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Title:
Jane Austen: A Life Series:
(Non-Fiction) Author: Claire Tomalin Rating:
2 of 5 Stars / DNF@16% Genre: Biography Pages:
384 / 60 Words: 138K / 22K Publish:
1997
This
was supposed to be a biography of Jane Austen. The author, Claire
Tomalin kept going down so many rabbit trails and had such a
scattershot approach to her presentation that I couldn’t take it
any more. In one instance she started a story with Jane’s
great-grandmother and somehow worked it down to Jane herself. But it
was convoluted and messy and I had a very hard time following her.
Plus, her use of first names, when several people had the same first
name, didn’t help at all.
So
I decided to stop wasting my time and to move on. I find it much
easier to dnf a non-fiction book for whatever reason.
If
I ever see Claire Tomalin’s name on a book again, I’ll know to
avoid it for sure.
Yes, this post is mostly about the Pumpkin Festival, but there was a whole week leading up to it. So pull out those pistols, 'cause we're going to go so fast that we MUST be breaking some laws, and any self-respecting outlaw knows they need a pistol. So load up cowboys!
Sunday I was helping my brother move a new wood stove. 600 pound monster (275kg) that took 3 of us to move, with a moving dolly. I felt like He-Man afterwards, hahahahaa.
Monday was an Oh Yeaaaaah day. Because eggnog is now on sale! You know life is good when you can drink eggnog on a Monday afternoon. Not even work could put a damper on that.
Tuesday was Date Night for the month. We went to a burger joint of all places, and it was even Mrs B's idea. It's a local place that does a few kinds of burgers and sides, really well. Mrs B got the poutine (gravy covered french fries) along with the veggieburger and I got the weekly special, the Country Fair burger. That consists of, according to their website and I can verify it, "Our Fresh Ground Seasoned Burger topped with a Whole Hotdog, American Cheese and French Fries on our signature toasted bun with Ketchup and Mustard". Date Night was a smashing success this month.
Wednesday I had to take off from work because we needed our furnace cleaned and serviced for the upcoming winter. I was looking at our records and it has been QUITE a while since it was last done, so it was more of a necessity than one of those "oh, that's a good idea" kind of things. Once that was done I did all those things I usually save for after work like going to the bank, the pharmacy, the boot store, that kind of thing. Get them all done in one whack instead of spacing them out. Of course, I had a couple glasses of eggnog to help sugar me through the day, so it was yet another fine day :-) and I didn't have to go to work. I think that was the best part, hahahahaa.
Thursday was sunny and work went well and I felt GOOD.
And Friday was the main Event, the Pumpkin Festival! This scary looking fellah was painted on a window and he got a lot of attention.
The Pumpkin Festival just isn't complete until you've seen a Man and his Pig, snuffling along, just itching to be petted and scritched (the pig, not the man). That'll do Pig, that'll do.
And what's better than a Man and his Pig? A skeleton dog driving an old time'y car of course! I mean, it goes without saying.
For the more discriminating tastes amongst us, we have the arts and crafts section of the Pumpkin Festival. Nothing says "I'm wicked scary" like a bedazzled skull grinning at you! Sadly, I didn't see any that had one glowing eye, so there was no Bookstooge Skull of Power to be had.
Once you've wandered around, it's time to eat. I had a pepperoni calzone and Mrs B had this scrumptious home made cinnamon bun with pumpkin icing and pumpkin seeds. By the time I'd remembered I was taking pictures, I'd already eaten 3/4 of my calzone, and NOBODY needs to see the devoured corpse of a pepperoni calzone.
When you are done eating, you do the right thing and throw you garbage away in the provided trash bins. Obviously, the trash bin on the right has an old russian soul. I commiserated with it, in silence.
Then to help aid in digestion, you walk around and look at people. The Pumpkin Festival always has characters. The Man and his Pig are just the tip of the iceberg. This year we had someone in a full ghilly suit (a military suit used by snipers to hide out in plain sight to whack baddies like the former President of Iran). I saw them walking around and thought they were trying for a Cousin It impression. Then you have the opposite end of the spectrum like the people in the second picture. They made their own staffs and put glow in the dark lights on them and walked around in their capes. Characters, that is what they were, and the Pumpkin Festival was just full of characters!
The the exciting end to the evening. A firetruck puts its ladder up to the second story of town hall and a fireman runs up the ladder waving a pumpkin flashlight, as everyone screams and hollers and loses their collective minds, and then he "lights" the great pumpkin, which is shown in the featured image. Then all the young people eat more food and make lots more noise while us more mature folk head home and get ready for bed. A good time was had by all.
Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road will resume normal broadcasting again tomorrow with all new episodes of Imperatoris Chronicorum at 5am. Will our beloved Imperator survive the Pumpkin Festival with all its fair food and thousands of people crowded into one small town oval? Will said thousands survive the Imperator? Tune in and find out tomorrow!
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Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
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Title:
Brian Barr’s King in Yellow Series: The
King in Yellow Anthology #14 Author: Brian
Barr Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre:
Cosmic Horror Pages: 61 Words:
26K Publish: 2019
It
has been almost two years since I last read some King in Yellow
stories (Under
Twin Suns in 2024)
and this collection by Brian Barr showcasing his own KiY stories was
a nice way to ease back into things.
It
was confusing and gory and fatalistic and in the end, nobody wins or
is in any way happy. It was distilled misery of the soul and that is
how a KiY set of stories should feel like.
All
four stories take place in the same world and use the same time
frame. While some stories take place in the past, they all end up in
our present day’ish.
What
I did find interesting, and different, was the space age approach to
the King in Yellow. Astronauts, in the space program successor to
NASA, find spaceships with the yellow sign on them. Much is made of
the physical side of Carcosa being in the Pleiades and how far it is
from Earth. It was just a very different take on things and one that
I appreciated. Barr’s writing fit right into the KiY mythos and I
feel that he understood just what the KiY is all about.
I
read the ebook version and some of the formatting was a bit wonky.
I’m not sure if it was supposed to be like that, or if it was a
conversion issue when I removed the drm from it and converted it to
the format of my choice.
I
do like the cover immensely though. It has that fusion of yellow, red
and black that I think fits the mythos just right. It also some real
weirdness in the pictures themselves, which once again I find very
fitting. A cover like this fits The King in Yellow to a T.
★★★★☆
From
Fandom.com
A
Visage of Great Truths
A
short prologue describes a group of astronauts salvaging a derelict
shipyard who bear witness to the manifestation of a group of pallid
yellow beings before being utterly destroyed by the newcomers.
The
main story tells of a magician who has devoted years to serving the
King in Yellow. When the truth of the entity is finally revealed to
him, his mind is shattered and his body annihilated.
The Sacred House
A
drug-addicted criminal steals a copy of The King in Yellow while
committing a home invasion which results in the death of the targeted
family. After reading the play he is visited by the spirits of the
family, devoted to the King, who tear his body apart before his soul
is brought into the service of their master.
Venusian Hell
When
her former crewmates begin to mysteriously die, grounded astronaut
Alicia Meadows begins to look into the government coverup of derelict
alien spacecraft which they had discovered on their last mission.
Discovering a link between the strange symbol etched into the craft
and an ancient play called The King in Yellow, she manages to track
down a copy. After reading it, Alicia embarks on a murder spree
across America, slowly paving the way for her new master to establish
a hold on Earth.
Aldebaran Apocalypse
In
400BC Anatolia, a young Greek woman is inducted into a cult of the
Yellow King known as the Cult of the Carians, receiving the mark of
her new master.
In
the modern day Robbie, a man completing his PhD on the cult, is is
slowly consumed by his thirst for knowledge on the subject while
simultaneously coming to realise that he may have unwittingly drawn
the King's attention to him. Following the lead of a beautiful Greek
woman who appears in his dreams, he begins to experiment with magical
rituals. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of planet Earth, his work
results in the opening of a breach in reality, allowing the armies of
Hastur to pour through and begin their conquest.
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Title: The Death Giver Series:
The Shadow #30 Authors: Maxwell Grant Rating:
3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages:
160 Words: 50K Publish: 1933
A
disgruntled scyentist turns his ire against rich people to get their
money, but also so he can get his jollies off by randomly killing
people just for funsies.
Oh,
this was fun! Thade, the Death Giver, who always refers to himself in
the third person as “The Death Giver” (maybe a literary trick by
the author to show he’s in opposition to “The Shadow”?), is
dead set on killing a bunch of important people at a ticker tape
parade in Manhattan. He has some practice runs on a couple of
millionaires and that’s what puts him The Shadow’s radar. Also
the police, but they are stumped as a Canadian forest, so they are
essentially useless.
On
a side note, I do wonder if law enforcement ever read these stories
in the 1930’s and what they thought of them? Sadly, the kind of
people who were buying these pulp magazines and reading them usually
weren’t the sort to go home and write their thoughts out in
beautiful journals meant to stand the test of time. They had stuff
like food and rent to worry about. But it leaves me curious because
the police are truly inept in this case.
The
Shadow does his usual “clew” investigating and Harry Vincent gets
into trouble yet again. This time he almost gets blown up but The
Shadow throws him like a bag of garbage out of a garage and saves his
life. I just laughed. Good ol’ Harry, our comedic “I almost
died!” bit character. The Shadow stories just wouldn’t be the
same without his hijinks.
I
enjoyed the villain’s ending too. He runs into an elevator shaft
trying to escape, only the elevator car isn’t there and he plummets
multiple stories to his messy death. I think I raised a fist and went
“Booyah!” when that happened :-D
This
was the final story in the sixth Shadow omnibus that I have and it
feels like it is time for a little break from The Shadow. I’ll be
putting this series on hiatus until sometime next year, but don’t
worry, I’m not permanently stopping. There are just too many clews
to check out after all ;-)
★★★✬☆
From
the Internet
The Main Villain:
The
story follows a sadistic criminal mastermind named Lucius
Olney—better known as Thade, "The Death Giver".
The Conflict:
Unlike villains motivated strictly by
financial gain or political power, Thade spreads murder and terror
purely for the dark pleasure of killing. He uses cunning schemes,
blackmail, and fatal traps (infamously featuring his calling card of
"bubbles of death") to eliminate victims and even dispose
of his own henchmen.
The Shadow's Intervention:
As Thade's web of terror tightens
across New York City, The Shadow steps in from the shadows. Utilizing
his trademark stealth, disguises, and network of agents, he unravels
the mastermind's plots, outwits the deadly traps, and brings down the
killer.
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review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
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copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
The Icarus Plot Series: The Icarus Saga
#2 Author: Timothy Zahn Rating: 3.5 of
5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 287 Words:
114K Publish: 2023
So
twisty, so fun. By this time in my association with Zahn, I’ve
realized my brain just can’t keep up with the twists and turns and
so I don’t try. I just sit back and hang on while Zahn rockets me
forward on the ride. It was a good ride too.
I’d
like to talk more about the book, but really, I just had fun. It is
part of a series and the series is going well. I’m good with that.
★★★✬☆
From
the Internet
For
years Gregory Roarke and his Kadolian partner Selene worked as
crocketts, combing through the atmospheres of uninhabited worlds for
places that might be colonized or hold valuable resources. Now, they
quietly work for the Icarus Group, a top-secret government
organization hunting for portals created by a long-vanished alien
race, portals that can teleport a person hundreds or thousands of
light-years in the blink of an eye.
Roarke and Selene are
searching one such possibility when they find that someone appears to
be stalking them. They evade their pursuers and return to find that a
man named Easton Dent has been searching the Spiral’s databases for
the names Gregory Roarke and Icarus.
Roarke reluctantly
agrees to meet with him. But that first contact is cut short, and
hours later Roarke is arrested and accused of Dent’s murder.
More
importantly to Roarke’s Icarus Group overseers, that brief meeting
also confirms that Dent was in recent contact with a portal.
But
the alien Patth are also searching for such portals, and they are
also on the trail. It’s now a race . . . and the Patth have
resources and ruthlessness far beyond anything Roarke and Selene can
match.
In
a universe where transportation is subsumed by the Paath monopoly,
Gregory Roarke and his partner Selena have been hired by the Icarus
program to find
interstellar gates that allow instantaneous transportation between
any two points in the galaxy. But when a conman and thief named
Easton Dent continuously searches for “Gregory Roarke” and
“Icarus,” everyone wants to hunt Dent down. The con man will only
make contact with Roarke.
But
when a body drops near the contact point, with Roarke’s wallet near
the corpse, the problems expand exponentially. The Paath are after
the portal. Roarke’s old mob boss employer is after Roarke and
Dent. Icarus has
secrets of its own, and playing its own long game. On top of
everything else is Easton Dent’s brother, Weston—an omnipresent
threat that always watches Easton’s back. Worst of all: The
badgemen are after Roarke for the murder of Easton Dent.
Having a handful of cards is what gives you options in Magic the Gathering. If you don't have any cards in your hand, you can't do anything and your opponent can just wale on you while you sit there and take it.
This card removes those cards from your opponent's hand. Remove his ability to play or fight back and you've got the game all sewn up. Unless he's a blue player, in which case he'll probably screw you over instead :-/
