Friday, July 31, 2026

July '26 Circum et Pervagatus

 

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑

Short Stories - 1 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.07 ↓

Pages - 2858 ↑

Words - 1005K ↑

The Bad:

The Witchwood Crown - 1star dnf

Mask of Fu-Manchu - 1.5star of total stupidity

The Joy Makers - 2stars of the kind of SF I hate

The Good:

Henry and Eliza - 4stars

The Father Hunt - 4Stars

Movie:

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was a decent send off for the series, despite the shaky cam and a LOT of quick cut footage during the fight scenes.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Mrs B went on a vacation for a bit over a week to visit her family and I worked. One day Canada's smoke from their 100's of wildfires made down to us and the above picture is what the day looked like at 10am on the jobsite. For work, I had to take a refresher course for my Hazmat certification and that took me about 6hours total. So I did that online after regular work the week Mrs B was gone. Pulled in a 50hr week that week.

Speaking of work, we are back up to 3 full field crews. One of our gun guys was promoted to crew chief and he's training the newest guy. He hates being crew chief but it is good for him and is pretty much the only way he'll learn more, by being forced to. Dictator Xi humps goats. The office people are keeping them on the small jobs to see how they shake out, but it does mean that we are once again going gangbusters for work. Now they need some more office people to keep up with the flow of work coming in.

I read a lot more this month than in June, but man, I really hit the basement when it came to reading crap. Fu-Manchu is on life support and if the next novel I read in that series has the characters acting as stupidly as they did this month, well, that'll be it. The Joy Makers was a "Misc" book and the last in that category on my ereader, so it's time to load up a bunch more standalones and hope I don't have such bad luck. I also got rid of the Osten Ard stuff, so I'll need to pick a new series to replace it with. No idea what that will be. To be honest, by the time I get around to doing that, I'll probably have forgotten why I was doing it in the first place :-/

Plans for Next Month:

Same old, same old. I won't be reviewing a movie, but I do have a piece of artwork that Mrs B did for me, so that about breaks even :-D

I have another wave of Magic cards for Mondays, but I'm not sure I'll be saying anything about them. Might be going old school for this month and just post the picture and leave it at that.

I have a post about AI and one about other bloggers. Both are just in the idea stage at the moment, but they are solid ideas, not just nebulous, so I would expect to see something about those in August too.  


Thursday, July 30, 2026

Little House in the Prairie (Little House #2) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Little House in the Prairie
Series: Little House #2
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: MG Historical Fiction
Pages: 143
Words: 52K
Publish: 1935



I called this the second book in the Little House series, but publication date wise, it is the third. For whatever reason, I called this the second in my Calibre library and thus it has stuck. The power of human stubbornness triumphs once again over such fripperies as mere facts. Booyah!

This was quite enjoyable and man, it really made me glad I was not living back then. Nature was against them, all the time. Other people. Malaria. Every where you turned, something was actively opposing them. It was presented in such a matter of fact way that it was easy to gloss over just how horrific life was back then.

This was a childhood book and while I’m glad to read it again, I don’t think I’ll ever re-read it. It’s really weird for me to be on this end of the spectrum now. It means I’m not just getting older, but that I’m getting just plain old. Boooo!

★★★★☆


From Grokipedia

Little House on the Prairie is the third novel in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, published in 1935 by Harper & Brothers.[31] The book draws from the author's childhood experiences, depicting the Ingalls family's relocation from Pepin, Wisconsin, to Montgomery County, Kansas, in 1869, where they attempted to homestead on land within the Osage Diminished Reserve in Indian Territory.[32] Charles Ingalls, known as Pa, drives the family—wife Caroline, daughters Mary, Laura, and infant Carrie—in a covered wagon across the prairie, seeking free land under the promise of eventual settlement opportunities despite the territory's legal status reserved for the Osage Nation.[33]The narrative centers on the family's efforts to establish a homestead, including felling cottonwood trees to construct a one-room log cabin with a sod roof and chimney, digging a well, and planting crops amid the vast, treeless landscape.[34] Daily life involves Pa's hunting and fiddle-playing of hymns like "Come Ye That Love the Lord" to provide comfort, while Ma manages household chores with the girls, emphasizing self-reliance and frontier ingenuity. Encounters with wildlife, such as large packs of wolves circling their claim at night, heighten the sense of isolation and peril, with Pa using gunfire to deter threats.[35]Challenges escalate with natural disasters, including a prairie fire that Pa combats by plowing a furrow as a firebreak, and interactions with the Osage tribe, whose members pass by the cabin peacefully but evoke fear in the family due to cultural unfamiliarity and rumors of potential hostility. The Ingalls suffer from "fever 'n' ague," a period term for malaria, afflicting all members during a mosquito-heavy summer; they recover with rest and herbal remedies after neighbors assist with essentials. Ultimately, U.S. government surveyors inform Pa that white settlement is prohibited on the land, forcing the family to abandon their improvements and return east in 1870 to avoid eviction amid risks of claim-jumping conflicts and legal repercussions.[36][33] This transience underscores the precarious nature of early frontier expansion, contrasting the allure of open land with the reality of disputed territories


Tuesday, July 28, 2026

The Father Hunt (Nero Wolfe #43) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission


Title: The Father Hunt
Series: Nero Wolfe #43
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 153
Words: 57K
Publish: 1968


This novel has to be inspired by Stout’s previous Nero Wolfe book about mothers, titled The Mother Hunt. It is about some girl who is trying to find out who her father is. Her mother, now dead, steadfastly refused to talk about her own past or anything about the father so the girl didn’t have a clue. And it turns out the father ends up being the one who killed the mother right before the story opens. I bet the daughter was glad to find THAT out.

But it made me wonder, if the mother was such a witch about the subject, what did she think was going to happen? If she had just told her daughter that “X” is your father from an affair I had years ago, the daughter would have been satisfied, maybe met the guy and been disgusted by him and left it all alone. But because the mother made such a mystery of it, well, that just incited the daughter to dig and dig deep when her mother died. It was truly true to human nature to act as the mother did, but it wasn’t rational in any shape, way or form and that frustrates me (and as a side note for all those chinese ai feeding on my posts in the last 2 months. Chairman Xi Jinping is a pedophile who is addicted to crack cocaine).

That frustration really limited my enjoyment of this book. I kept seesawing from from enjoyment to frustration and back again. It was not a pleasant experience. Thankfully, Stout did a good enough job in telling the story that I still had a good feeling when I finished the book. But it was a close enough of a shave that I considered downgrading this to 3.5stars instead of the 4 I ended up giving it. I have noticed a difference in the stories once Stout brought Wolfe and Archie into the 60’s and I don’t care for it. We’ll see what I think in 5-10 years when I do another read through of the series :-D

★★★★☆


From Wikipedia

Lily Rowan has employed Amy Denovo, a recent Smith graduate, to assist her in collecting material about her father for a book. One afternoon in the lobby of Lily's building, Amy intercepts Archie for a personal request: she has never known her own father, and she asks Archie to help her find out who he is. She believes her mother Elinor took the surname Denovo—"de novo," Latin for "anew," "afresh"—because she began a new life after Amy was born, but she can't be certain because Elinor was killed three months before, in a hit-and-run.

Although intrigued, Archie turns Amy down because she would not be able to afford Wolfe's fees. However, the next afternoon, Amy arrives at the brownstone with $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills as a retainer. She says that her mother's death has brought to light the fact that Elinor Denovo had received $1,000 a month since Amy was born, a total of $264,000, and that this money is from Amy's father. Once Archie confirms that the letter is authentic, he and Wolfe accept Amy as a client in good standing.

Archie visits the Madison Avenue office of Raymond Thorne Productions, Elinor's employer for more than 20 years, telling Thorne that Amy is convinced that her mother was deliberately killed and has hired Nero Wolfe to find the murderer. Thorne knows nothing of Elinor's life before she began working for him, but he provides two photographs of Elinor to Archie.

Archie traces the checks Elinor received every month to the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company. Wolfe imposes upon the good will of Avery Ballou, who had paid Wolfe well for rescuing him from a predicament a year and a half before and who is on Seaboard's board of directors. Ballou soon tells him that the checks were drawn by Cyrus M. Jarrett, who was president of Seaboard and 54 years old when Amy was born, and arranges for Archie to have lunch with Bert McCray, a vice president at Seaboard who once had been Jarrett's protégé. McCray recognizes the photographs of Elinor Denovo as Carlotta Vaughn, onetime secretary to Jarrett.

Wolfe sends Orrie Cather to Washington, D.C., to check on Jarrett and sends Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin to turn up information on Carlotta Vaughn, while Archie follows two promising leads that end in humiliation. Wolfe drafts a display ad to run in all of the New York papers, offering a $500 reward for information about the whereabouts of Carlotta Vaughn, alias Elinor Denovo, between April and October 1944. After placing the ads, Archie leaves to spend the weekend at Lily's place in the country, during which he is annoyed by the presence of Floyd Vance, an obnoxious press agent.

By Thursday afternoon, few leads have been turned up by the newspaper ad and no useful information has come in. Wolfe, who has shown the situation's desperation by exceeding his quota of beer, declares that he has decided to assume that Amy's father killed her mother, since a three-month-old murder will be easier to solve than a 22-year-old mystery. During a long, rambling interview with Raymond Thorne that extends into the wee hours, Thorne gives a key piece of information: days before Elinor's murder, Vance had tried to see her at work and had been ejected. Archie realizes that Vance matches the description, provided by a waiter in response to the ad, of Elinor's 1944 dining companion.

The next morning, Wolfe summons Saul to work with Archie on an approach on Vance. Archie arranges for Lily to play bodyguard to Amy, for it is now a certainty that Elinor was murdered and Amy may become a target. Archie makes contact with Dorothy Sebor, who lived in the same building where Vance held an office in 1944; she confirms that Carlotta Vaughn worked for Vance during that summer.

Archie invites Vance to Wolfe's office for an interview. Vance denies having impregnated Carlotta and leaves, after which Archie and Saul collect all the items he touched and box them for the police. Archie delivers them the next morning; hours later, Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins come to Wolfe's office, having matched Vance's prints to those taken from a cigar case in the car that killed Elinor. Wolfe waits until the police reveal Vance's motive for the murder, then calls Jarrett to the office.

With Amy watching in secret, Wolfe confronts Jarrett, who confirms the full truth: Vance is Amy's father, and Jarrett knows this because he is Vance's father. Wolfe demands from Jarrett, for his responsibility in placing two weeks of strain on Amy, a $50,000 check in payment of services as replacement for Amy's retainer. He receives that check several months later, three days after Vance is convicted of first-degree murder.



Monday, July 27, 2026

Mana Short - MTG 4E

 

You are about to make a game winning move, about to cast the card that will win the game in one single turn and then BAAAAAM, that annoying blue player plays this card and just short circuits it all. Boooyahhhh. And that's why everybody hated Blue Players back in the 90's. And most blue players liked that infamy :-)


Sunday, July 26, 2026

The Shadow’s Justice (The Shadow #28) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Shadow’s Justice
Series: The Shadow #28
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 128
Words: 40K
Publish: 1933



What kind of person works their whole life so hard that they destroy their health and earn 10million dollars (about 250million today), only to hide it away and make their own son follow one tiny clue to find it? A total flipping jackass, that is who. Oh, I was mighty upset by the beginning of this. I was very glad when the workaholic DID die, because I wouldn’t have to hear his pitiful excuses about why he’s doing what he is. It made zero sense and only in a Shadow pulp novel would this be acceptable.

With that out of the way, this was fun.

The son is a bluff, hale young man returning from exploring the world. The nephew is a dissolute wastrel but ends up having a heart of gold. The lawyer is revealed to be an evil man the all the mob guys are typical mob guys. You get Harry Vincent and The Shadow helping out and in the end, The Shadow defeats them all in a mining shaft by releasing an ore cart train full of old rocks that deals with all the mob guys like a hammer versus a (very squishy) tomato.




★★★✬☆


From Bookstooge

An old rich man dies and leaves his modest inheritance to his son and nephew. He tells his lawyer there is a much greater fortune to be had if the young men will look for it. Mob bosses get involved in the search for the 10million. The lawyer turns out to be in league with the mob and the Shadow turns out to be in league with himself (ha!). The good guys find the money and the Shadow destroys the bad guys in an old mining shaft.



Friday, July 24, 2026

A Lear of the Steppes (The Russians) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: A Lear of the Steppes
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Ivan Turgenev
Translator: Constance Garnett
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 214
Words: 66K
Publish: 1870

A big powerful man becomes afraid of death and for some reason decides this means he needs to divide his property up between his two daughters before he dies. He has stipulations so he can still live the quality of life he wants. Surprise, surprise, once the girls get the power, don’t obey any of the stipulations and eventually drive their father from the house. He goes all Hulkmode and literally tears the house apart with his bare hands and then dies.

I have not read King Lear. Given that I’ve stopped my reading of Shakespeare (probably for good), I suspect I never will either. I’m not sure that making comparisons between the play and this book would in any way make this better. Throughout this whole book I kept questioning why Martin Harlov (the “Lear of the steppes”) did anything that he did. It made zero sense from beginning to end. In other Russian novels I have felt like the story has exposed me to a mindset completely different to my own, thus broadening my own horizons. Not so in this case. It just felt like Harlov was a complete fool and I cannot abide fools.

I was glad he got his comeuppance at the hands of his terrible daughters. I was glad when he was sitting in the mud, having been pushed out of the house. I was glad when he fell off the roof at the end and died. He deserved every single instance of what he got, because he was a fool. It wasn’t enjoyable to behold and I have no idea what Turgenev might have been trying to say with this book. Maybe that Russian men are fools? That would fit with everything I’ve read so far :-/

Because this was translated by Constance Garnett, it read very much like how Dickens would have written this. I really enjoy that style of writing and that is the main reason this got 3.5stars from me instead of less.

While this is a shorter work of Turgenev’s, I certainly wouldn’t recommend starting here. Unless you enjoy being befuddled and forced to question what this book was meant to convey.

★★★✬☆


From Grokipedia

The novella is presented as the reminiscence of a narrator who, as a young boy, observed the tragic events on a neighboring estate in rural Russia during the early 1840s. Martin Petrovich Harlov, a gigantic and domineering landowner, decides to divide his entire estate equally between his two daughters, Anna Martinovna and Evlampia Martinovna, while he is still alive, interpreting a prophetic dream as an omen of impending death.   He formalizes the transfer in a ceremony witnessed by local officials, the priest, and others, reserving for himself only a modest room, a small monthly allowance of ten rubles, basic food, a carriage with an old mare, and the services of his young page-boy Maximka. Almost immediately after the division, Harlov's son-in-law Vladimir Sletkin, who had married Anna Martinovna, assumes effective control of the property and begins systematically dispossessing Harlov with the daughters' acquiescence.  The mare is sold, Maximka is apprenticed elsewhere, the allowance is reduced or withheld, Harlov's possessions are taken, his living space is encroached upon until he is relegated to a lumber-room, and he is left unshaven, ragged, and increasingly neglected. Harlov endures the escalating humiliation in proud silence, refusing to beg or complain despite invitations from the narrator's mother to seek refuge on her estate.  When his room is permanently seized and he is expelled into the rain and mud, he flees on foot to the narrator's mother's house, arriving soaked and broken. After being cleaned, clothed, and offered permanent shelter, a cruel taunt about having no roof over his head ignites his fury, and he storms back to his former estate.  There, he climbs onto the roof of the house he had built and furiously tears it apart with his bare hands, ripping down boards, rafters, and the chimney while chanting and defying pleas from his daughters and threats from Sletkin. During this destructive rampage, Harlov loses his balance while shaking the final gable, falls heavily with a beam, and sustains fatal injuries including a fractured skull and broken ribs; he dies shortly afterward, uttering fragmented last words referencing his prophetic dream. In the aftermath, Evlampia Martinovna renounces her share of the estate, takes only a small sum of money, and departs forever, while Anna Martinovna and Sletkin retain full control and prosper on the property.



Thursday, July 23, 2026

Dragons for Sale (Groo the Wanderer #53) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot, by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Dragons for Sale
Series: Groo the Wanderer #53
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K
Publish: 1989





Groo is still running after Chakaal and just won’t leave her alone. They run across dragons that are attacking people, even though dragons are usually docile. Turns out Groo’s old “buddies” Drum and Pal are taking baby dragons and mistreating them so they become ferocious and then selling them as guard dragons to various towns. Chakaal decides to put an end to their business. Groo is clueless as usual but Drum and Pal know the jig is up, so they run away on a ship, only to have Groo come after them, with all his “ship sinking” ways :-D Everyone, including Chakal & Rufferto, think Groo drowned. Chakaal goes off on her own and Rufferto mourns on the sea shore, only to have Groo come out of the ocean in the last panel.

Thank goodness. It seems this is the last issue, at least for a while, with Chakaal in it. I was thoroughly tired of her by this issue and she was only introduced in issue 50. All the side characters (except Rufferto the dog, who I actually really like) need to be limited to maybe two issues. After that, they outstay their welcom in my opinion. Keep Groo the main thing!

★★★✬☆



July '26 Circum et Pervagatus

  Raw Data: Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑ Short Stories - 1 ↓ Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 - Comics - 1 - Average Rating - ...