Howling Frog Books

It's the last day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, hosted by the Estella Society .  Final question: One of the unfortunate side effects of reading and blogging like rockstars seems to be a tendency toward burnout. How do you keep things fresh on your blog and in your reading ? Yeah, I have to take a week or two off sometime, and I'm not even one of those rockstar bloggers!  It's not easy to come up with posts all the time. Generally a new event or fun little activity will get me back on the bicycle.  March Magics is guaranteed to get me writing, or one of those goofy little questionnaires that go around.  The new year is always invigorating too. It's pretty rare for me to hit a reading slump, where I'm not reading something.  If I do it's generally a sign that I've picked two or three long, difficult books and have forgotten to put in anything lighter and more fun.  Bringing in a book that really grabs me will fix that.   Thanks to t...

Welcome to Day 3 of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, hosted by the Estella Society.   Today's question: What have you read and loved because of a fellow blogger? Well, quite a lot of things really, which I'm sure is the answer for most of us.  And very often I forget who blogged about a book--I put it on my list and read it months later, and by then I don't know any more.  But here are some: Kristen at We Be Reading hosts the annual DWJ fest, now to be March Magics (so as to include our beloved Pterry as well).  I guess she's sort of the head of the DWJ fanclub--you can recognize us by the fact that we all seem to have put Fire and Hemlock on our lists of five books.  As such she has come up with other things I wanted to read too. Tom at Wuthering Expectations does truly scary levels of literary erudition, and he came up with the most preposterous readalong in blog history-- What is to be Done? Brona is my go-to for Australian literature....

Day 2 of BBAW is interview day!  I was partnered with Darren from Bart's Bookshelf . Together, we came up with a list of questions; here are his answers, and you'll have to head over to his blog to see mine.  BBS: How did you get into book blogging? How long have you been doing it? Bart’s Bookshelf, started when my original but just about defunct personal blog was in it’s last gasps of life. After a few years of really not reading as much as I would have liked, I decided it was time to do something about it and force myself to get back in to the habit of reading, and I was going to do this by setting myself some targets and reviewing what I read. I also enjoyed (and still do) the work of tweaking and maintaining a blog, so this was a way of doing that. BBS: Tell me a little bit about the name of your blog and how it came to be. Longer ago than I care to admit, when I was still a teenager, I had a hairstyle that my friends decided looked like Bart Simpson’s ...

Hey everybody, it's Book Blogger Appreciation Week, hosted by the Estella Society!   For the first day, I'm supposed to introduce myself by telling about five books that represent me as a person or my interests/lifestyle.  So here we go:   Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology and the Origins of European Dance, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber .   I love reading history, I love reading about textiles and women's history, I have kind of a thing for Russia (and India, and the British Isles), and I love Barber's work.  This is a fabulous book that I'm planning to re-read this year.  Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones . Regular Howling Frog readers are well aware that DWJ is my all-time favorite ever.  And Fire and Hemlock is her strangest, most complex, novel.  I'll let this post cover my love of embroidery too, because I actually have a DWJ sampler in progress...that I haven't touched in a while, actually, but I'm looking forward to workin...

I signed up for this!  Look out, because I even signed up to interview another book blogger.  I've never done BBAW before, and this year it's being hosted by The Estella Society.   The topics: Day 1 Introduce yourself by telling us about five books that represent you as a person or your interests/lifestyle. Day 2 Interview Day! If you choose to be part of the interviews (in the form down below), you’ll be assigned a fellow blogger to chat with and post about! Sign-ups for interviews close on Wednesday, February 10!  Day 3 What have you read and loved because of a fellow blogger? Day 4 How do you stay connected to the community? Examples: social media, regular commenting, participation in blog events, etc. Tell us your faves! Day 5 One of the unfortunate side effects of reading and blogging like rockstars seems to be a tendency toward burnout. How do you keep things fresh on your blog and in your reading? Watch for BBAW articles all over ...