Howling Frog Books

 The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins This was my book club book!  I think we all agree that while the book could easily be half the length, the thesis is an important one that is particularly useful to people like us -- women socialized to make everyone else happy (whether they like it or not).  Also, you can really tell that Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker with a podcast.  Which I might listen to. All it boils down to is -- let people do what they're going to do, and don't worry about it so much.  Then decide what it is that you need to do, and do that. So if (as in her example) your teen kid wants to go for tacos in a tuxedo in the rain without a coat, just let him do that without fussing.  If people are judgemental, that's okay.  The only person you can control is yourself, so what are you going to do with yourself? Useful interludes include: What if I'm feeling envious of everybody else?  What if my life is a disaster?  What if some...

 Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh On a small asteroid, a tiny remnant of humanity cling to their ideology.  Earth was destroyed in the Majo War, and most of the human survivors live on one world of the massive, peaceful, and multispecies Majoda civilization that is managed by the Wisdom, a millenia-old transdimensional artificial intelligence.  But on Gaea Station, these survivors live an extremely Spartan existence dedicated to revenge. Valkyr has spent her life training as a soldier, just like her twin brother Mags, just like every Gaean child.  Now her group is up for assignment; each girl will be given a lifetime job in a section of Gaea to keep it running.  Kyr and her brother, as warbreeds, are excellent soldiers and both expect to be assigned as such, but Mags doesn't want it and Kyr discovers that she's expected to spend her life bearing children in Nursery, what with her valuable genetics and all.  The capture of a majo serves as the catalyst th...

 Happy March Magics!  Back in July of 2024, I joined a group of Diana Wynne Jones fans in reading the complete works, in publication order.  You can see the host at her blog!   She gave us a schedule and we dove in.  This has been such a fun project for me, and a real lifesaver during some rough times. It's very enlightening to read the books in order, because I could see her writing talent developing.  Every so often she would hit a new level of descriptiveness, of plot layering, of subtlety.   Themes come up and into focus, and get several treatments before subsiding in favor of some new theme.  So for example, Homeward Bounders (arguably her most tragic story) and Time of the Ghost (most horrifying) were written right next to each other.  What does that say about what she was thinking at the time? Reading so continually also brings out characteristics that last across many books, such as a love of joyful, possibly destructive, chaos...

 The Strange House, vols 1 and 2, by Uketsu  This is at least a trilogy, but so far only the first two have been published.  Uketsu is an odd Japanese artist/ Youtuber /author, whose videos and books have made something of a splash.  As far as I can tell, no one admits to knowing who Uketsu actually is -- the artist is always masked. The unnamed narrator is asked to investigate an unusual floor plan for a house that previously belonged to a married couple with a child.  This doesn't seem like something she knows much about, so she asks an architect friend who is into the occult; maybe he can come up with something.  Kurihara studies the floor plans, notes its oddities, and spins the craziest, most macabre theories you've ever heard.   Then they connect this house to the inhabitants' previous home, which also seems odd.  And a woman claiming to be the wife of a murder victim shows up, asking for help.  Everything just gets more complex i...

 I've had these sitting on the desk for a while, and I'm just going to take them all off at once.  These were all books on my TBR shelf that I finally got around to reading! The Stones Are Hatching , by Geraldine McCaughrean :  It's 1919, and Phelim and his sister live deep in the countryside.  Phelim is on his own when all the old folktales rise up at once and hit him -- the domovoy and the glashans take over the house, call him Jack o'Green, and tell him to hurry up and save them all from the Stoor Worm, as the Black Dog attacks from outside.  Phelim is to travel cross-country and gather up his allies: the Maiden, the Fool, and the Hobby-Horse -- but the trouble is, he's never been told any of the stories.  He hasn't a clue how to navigate a world gone back to every superstition come alive, and he can't understand why everyone thinks it's his job to defeat the Stoor Worm.  It's a well-told tale of discovering the world and himself. The Thorn Ogres ...

 4!   That gives me  The Nature of Things , by Lucretius...a classic of Roman philosophy.  It's a poem, but I have a vague idea that the Penguin Classics hardcover at the library is in prose.  So wish me luck, and if there's a better translation out there that you know of, let me know!     

 Wow, it's the 40th Classics Club Spin !  You know the drill, or you can see it at the site.  They'll pull the number on Sunday morning, and we'll have until April 11th to finish the book.  Here are my titles:  No Name, by Wilkie Collins Peter the Great's African, by Pushkin  The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay The Nature of Things, by Lucretius Second-Class Citizen, by Buchi Emecheta Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman (this would be quite a feat!) Sybil, by Disraeli The Leopard, by di Lampedusa  Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope   The Obedience of a Christian Man, by William Tyndale   Sagas of Icelanders (aiming for 50% by the due date) The Well at the End of the World, by William Morris   The Law and the Lady, by Wilkie Collins It is Acceptable (Det Gaar An), C. J. L. Almqvist  Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana  Amerika, by Kafka Polyhistor Solinus   The Tale of Sinhue (ancient Egyptian poetry)   Eichmann ...