Howling Frog Books

Maidenhair , by Mikhail Shishkin This book has been a long-term project.  It's a Russian modernist novel that made a big splash a few years ago.  I've been reading it, slowly, since...January?  It's not that it was incredibly difficult; it's weird but if you let it wash over you it's not overwhelming.  But taking it slowly worked pretty well for me. There are several strands in the braid that make up Maidenhair : A translator at a Swiss border post interprets for Russian people seeking asylum.  They tell long, elaborate stories (often untrue) and Peter sometimes does too.  In fact, sometimes you wonder which is which. He writes letters to his son, "Nebuchadnezzarsaurus," about the boy's imaginary kingdom. There are sections of the diary of a Russian singer who was a young teen in 1914 and who lived to see the USSR crumble. The interpreter re-lives his affair with his son's mother (his wife?) and his obsession with her former lover, calling...

Arthur's Britain , by Leslie Alcock I got this years ago and then couldn't get very far in it.  No wonder--the first 100 pages are interesting, the last 100 pages are interesting, but in the middle there are 150 pages or so that are incredibly dry.  Alcock wrote one of the really definitive books of "Who was the real Arthur?" back in 1971, and he was well qualified to do so after excavating Cadbury Castle.  It's now a Penguin "Classic History" title, but since it's also 40 years out of date, I wouldn't recommend it for up-to-the-minute accuracy.  Overall, though, it's probably reasonable enough.  It's a portrait of 5th-century Britain, focused on the archaeological and textual evidence--what there is of it. The first 100 pages delve into the historical texts that mention Arthur: Nennius, Gildas, all our old friends.  From these, Alcock concludes (after a lot of detail and argument) that Arthur would have been a famous warrior, but ...

I'm finding that I get overwhelmed with Life at the End of the Semester and stop posting for a week or so at a time.  So here's an update: I've been doing some great reading.  I'm nearly halfway through The Mill on the Floss , which is on my TBR list for this year, and I thought I'd read it for the Classics Club April theme.  I'm enjoying it a lot.   Pretty soon I shall start August 1914 too, for the May theme. My really big project now that I'm done with What is to be Done?* is that I ILLed Charles Williams' Arthurian poetry!  I'm working my way through it by reading the poems in the chronological order that C. S. Lewis recommended for beginners.  There is an accompanying Lewis essay, and I'm reading a section of essay, then the chunk of poems the essay covers.  This is a huge help, because Williams' poetry is far beyond me.  If I had time to do a second reading, I would then re-read them in the proper order Williams arranged them in,...

We Learn Nothing: Essays by Tim Kreider I picked up this book of essays at work, and they were just kind of fun.  Tim Kreider is a cartoonist and essayist, and these were all about life and friends and hard times and so on, and they're very funny in a kind of rough-edged way.  Here's a sample that I really like: Years ago a friend of mine and I used to frequent a market in Baltimore where we would eat oysters and drink Very Large Beers from 32-ounce styrofoam cups. One of the regulars there had the worst toupee in the world, a comical little wig taped in place on the top of his head. Looking at this man and drinking our VLBs, we developed the concept of the Soul Toupee. Each of us has a Soul Toupee. The Soul Toupee is that thing about ourselves we are most deeply embarrassed by and like to think we have cunningly concealed from the world, but which is, in fact, pitifully obvious to everybody who knows us. Contemplating one’s own Soul Toupee is not an ex...

What is to be Done?  by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky I read this for Tom's April readalong , and I was quite excited about it because What is to be Done? was an important part of a literary debate in 19th century Russia about what Russian society should be.  Turgenev first asked the question in Fathers and Sons, and here Chernyshevsky tries to answer it.  He doesn't claim great literary talent; in fact, he says right out that he hasn't got much.  He wrote a novel--while in prison--because that was the way Russians got around the censors to write about revolutionary ideas.  Such ideas are very thinly veiled in this novel, which likens Russia to a bad wheatfield that is sorely in need of drainage and general reform. There is a plot, though.  Vera is a young woman who is desperate to escape her family, especially her mother, who is a crook and a cheat, and who wants to arrange an advantageous marriage for her daughter.  Vera is rescued by Lopu...

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube , by Patrick Leigh Fermor In 1933, an 18-year-old Patrick was thrown out of school and decided that he might as well go on a walking tour of Europe.  He set off to walk to Constantinople.*  As a much older man, he sat down with his memories and diaries to write out the story in a three-part set.  This is the first volume; I have the second waiting; and the third was never finished but it was published posthumously so I will read it too. Since I cannot think of anything much more wonderful than to walk across Europe (can you?), I was instantly hooked.  And truly, I enjoyed this so much!  Fermor throws the people he met, scenery, history, art, strange stories, and all sorts of things into his book--and in many cases he's talking about a world that is now gone.  Most of this volume is spent in Germany, and Nazism is just getting started.  It has little foothold a...

The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books , by Eleanor Cameron Eleanor Cameron was the author of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and other Mr. Bass stories, as well as some other books too.  This is a collection of essays and speeches from the mid 1960s about children's literature--writing it, reading it, and enjoying it.  She talks about a lot of my favorites and mentions a few I think I would like to read.  At time she gets a little too misty-eyed about myth and children and all, but mostly it's some quite good stuff if you're interested in children's literature.  I especially liked the last two essays, which were about Wanda Gag and Eleanor Farjeon.  They were fun.  But the whole thing was quite worth reading.