Howling Frog Books

 18!  This gives me a doozy that I've long wanted to read: The Well at the World's End , by William Morris .  It's a knightly adventure through trackless forest, an imitation of Malory and of Spenser, I'd say.  Sir Ralph decides to search for, guess what, the Well at the World's End, and has many adventures along the way, often about the Castle of Abundance and so on.  I got an ebook from Gutenberg and it's looking pretty lengthy, being divided into four books of many chapters each.  PLUS Morris went for the full Victorian/Howard Pyle style, observe this random paragraph: Therewithal they gat to horse and rode away through that stony land, wherein was no river, but for water many pools in the bottoms, with little brooks running from them. But after a while they came upon a ridge somewhat high, on the further side whereof was a wide valley well-grassed and with few trees, and no habitation of man that they might see. But a wide river ran down the midst of...

 Parables of Kierkegaard , ed. Thomas C. Oden I wasn't sure what to expect from this collction, but given the general intimidatingness of Kierkegaard, I figured I could deal with some parables.  I did actually read Either/Or in college, with particular focus on "Diary of a Seducer," but that was long long ago! What this turned out to be is a collection of parable-like stories gathered from the complete works of Kierkegaard.  Perhaps it's a few sentences of anecdote, perhaps it's a long excerpt on the experiences of a particular character known in 1830s. Christianshavn.  And, each little story comes with a moral quesion that the editor inserted to clarify what Kierkegaard was getting at.  I'm not sure it helped; to my mind it mostly gave an appearance of purpose more than there was, in fact, purpose. But it was a nice and fairly interesting thing to read.

 It's time for the 45th Classics Club Spin!  You know the rules, so here's my list:  Amerika, by Kafka Thus Were Their Faces, by Silvina Ocampo Peter the Great's African, by Pushkin Lives, by Plutarch (vol I) Sybil, by Disraeli   Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt   The Leopard, by di Lampedusa Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman (this would be quite a feat!) Conjure Tales, by Charles Chesnutt Polyhistor Solinus    Folktales collected by Afanas'ev (vol I of 3)   Sagas of Icelanders (aiming for 50% by the due date)   The Law and the Lady, by Wilkie Collins The Burning Plain, by Juan Rulfo The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay Sport of the Gods, by Paul Dunbar Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope The Well at the End of the World, by William Morris The Tale of Sinhue (ancient Egyptian poetry) The Once and Future King, by T. H. White Hoping for: Once and Future King or Plutarch.  Nervous about: Life and Fate!  It's a brick! What do you thin...

 Bushman Lives ! , and Adventures of a Dwergish Girl , by Daniel Pinkwater As long-time readers (if any) know, Pinkwater is a favorite of mine and in fact built large sections of my brain in my youth.  But these two are fairly recent, being only a decade or so old, and I had never gotten around to them -- largely because I was quite disappointed by one of his newer books in the late 90s and was cautious about reading more.  However!  A few months ago I happened upon a ranked list of every single Pinkwater book ever, which is over 100 titles and includes quite a few different genres, so not an easy list to rank.  Anyway, this guy thought Bushman Lives! was pretty great, so I thought I would give it a try somettime, and that time was now. Harold Knishke, disaffected high school student, lives in Chicago, and his coming-of-age story involves deciding to learn to draw, getting interested in art, and meeting all the strange people in the Chicago art scene.  Real...

  On Lying and Politics, two essays by Hannah Arendt I love this cover though This little book contains two very long essays: "Truth and Politics" and "Lying in Politics."  Both take questions of the Vietnam War and apply them to a wider context.  "Lying in Politics" is a direct response to the release of the Pentagon Papers. Arendt is probably a little above my head.  I have ambitions to read her larger works, but I don't know that I even managed to plumb the depths of these short ones.  "Truth and Politics" talks a lot about what kinds of truth there are and how they might be manipulated or if truth is even very findable.  It's less concrete, more abstract than the second essay. "Lying in Politics" meditates upon the question of "how could they?" in relation to Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,  why and how politicians lie, and particularly focuses on lying as a method of trying to make reality conform to the liar...

 Sublimia Syndrome, by Exurb1a Time for some more far-future science fiction!  Millennia in the future, mankind has spread among the stars and evolved into quite a few different variants.  In fact it's been so long that Earth is long-forgotten, the galactic empire has been through dozens of collapses and regenerations, and there are even groups like the behethan (incredibly wise space whales) that nevertheless originated from humanity at some point.   One section of space, however, is perhaps better left alone; the area the Big Sisters occupied.  They are gone now, perhaps having evolved into energy, or some other mysterious fate, but their abandoned worlds contain artifacts and buildings beyond the understanding of anyone else.  In fact, trying to figure out what the Big Sisters were up to is a good way to develop sublimia, a feeling of incomprehension and discombubulation so total that it becomes dangerous and can easily lead to madness. As with The...

 Beau Geste, by P. C. Wren Whoof, this was an exciting one!  If you're not familiar, as I was not, Beau Geste*  was a smash hit back in the 1920s, was promptly made into a big-budget film (and a lot of radio plays, more films, and a TV show), and is just the sort of book everybody read back in the day, like Ben-Hur  or Lorna Doone.  If you grew up (as I did) reading old Peanuts collections from the library, you'll remember Snoopy being a Legionnaire at Fort Zinderneuf.   Three brothers, orphans, grow up at Brandon Abbas under the care of their lovely aunt, Lady Brandon.  Michael, the oldest, is the leader and known as Beau.  His younger twin, Digby, follows, and John, the youngest, is the narrator.  Along with playmates and cousins, they love to look at Aunt Patricia's prize jewel, the huge sapphire known as the Blue Water; and one evening it's stolen.  No one could have done it but the seven people in the room, and Michael decide...