Howling Frog Books

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table , by Molly Wizenberg I've finally managed to find a food book to finish off the Mixing It Up Challenge!  Maybe after I read all those gardening and food books last year, I was just done for a while.  Anyway, challenge complete. Molly Wizenberg writes a food blog, and as is so often the case, a book resulted.  (The book is not, so far as I know, made up of blog posts.)  Each short chapter talks about a piece of Wizenberg's life and then provides an accompanying recipe.  It's mostly autobiographical; she talks about her childhood and her parents--especially her dad--college, relationships, time in Paris, and eventually meeting and marrying her husband (who she actually met through her blog). There are some great recipes included, many of which are interesting or different, not just your usual thing.  I'm copying several.  There is not so much in the way of philosophizing about the joys of h...

A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century , by Barbara Tuchman The 14th century was pretty bad, and Barbara Tuchman is here to tell you all about it.  Her central focus is on France, which was the cultural center of medieval Europe in many ways, and she picks Enguerrand Coucy VII as a organizing central figure to follow.  The Sire of Coucy was an important lord involved in nearly everything that went on, and there is plenty of documentation about him.  That said, I don't think that the majority of the book is directly about Coucy; there is lots of background information and other stuff going on. Misery is piled upon misery in the 14th century; the Black Death, constant pointless warfare, brigandage that ruins towns, a papal schism, and a ruling class that requires ever more money and ostentation while impoverishing ordinary people and delivering nothing but bad government.  More than anything else, there is war--quite often war simply because the knights want...

Midnight in Austenland , by Shannon Hale This one is a really fun light read.  I'm not a big fan of the Jane Austen spin-off industry, but I do love Shannon Hale and her Austenland books, which features a sort of theme park where you can go and live the Regency lifestyle for a couple of weeks.  Romance guaranteed! This is the second book and is a takeoff on Northanger Abbey (a favorite of mine).  Charlotte, age about 39, was blindsided by her husband's infidelity and desertion.  She has spent the past year or so numbing herself with work.  Now she's spending two weeks at Pembroke Park, and they're playing a Gothic mystery game--but some of the clues might be real.  Charlotte spends her time wondering what is real and what is pretend. The book is really very funny as well as a bit scary.  I love some of the lines: His profile was significant, as if it belonged on legal tender.  His jaw was delightful to contemplate, and his long hair pull...

The Old Curiosity Shop , by Charles Dickens I finally did it!  I've been reading this book for months, but my problem was that it was on my tablet and e-reading just wasn't doing it for me with this book.  I checked a paper copy (with illustrations by Phiz!) out of the library last week and finished the second half of the book in about 3 days.  It's much better on paper. Here we have the saga of Little Nell and her dotty old grandfather, horrible Quilp with his confederates, and trusty Kit Nubbins with his good friends.   There are virtuous folks, who go through trials and are rewarded, and baddies who come to a sorry end.  And there are some funny ones with a story nearly all their own, who turn out good in the end--I liked them quite a lot. Quilp's manipulations made me think of him as a DM, running his own evil D&D game, which is not very classically-minded of me. Really, I think I liked the Kit sections best.  Nell was angelic and all, and I d...

Lovely is the Lee, by Robert Gibbings This is one of those nice, peaceful books where the author wanders around the countryside and writes about it. I liked it very much. Apparently it was quite a hit in the mid-40s when it was released; Gibbings had already written two books about the countryside and there was another after this one. Gibbings became quite well-known and appeared on the radio and even television. There is not one word about World War II in this book, which was probably part of its appeal, but at the same time, everyone knew that the things he wrote about were in danger of disappearing. I expect a lot of it has disappeared by now. Gibbings starts in Galway and just sort of wanders around the Irish coast for several months. He visits tiny islands, goes out with fishermen, and meets interesting people. There is a lot about birds and fish, a good bit of history, and many anecdotes about fairies and weird happenings--I think I liked that best. Eventually Gibbings e...

My daughter and I read The Merchant of Venice out loud for her schoolwork. I had never read this play before, so it was a good chance for me. Explaining the history of anti-Semitism to a modern kid is quite a job, I must say, and we had some good discussions. Shylock's complex character was difficult for her to comprehend (and me too); here you have a fairly traditional set of people except for Shylock, who has perhaps sparked more arguments than any other Shakespearean character besides Hamlet. He has good reason to hate Antonio, but his determination to exact revenge eventually destroys him, and his enemies learn nothing. I'm going to count this as the drama selection for the Mixing It Up Challenge! 11 down, 5 to go! But the rest will take longer, since I've chosen a pretty long history book. I don't have a cooking or travel selection yet, so recommendations are welcome. I've just gotten around to watching the final episode of the first season of Downton A...

Henrietta Sees It Through: More News From the Home Front, 1942-1945 , by Joyce Dennys It's another volume of Henrietta's village life and wartime trials! I was happy to get my hands on this volume after I enjoyed Henrietta's War so much. (Once again, I was deprived of the pretty candy-like cover of the new edition.) This one did not disappoint and is even a bit longer than the first one. The "Henrietta" letters are fictional and were written for Sketch magazine by Joyce Dennys as a humor column. The book's introduction says it nicely: "It is Joyce Dennys' great gift to have transformed the frustration and grief of those years into the most enchanting comedy." Of course not all of the weekly letters could be published in the book, so this is just a nice selection with explanatory footnotes when you've missed an event. All the same characters are still living in the little village on the Dover coast, but now there are evacuees in home...

Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, by Michael Shermer In the Evolution vs. Creation discussions, Shermer is a welcome voice of moderation (to me anyway). As a former Baptist, he has a realistic idea of what faith is about, and he thinks that respectful dialogue and debate--as tedious as it may be, what with the everlasting repetition--is better than insults and scorn, which usually fails to convince. (It generally makes me stubborn when people do it to me.) I accept evolution as a valid scientific theory and I teach it to my kids, but as a religious person I dislike the generalized insults that come from prominent skeptics like Dawkins and P. Z. Myers. Because of that, I was looking forward to reading Why Darwin Matters . Shermer talks about the whole debate. He does not talk as much about evolution itself as I expected, though there is quite a bit of that. He spends at least as much time on why some folks do not accept evolution, why the creationist moveme...

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men , by Mara Hvistendahl For the past few years, we've been hearing about the imbalance of boys vs. girls in China--people want to have boys, and so you get orphanages full of girls and schools full of little boys who won't have anyone to marry when they grow up. We've been hearing about it happening in India too, though China usually seems to get what headlines are going. Hvistendahl has investigated this social trend and documents it thoroughly. The news is really bad: throughout Asia and now Eastern Europe, people frequently choose to abort baby girls in hopes of getting sons instead. The practice is far more pervasive than anyone realized (it persists in groups in the US too), it's growing in many areas, it's routinely ignored, and it results in millions of angry young men with no hopes of marriage but plenty of time for violence. This is a really horrifying issue. The b...

The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories , by M. R. James I've been saving this second volume of James stories for a treat. Though they are not as consistently good as the earlier stories, I enjoyed them quite a bit and there are some really good ones here. James was very subtle about his ghosts and ghouls, which make them really good to read about--they're just suggested. The title story, "The Haunted Dolls' House," sounded awfully familiar to me although I knew I'd never read it before. My 11-year-old daughter took one look at it and knew--the plot was lifted for a children's book she read last year called The Dollhouse Murders . It's really similar. There's an extra treat at the end of the book--a little collection of 12 medieval ghost stories written in Latin and translated by James. The Latin is included, so you can try your hand at it too! And there are a couple of short essays on ghost stories. I'm counting this as my horro...

Feynman , by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick Well, who knew--there's a graphic novel biography of Richard Feynman! I found it at the library the other day, and since I'm a Feynman fan, I picked it right up. The storyline jumps around kind of a lot at first, but soon settles down into a fun rhythm. If you're not familiar with the name, you should know that Richard Feynman was one of the eminent physicists of the 20th century. He got to be quite famous because he was kind of a big personality--he was outspoken, direct, had a bunch of unusual hobbies, and was all around an interesting guy. He wrote a couple of books of entertaining vignettes about his life and experiences that people who didn't understand physics (like me) could enjoy, and he also worked hard to make physics comprehensible to us ordinary folks. The graphic novel covers a lot of material that I was already familiar with, and added more that I didn't know--it gives a better overall picture of Feynman...

Daughter of Smoke and Bone , by Laini Taylor I've seen this book all over the YA blogs, and eventually one of the descriptions caught my attention. It's a pretty enjoyable book, very current in the paranormal romance genre. Karou is 17, an art student in Prague. But she grew up in a shop that is run by a chimaera who collects teeth. Her hair grows blue. She speaks 20 languages, and she doesn't know where she came from. Then an angel appears and tries to kill her. Since they are deadly enemies, it follows that they are meant to be together! Or, maybe not, considering what they each have to forgive. I am not a 'paranormal teen romance' person, but I did quite enjoy the story and writing, and I'll be reading the rest of the trilogy. I'm counting this as the YA requirement for the Mixing It Up Challenge. I just noticed that today is the 19th of January and so far I've averaged a book per day--partly because I've read 5 light books during 3 days o...

And There Was Light , by Jacques Lusseyran I can't remember now who recommended this book on her blog, so if it was you, tell me so I can thank you! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight in an accident when he was about 8 years old, and the first half of the book is about his experiences coping with blindness. I don't know if I should say "coping" because that's not how he tells it at all; it's an amazing story, and I can't do it justice. Then, when Lusseyran was a teenager, the Germans invaded France. He describes living in occupied Paris, and how he and his friends started a resistance organization. That's also an amazing story! Before too long they joined up with the rest of the French Resistance. They were nearly all still under 18, which gave them something of an advantage. Their unit was eventually betrayed and Lusseyran spent the remainder of the war in a concentration camp, but he spends very little time on that period. This was a great book ...

The Man in the High Castle , by Philip K. Dick I've had an old paperback library copy of this on my TBR pile for quite a long time. I don't know if anyone wrote any alternate-universe books about a different outcome to World War II before Dick did, but this is the most famous one. It's the late 60's, and the Axis won the war. Japan occupies the West Coast of the American continent and Germany owns the East Coast as well as all of Europe and Africa. Africa has been depopulated, black people are mostly enslaved, Jews live in hiding, and everything is very racialized. White people in California live in subservience to the Japanese (as do the Chinese). And Germans are sending rockets out to colonize the solar system, too. Although Japan and Germany are officially friendly, the cracks are starting to show. The action mainly takes place in San Francisco or the Midwest (which is the only remnant of the USA and mostly ignored), and jumps between several main characters. ...

Hopjoy Was Here , by Colin Watson I thought maybe the Watson mysteries would improve, so I picked up the next one on the pile. It's called Hopjoy Was Here and I'm happy to report that it was indeed much better--more interesting and yes, kind of funny. It was really kind of an oddball mystery, but in an entertaining way. Now I will be happy to read more Watson in future. My book cover is not nearly so nice as this picture from a new run of the series. It is quite a boring cover and has a photo on it of a British actor with a pipe and tweed hat, from the BBC series based on the books--it was called "Murder Most English." The show ran in the late 70's and featured the guy who played James Herriot in "All Creatures Great and Small" as the sargeant. Maybe I'll see if I can find it sometime, though really I don't like televised mysteries very much, just books. I'm going to count this as the mystery selection in the Mixing It Up Challenge.

Half of a Yellow Sun , by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie This is the first Adichie book I've heard of or read, and she is going on my list of authors I need to read more of. Her writing is beautiful. And tragic. The story revolves around a small constellation of people in Nigeria and explores their personal relationships. All become involved in the Biafran independence movement of the late 1960s, and we see how war and hardship change them. Some background information: Biafra was an attempt at secession from Nigeria in 1967, and it only lasted a couple of years; Nigeria declared war and few governments wanted to encourage post-colonial African independence movements, and the Biafrans were massacred or starved. The title refers to the Biafran flag. This is yet another title recommended by Eva, so she gets the credit. And, I'm counting this as my modern fiction entry in the Mixing It Up Challenge.

I know, this is going a bit overboard, but I like this one! It's the Mixing It Up Challenge hosted by Ellie at Musings of a Bookshop Girl. Here are the rules: Read one book from each of the challenge categories, using the guidelines above. Don't use the same book for more than one category! The challenge will run until December 31st 2012, so you can sign up any time during the year. Create a blog post for the challenge, to keep track of what you've read. Add review links for each completed book so we can see how you're getting on. My post, for example, looks like THIS . The URL you leave in the Mr Linky MUST be a direct link to your challenge post, not to your blog homepage - I don't have time to comb through several months' worth of posts searching for it as the year wears on! Leave a comment on this post with your blog name (so I can match you to your Linky entry) and your chosen level of participation. Bookmark this post so you can come back late...