October '22 Roundup & Rambling

 Raw Data:

Novels - 23 ↑

Graphic Novels - 6 ⭤

Average Rating - 3.02 ↓

Pages - 6498 ↑

Words - 2175 ↑

The Bad:

Forgotten Ruin - 2.5stars of Rangers rangering this book right into the ground.

The Good:

Kill Shot - 4.5stars of Mitch Rapp at his best.

Movie:

The Muppets Haunted Mansion was the final muppet movie in my journey. I'd say it was for either kids who know nothing about the Muppets or for fans like myself who need to watch everything Muppet. Everyone else, probably not really worth your time.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Bad Moon - MTG 4E
• The Bookstooge Chronicles: The Midlife Crisis
• Balance - MTG 4E
• Wordpress Forums: Banned Again!
• Ball Lightning - MTG 4E
• Need More Space? Bookstooge Has You Covered Part II
• Battering Ram - MTG 4E
• Author Index: My Next Big Project

Personal:

What a month. I was sick near the beginning that threw me out of work for a week and then took another 2 weeks to fully recover. Bronchitis is awful! :-( But it is one reason I read so much. Of course, feeling so bad I rated things a bit harder and so my average rating was down.

Not writing reviews was just what I needed. It gave me a chance to realize that a book review site is a second job while blogging is a hobby. Over the last year I have turned into a book reviewing site and I want to be a blogger again. I want to write for fun, not because I feel like I have to. With my personality, that is going to be a hard line to balance, as I just want to go all-out in whatever I am doing. But I can't. I would also like to thank all of you for your patience as I posted essentially book ratings. Several of you commented mightily and made it a fun time in spite of nothing going on. Aonghus, I was proud of you for jumping in too. Even if you aren't a regular :-)

Reading my old journals made me realize how I've changed and stayed the same and blogging is integral to that part of me that is fun and spontaneous (it's about the only spontaneous part of my life). I am not a spontaneous person and so I have to take it when I can. I'll never call out of work sick and just go to the beach (especially not in November in New England, brrrrrrrr!) but maybe I can blow off a book review and write about how laundry has changed my life ;-)

Cover Love:

You better watch out

You better not cry

Better not pout

I'm telling you why

Shadow Claus is coming to town

He's making a list

And checking it twice;

Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice

Shadow Claus is coming to town"

He sees you when you're sleeping

He knows when you're awake

He knows if you've been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake!

O! You better watch out!

You better not cry

Better not pout

I'm telling you why

Shadow Claus is coming to town

Shadow Claus is coming to town

Plans for Next Month:

November is going to be a return to having some words and pictures to go along with the ratings. I am also going to be cutting WAY down on the number of books read (I am NOT going to have 29 entries for books, that is for sure!) and I'm going to be leaving Tuesdays open. Not as a space to post something last minute but just have a day to not worry about the blog and to concentrate on those I am following.

I am going to follow Matt's path and make my reviews very simple affairs, like they used to be. Trying to become a blogger again and not exclusively a book reviewer. I LIKE connecting with people on their blogs and if all they did was reviews with no personality, it wouldn't be much fun. So I'm going to add personality here, or at least try.

I am also going to be stopping my manga reading until January. Once the new year rolls around I'm going to start up One Piece again as well as Full Metal Alchemist. But I just need a break so this is one place I can easily make that happen. Sorry, Misaki, you'll have to continue being patient with me.

September '22 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

Novels - 21 ↑

Graphic Novels - 6 ⭤

Average Rating - 3.07 ↓

Pages - 6116 ↑

Words - 1919K ↑

The Bad:

Dead Silence - 1star of totally awesome space horror RUINED by scyenze and romance

Hunting Zero - 1star read that killed this already dead series for me.

The Good:

American Assassin - The ONLY 4star read I had this month. sigh....

Movie:

Muppets Now, while quite enjoyable, had some serious flaws as an episodic show, in my opinion. There hasn't been a season 2 yet and I doubt there ever will be.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Ashes to Ashes - MTG 4E
• 9/11 - An Unbearable Weight of Remembrance
• Ashnod's Battle Gear - MTG 4E
• Aspect of Wolf - MTG 4E
• Backfire - MTG 4E

Personal:

What a busy, busy month. The only way I got through all the blogging was knowing that October was going to be totally different (more on that in the next section). After August's R&R and realizing I was on the edge of burnout, I spent September strategizing. It helped me mentally and emotionally (you try being an introspective introvert who hates people yet still wants to be liked).

Work still continues to be the dominant part of both my and Mrs B's life. We are both working overtime every week and the holiday season is approaching (Mrs B has already seen Christmas stuff getting readied to be out on the sales floor, boooo!). So Mrs B is only going to get busier and my own work shows ZERO slow down. We're still running about 2 months behind (so if you call and hire us, we won't be able to get there for 7-8 weeks) so this winter is probably going to be as busy as ever. I'm tired just thinking about it.

The weather started to change, which was much appreciated. Some mornings it was chilly enough so you could see your breath but the afternoons were still warm enough that t-shirts and shorts were more than enough. With the drought we're having I don't know what is going to happen for the foliage. Glad I'm not a leaf peeper.

Utilities are skyrocketing in price. The electrical company instituted a price hike that comes out to about a 50% across the board hike. It's all in the "service" part of the bill so you can't even offset it by trying to use less electricity. Once the cold weather hits and we have to turn on the furnace, and the natural gas bills start coming in, well, it's going to be an expensive winter. Thank goodness I have 3 can of campbell's chunky soup in reserve!

On the good side of things, Mrs B and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. God has truly blessed us together and we are so thankful He led us to the other. We don't take it lightly. I've also been playing the board game Doom with my brother every 3-6 weeks and that has been a blast. I keep taking pictures of the board and mini's when we're playing but my goodness, it is HARD to get even decent pix out of it, much less good ones. I'm going to keep trying though and maybe in the next month or two I'll have a mini's update about it. I also found someone at church who is interested in playing Magic the Gathering. We played a couple of games and while it was a bit too complicated for him, his 9 year old son was utterly enthralled. He's literally inhaling the rules and we're probably going to schedule play times a couple times a month. I figure I've got a year or two before he starts wiping the floor with me. So I'm going to enjoy my "win time" while I can :-D Also, if I play my cards right (oh, aren't I SO clever?!?) I can get him to sort through my cards and take out all the uncommons, rares and mythics in exchange for about 2000 commons. I'll see what his dad has to say on the subject.

Plans for Next Month:

I'm still reading up a storm but for October, while I'll be posting reviews, said reviews will only contain all the data I put in the very beginning. Pretty much going back to my roots of 2000-2001 and how I reviewed books then. That cuts about 90% of the writing so that pressure just isn't on me. That will have the 2fold effect of relieving the pressure and also letting my word well recharge. I won't even be adding covers. We're talking straight up text posts. LITTLE text posts too.

Depending on how that goes I might carry that format on for the rest of the year. Once my words get recharged and I keep on doing the minimum for reviews that will allow me to start writing some non-review posts again. It's been months since I've written something based on an idea that popped into my head at 1435 or some such thing. I need the spontaneity back and I can't do that if all my words go to just reviews.

I suspect October will be a recovery time for me and not a "hey, look at me blogging about Whatever" kind of month. Lots of tiny review posts. I'm hoping it will also help me to clear my head about blogging in general and using wordpress in particular. One change that will be big, for me anyway, is that I'll be crossposting everything to blogger now, starting with this post. I might not get everything all at once, but I'll be working on getting my blogger site more socially friendly.

Bookstooge Reviews 2016

2016 was on the whole a very good year for me. There will be lots of pictures and links in this post and the wordcount is the highest so far this year, so lets get cracking!

The Year in Visual Review. I continue to use Ipiccy.com for my collages, as their 25picture box works very well with the number of books I read each month and their iphone4 setting keeps all the squares pretty close to the cover sizes so the covers don’t get chopped off. I am sure there is a lot more I could be doing, but a monthly roundup is about the limit of my artsy-fartsy’ness.






I read 228 books this year. This was up from last years 183. Much of that is due to starting up Manga Monday again.








My pages read went up as well. From just under 63000 to just over 77000. Even though, in all fairness that includes the full number of pages for books that I DNF’d and abandoned. So take that number with a pinch or two of salt.




Each month stayed pretty steady in terms of overall books read with only 3 months dipping below the 18book mark. Even in August when I had to take some emergency time off to go move my parents when they unexpectedly sold their house in 2 weeks instead of the 3 months everyone was planning on. Which just means that I’ve made reading my main hobby this year and put most of my time and attention into it.






The Stars shall speak


13  
8   
58 
53 
49 
13 
12 
1   
14 
4   
3   

That makes my average for the year right around 3.25. Considering that a 3 is a good and completely average read, 3.25 means I pulled ahead of just plain good. I am more than satisfied with that.



On to the Books themselves!

Venetia was probably the best 1Star of the Year. It was fun to do a buddy read outside of my genre. It did reinforce my thoughts on the Romance genre however.

Worst 1Star was a tossup between Obsidian Worlds and The Store. Both got my stomach churning with disgust and outrage.

Best Non-Fiction wasn’t that hard because it was the only real N0n-fiction I read AND it was a 5Star’r. The Many Faces of Evil. It was just what I needed this year with my friend Amy losing her preemie twins and dealing with stage 4 cancer, all at the same time.

Best 5Star was once again a tossup. This time it was between 2 Re-reads, Dune & Way-farer. If I had to pick a new book, I’d go with Heirs of Empire, as it just hit me right at the right time.

Weirdest book of the year was definitely Gregor Xane‘s Taboogasm.  It just doesn’t get any weirder than that. If it does, I don’t want to know about it😀


Project ReRead
This was a complete success. 11 books that I had read before being read again with the aim of comparing how my tastes had changed and how that was reflected in my enjoyment and rating of said books. I still enjoyed every single book. However, I was able to determine that this was the last time I would read some of them.

I cherry picked specific books just so I wouldn’t bog down. That did lead to me realizing that some of these books are going to be favorites of mine for quite some time.  It also lead to the realization that while I’ve matured as a reader and can articulate the why’s and wherefores better, at heart, I’m still just a big geek/nerd.

Because it was such a success, I decided to expand upon the whole idea in a big way for ’17 and quite possibly into ’18. I’ve got a whole bunch of SERIES that I’m going to be rereading. They are:

I) Malazan books of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
II) Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert
III) Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede
IV) Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
V) Patricia McKillip’s books
VI) Space trilogy by C.S. Lewis
VII) Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky
VIII) The Malaz Empire novels by Iain Esslemont
IX) Swan’s War trilogy by Sean Russell
X) Polity books by Neal Asher

So be prepared for a lot of whining and angst from me as I rip into these. I did choose books that I think will stand up to my high standards, hahhaaha.

For my other plans for 2017, please feel free to read them HERE.






2016 is the year that Booklikes crashed. Crashed and Burned. Staff literally disappeared, the site kept breaking in new and varied ways, people left, people couldn’t join up. Some of the more patient and determined members made a supreme effort to stick around, figure out ways to work around the broken bits and keep members from totally hemorrhaging away. One staff member has returned at the end of the year but the site still crawls or doesn’t load right for long stretches at a time.

I am staying at Booklikes but it is no longer my primary social booksite. When it takes me 3 tries and 5minutes to just comment, that pretty much kills my desire to be there. You can find me there at: Bookstooge.booklikes.com

To anyone who I have followed at wordpress who also is on booklikes, just let me know which site you prefer interaction at. I unfollowed a lot of people at Booklikes who started up blogs at WP but I know not everyone will make the move to WP and I don’t want to lose interaction if I can help it😀





I joined Librarything with a free lifetime membership, thanks to some other Bookliker’s. I am using it as a backup catalogue site since I can’t export from Booklikes and I don’t know how long BL will last.

It is VERY different from what I am used to and you’re going to hear me complain about those differences, a lot! That doesn’t mean I will stop using it or that I hate the site. It just means that I am set in my ways and learning a new way brings out my inner cranky.

You can find me there at: librarything.com/profile/BookstoogeLT




I’ve been on WP.com since ’13, but more as a backup than as anything serious. As BL kept pushing me away, I started looking around at other booksites to find an alternative. I tried a lot of places but one thing or another just made them unpalatable. So finally I started making a serious effort to find new people here on WordPress and connect with fellow Booklikers who also had backup blogs here.

I’d like to thank you all who I follow for writing such fun things and I’d like to thank all of you who have chosen to follow me. It is nice to know that I am not screaming into the void. I plan on find another handful of bloggers to follow and to refine those I already do, as I see who posts regularly and who does it sporadically.



AND I think that about wraps it up. I’m plum out of words anyway, so that forces the issue. So onward to 2017 and a lot of Good Books!