands is a British archaeologist who I gather is fairly well known if you pay attention to these things.  He started off as a jobbing archaeologist (because in the UK, you have to pay archaeologists to check out the ground if you want to build anything; who knows, maybe Richard III is down there) and then did a bunch of things for the BBC that I would probably enjoy watching, like Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm , only I never seem to have time for much TV.  So he's the kind of guy who really likes to do things like thatch roofs or learn how to mow hay with a scythe.  And that is what this book is ab...